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An Answer to a Copy of Verses Sent Me to JerseyAn Answer to a Copy of Verses Sent Me to Jersey
As to a northern people (whom the Sun
Uses just as the Romish church has done
Her prophane laity, and does assign
Bread only both to serve for bread and wine)
A rich Canary fleet welcome arrives;
Such comfort to us here your letter gives,
Fraught with brisk racy verses, in which we
The Soil from whence they came, taste, smell, and see:
Such is your present to`us; for you must know,
Sir, that verse does not in this island grow
No more then sack; one lately did not fear
(Without the Muses leave) to plant it here.
But it produc`d such base, rough, crabbed, hedge
rhymes, as ev`n set the hearers ears on edge.
Written by ______ Esquire, the
Year of our Lord six hundred thirty three.
Brave Jersey Muse! and he`s for this high syile
Call`d to this day the Homer of the Isle.
Alas! to men here no words less hard be
To Rhime with, than Mount Orgueil is to me.
Mount Orgueil, which in scorn o`th` Muses law
With no yoke-fellow word will deign to draw.
Stubborn Mount Orgueil! `tis a work to make it
Come into rhime, more hard then `twere to take it.
Alas, to bring your tropes and figures here,
Strange as to bring camels and elephants were;
And metaphor is so unknown a thing,
`Twould need the preface of "God save the King."
Yet this I`ll say for th` honour of the place,
That, by God`s extraordinary grace
(Which shows the people`have judgment, if not wit)
The land is undefil`d with clinches yet.
Which in my poor opinion, I confess,
Is a most singular blessing, and no less
Then Irelands wanting spiders. And, so far
From th` Actual sin of bombast too they are,
(That other crying sin o` th` English Muse)
That even Satan himself can accuse
None here (no not so much as the divines)
For th` motus priṃ primi to strong Lines.
Well, since the soil then does not naturally bear
Verse, who ( a Devil) should import it here?
For that to me would seem as strange a thing
As who did first wild beasts into islands bring;
Unless you think that it might taken be
As Green did Gondibert, in a prize at sea.
But that`s a fortune falls not every day;
`Tis true Green was made by it; for they say
The parliament did a noble bounty do,
And gave him the whole prize, their tenths and fifteens too.
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