To a Person of Honour, upon His Incomparable, Incomprehensible Poem, Entitled 'The British Princes'

Sir! you've obliged the British nation moreThan all their bards could ever do before,And, at your own charge, monuments as hardAs brass or marble to your fame have rear'd;For, as all warlike nations take delightTo hear how their brave ancestors could fight,You have advanced to wonder their renown,And no less virtuously improved your own;That 'twill be doubtful whether you do write,Or they have acted, at a nobler height.You of your ancient princes, have retrievedMore than the ages knew in which they lived;Explain'd their customs and their rights anew,Better than all their Druids ever knew;Unriddled those dark oracles as wellAs those that made them could themselves foretell.For as the Britons long have hoped, in vain,Arthur would come to govern them again,You have fulfill'd that prophecy alone,And in your poem placed him on his throne.Such magic power has your prodigious penTo raise the dead, and give new life to men,Make rival princes meet in arms and love,Whom distant ages did so far remove;For as eternity has neither pastNor future, authors say, nor first nor last,But is all instant, your eternal MuseAll ages can to any one reduce.Then why should you, whose miracles of artCan life at pleasure to the dead impart,Trouble in vain your better-busied head,T'observe what times they lived in, or were dead?For since you have such arbitrary power,It were defect in judgment to go lower,Or stoop to things so pitifully lewd,As use to take the vulgar latitude;For no man's fit to read what you have writ,That holds not some proportion with your wit;As light can no way but by light appear,He must bring sense that understands it here.