[From _The Kentucky Miscellany_ (Lexington, Kentucky, 1821)]
O! Thou who blest the loaves and fishes Look down upon these empty dishes; And that same power that did them fill, Bless each of us, but d---- old Gill!
DANVILLE
[From the same]
Accursed Danville, vile, detested spot, Where knaves inhabit, and where fools resort-- Thy roguish cunning, and thy deep design, Would shame a Bluebeard or an Algerine.
O, may thy fatal day be ever curst, When by blind error led, I entered first.
KENTUCKY
[From the same]
I hate Kentucky, curse the place, And all her vile and miscreant race!
Who make religion's sacred tie A mask thro' which they cheat and lie.
Proteus could not change his shape, Nor Jupiter commit a rape With half the ease those villains can Send prayers to God and cheat their man!
I hate all Judges here of late, And every Lawyer in the State.
Each quack that is called Physician, And all blockheads in Commission-- Worse than the Baptist roaring rant, I hate the Presbyterian cant-- Their Parsons, Elders, nay, the whole, And wish them gone with all my soul.
HUDSON, WIFE MURDERER
[From the same]
Strange things of Orpheus poets tell, How for a wife he went to Hell; Hudson, a wiser man no doubt, Would go to Hell to be without!
PARSON RICE
[From the same]
Ye fools! I told you once or twice, You'd hear no more from canting R----e; He cannot settle his affairs, Nor pay attention unto prayers, Unless you pay up your arrears.
Oh, how in pulpit he would storm, And fill all Hell with dire alarm!
Vengeance pronounced against each vice, And, more than all, curs'd avarice; Preach'd money was the root of ill; Consigned each rich man unto Hell; But since he finds you will not pay, Both rich and poor may go that way.
'Tis no more than I expected-- The meeting-house is now neglected: All trades are subject to this chance, No longer pipe, no longer dance.
THE POET'S EPITAPH
[From the same]
Underneath this marble tomb, In endless shades lies drunken Tom; Here safely moored, dead as a log, Who got his death by drinking grog.
By whiskey grog he lost his breath-- Who would not die so sweet a death?
GEORGE BECK
George Beck, classicist, born in England in 1749, became instructor of mathematics at Woolwich Academy, near London, at the age of twenty-seven years; but he was later dismissed. Beck married an English woman of culture and emigrated to the United States in 1795, reaching these shores in time to serve "Mad Anthony" Wayne as a scout in his Indian campaign. The wanderlust was upon George Beck, and he became one of the first of that little band of nomadic painters that came early to the Blue Grass country, and having once come remained.
He arrived at Lexington in 1800; and it was not long before he began to send short original poems and spirited translations of Anacreon, Homer, Horace, and Virgil to old John Bradford's _Gazette_. At about this time, too, Beck was doing many portraits and a group of landscapes in oils of the Kentucky river country, a few of which have come down to posterity. Eighteen hundred and six seems to have been Beck's best year in Kentucky from the literary viewpoint, as the _Gazette_ is full of his verses and translations. He was widely known as the "Lexington Horace." Besides painting and poetry, George Beck was a rather learned astronomer, as his _Observations on the Comet_ of 1811 prove. With his wife he conducted an "Academy for Young Ladies"
for several years. His last years were much embittered by the lack of appreciation upon the part of the Western public. The Kentucky of 1800 was not a whirlpool of art or literature by any means, and this cultured man languished and finally died among a people who cared very little for his fine learning or his manners. George Beck, poet, translator, mathematician, astronomer, artist, died in Lexington, Kentucky, December 14, 1812. His wife survived him until the cholera year of 1833, which swept away nearly two thousand citizens of Lexington and the Blue Grass.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Kentucky Gazette_ (Lexington, December 22, 1812); Appletons' _Cyclopaedia of American Biography_ (New York, 1887, v.
i).
FIFTEENTH ODE OF HORACE
A New Translation of the Fifteenth Ode of Horace, or Prophecy of Nerceus, from which (according to Count Algorotti and Dr. Johnson) Gray took his beautiful Ode, _The Bard_.
[From _The Kentucky Gazette_ (October 27, 1806)]
What time the fair perfidious shepherd bore The beauteous Helen back to Ilion's shore, To sleep the howling waves were won By Nerceus, Ocean's hoary son, While round the liquid realms he sung, From guilty love, what dire disasters sprung.
Thee, tainted Youth, what omens dire attend!
Thy neck and Ilion's soon to Greece shall bend.
To man and horse what sweat and blood, What carnage float down Xanthus' flood!
What wrath on Troy shall Greece infuriate turn!
What glittering domes, and spires, and temples burn!
In vain you boast the Queen of beauty's smiles, Her charms, her floating curls, her amourous wiles, These, these alas! will nought avail While Cretan arrows round you sail!
And, tho' the fates awhile such guilt may spare, Vile dust at length shall smear that golden hair!
Trace back, vain Youth! sad Ilion's fate of old!
Ulysses' sons and Nestor's yet behold, Teucer's and Diomede's more dread Horrific war shall round you shed; Then shall ye trembling fly like timid deer When hungry wolves are howling in their rear.
By promise Vain of Universal Sway Lur'd you from Greece the beauteous Queen away?
In less than ten revolving years Achilles' dreadful fleet appears!
His bloody trains of Myrmidonians dire Shall wrap proud Ilion's domes in Grecian fire!
ANACREON'S FIFTY-FIFTH ODE
[From _The Kentucky Gazette_ (November 3, 1806)]
What deathless Artist's mimic hand Shall paint me here the Ocean bland, Shall give the waves such kindling glows As when immortal Venus rose?
Who, in phrenzy's flight of mind Such touch and tinctures bright may find To match her form and golden hair And naked paint the heavenly fair?
While every amorous rival billow Strives her buoyant breast to pillow?
'Tis done! behold the wavelets green Softly press the Paphian Queen, Around her heavenly bosom play, Kiss its warm blush and melt away.
Her graceful neck of pearl behold, Her wavy curls of floating gold: But none but lips divine may tell What Graces on that bosom dwell!
Such bloom a bed of lilies shows Illumin'd by the crimson'd rose.
Rounding off with grace divine Like hills of snow her shoulders shine.
While streaming thro' the waves she swims The silvery maze half veils her limbs, Else where's the eye that durst behold Such beauty stream'd on heavenly mold?