TO ONE WHO DESIRED LATIN VERSE OF HIM
Still had I sojourn'd in that Delphic cave
Where young Apollo prophet first became,
Verona, Mantua were not sole in fame,
But Florence, too, her poet now might have:
But since the waters of that spring no more
Enrich my land, needs must that I pursue
Some other planet, and, with sickle new,
Reap from my field of sticks and thorns its store.
Dried is the olive: elsewhere turn'd the stream
Whose source from famed Parna**us was derived.
Whereby of yore it throve in best esteem.
Me fortune thus, or fault perchance, deprived
Of all good fruit—unless eternal Jove
Shower on my head some favour from above.
Macgregor.