Don Juan

How it begins

Bob Southey! You’re a poet, poet laureate, And representative of all the race. Although ’tis true that you turned out a Tory at Last, yours has lately been a common case. And now my epic renegade, what are ye at With all the lakers, in and out of place? A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye Like four and twenty blackbirds in a pye, Which pye being opened they began to sing’ (This old song and new simile holds good), ‘A dainty dish to set before the King’ Or Regent, who admires such kind of food. And Coleridge too has lately taken wing, But like a hawk encumbered with his hood, Explaining metaphysics to the nation. I wish he would explain his explanation.