Dear Publisher….a poem…by Charles Lamb (1775-1834) amongst others…
An interesting period in English Literature .
Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, Lloyd and others are referred to as ‘The Lake Poets’ because they drew their inspiration from the idyllic natural surroundings of the English Lake District. For their sins they were ridiculed by Byron who saw them as hayseeds who rejected all that was thrilling about the modern world. (the Industrial Revolution, The American Independence Wars, The Napoleonic Wars, and of course, the Agrarian Revolution which was driving people off the land and into industrial sweatshops)
Here’s Byron on the Lake Poets;
Yet let them not to vulgar Wordsworth stoop,
The meanest object of that lowly group,
Whose verse,of all but childish prattle void,
Seems blessed harmony to Lambe and Lloyd…
And here’s a line or two of Wordsworth’s, wondering what we’ve lost and what we’ve gained;
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
In all this a tone deaf Charles Lamb (200 years ago his name sported an ‘e’ on the end. Not now} took time to write the following;
Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart,
Just as the whim bites. For my part,
I do not care a farthing candle
For either of them, nor for Handel.
Oh tell me,Gods, where wouldst we be