A TRAGEDY BY WILLIAM GODWIN, 1807. <br /> <br /> <br />An author who has given you all delight <br />Furnished the tale our stage presents to-night. <br />Some of our earliest tears he taught to steal <br />Down our young cheeks, and forced us first to feel. <br />To solitary shores whole years confined, <br />Who has not read how pensive Crusoe pined? <br />Who, now grown old, that did not once admire <br />His goat, his parrot, his uncouth attire, <br />The stick, due-notched, that told each tedious day <br />That in the lonely island wore away? <br />Who has not shuddered, where he stands aghast <br />At sight of human footsteps in the waste? <br />Or joyed not, when his trembling hands unbind <br />Thee, Friday, gentlest of the savage kind? <br /> <br /> <br />The genius who conceived that magic tale <br />Was skilled by native pathos to prevail. <br />His stories, though rough-drawn and framed in haste, <br />Had that which pleased our homely grandsires' taste. <br /> <br /> <br />His was a various pen, that freely roved <br />Into all subjects, was in most approved. <br />Whate'er the theme, his ready Muse obeyed- <br />Love, courtship, politics, religion, trade- <br />Gifted alike to shine in every sphere, <br />Novelist, historian, poet, pamphleteer. <br /> <br /> <br />In some blest interval of party-strife, <br />He drew a striking sketch from private life, <br />Whose moving scenes of intricate distress <br />We try to-night in a dramatic dress: <br />A real story of domestic woe, <br />That asks no aid from music, verse, or show, <br />But trusts to truth, to Nature, and Defoe.<br /><br />Charles Lamb<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/prologue-to-faulkener/
