Law and Poetry

In days of old did law and rime
    A common pathway follow,
For Themis in the mythic time
    Was sister of Apollo.

The Hindu statutes tripped in feet
    As daintily as Dryads,
And law in Wales to be complete
    Was versified in triads.

The wise Alfonso of Castile
    Composed his code in metre
Thereby to make its flavour feel
    A little bit the sweeter.

But law and rime were found to be
    A trifle inconsistent,
And now in statutes poetry
    Is wholly non-existent.

Still here and there some advocate
    Before his fellows know it
Has had bestowed on him by fate
    The laurel of the poet.

Let him who has been honoured so,
    In truth a ,
Find precedents in Cicero
    And our Chief Justice Davis;

And more than all in Cino; he,
    So plaintive a narrator
Of fair Selvaggia's cruelty,
    Won fame as a glossator.

Let him remember Thomas More
    And Scott and Alciatus,
And Grotius with an ample store
    Of most divine afflatus.

But let him, if his bread and cheese
    Depend on his profession,
Bethink him that the art of these
    Was not their sole possession.

The stream that flows from Helicon
    Is scarcely a Pactolus,
A richer prize is theirs who con
    Dull treatises on .

'Tis well that some bold spirits dare
    To cut themselves asunder
From bonds of law like old Molière,
    While lawyers gaze in wonder.

The world had been a poorer place
    Had Goethe lived by pleading
Or Tasso won a hopeless case
    With Ariosto leading.