Bad Poetry: Harmonious Hog

The Reverend Samuel Wesley, Sr., is possibly best known as the father of John Wesley, founder of Methodism. He was also a poet, not always a first-rate one. The following excerpt, from his first volume, Maggots, is a good example. It's a stanza from his A Pindaricque on the Grunting of a Hog. A "Pindaricque," for those who might not know it, is an ode after the mode of the ancient Greek lyric poet Pindar.

Pindaric odes are long lyric encomia--poems written to praise and glorify someone or something. The subject should be lofty, the treatment serious. Pindaric odes are modeled on the songs of the chorus in Greek drama (strophe, antistrophe, epode), thus have a triadic structure. Many odes after Cowley in the mid-17th century retain the tone, style, and subject matter of the Pindaric ode, but not the stanzaic regularity.

Why an Anglican minister should think the grunting of a hog a subject worthy of a pindaric ode is anybody's guess.

from A Pindaricque on the Grunting of a Hog

Harmonious Hog draw near!
No bloody butchers here,
Thou need'st not fear.
Harmonious Hog draw near, and from they beauteous Snowt,
Whilst we attend with Ear
Like thine prik't up devout,
To taste thy sugry Voice, which hear, and there,
With wanton Curls, Vibrates around the Circling Air,
Harmonious Hog! Warble some Anthem out!