SISTER, I'M A POET

These Muses once taught beautiful singing to Hesiod as he was pasturing his lambs at the foot of holy Helicon.  The goddesses first addressed me with these words:  “Shepherds whose home is in the wilds, you miserable disgraces to your trade, all belly and no hands, we know how to tell many falsehoods that seem real:  but we also know how to speak truth when we wish to.” 

This is what the eloquent daughters of mighty Zeus said; they also gave me a staff, a branch of evergreen laurel which they trimmed with marvelous skill.  They breathed into me their divine voice, so that I might tell of things to come and things past, and ordered me to sing of the race of the blessed gods who live forever, and always to place the Muses themselves both at the beginning and at the end of my song.   

But enough of this gossiping. 

Hesiod, Theogony (I), trans. Norman O . Brown, The Library of the Liberal Arts, 1953

Morrissey, Sister I'm A Poet (Link) 

ALPS ON ALPS

A little learning is a dang'rous thing ;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring :

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,

In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts ;

While from the bounded level of our mind

Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,

But, more advanc'd, behold with strange surprise

New distant scenes of endless science rise !

So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,

Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky ;

Th' eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last ;

But those attain'd, we tremble to survey

The growing labours of the lengthen'd way ;

Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'rings eyes,

Hill peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise !

Alexander Pope:  From  An Essay On Criticism (1709)