"The longer we stay,
The longer we may;
It's a folly to think about weather or way."
"But now I begin to be frighted,
If I fall, what a way I should roll!
I am glad that the bridge was indicted,
Stay! stop! I am sunk in a hole!"
66 Nay never care,
'Tis a common affair;
You'll not be the last that will set a foot there."
"Let me breathe now a little, and ponder
On what it were better to do;
That terrible lane I see yonder,
I think we shall never get through."
"So think I :
But, by the bye,
We never shall know, if we never should try."
"But should we get there, how shall we get home
What a terrible deal of bad road! we have past'
Slipping, and sliding, and if we should come
To a difficult stile, I am ruin'd at last!
Oh this lane!
Now it is plain
That struggling and striving is labour in vain."
"I have examined it, every nook,
And what you see here is a sample of all.
Come, wheel round,
The dirt we have found
Would be an estate, at a farthing a pound."
Now, sister Anne,* the guitar you must take,
Set it, and sing it, and make it a song:
I have varied the verse, for variety's sake,
And cut it off short-because it was long.
'Tis hobbling and lame,
Which critics won't blame,
For the sense and the sound, they say, should be the same
ON THE LATE INDECENT LIBERTIES TAKEN WITH THE REMAINS OF MILTON⭑
"ME too, perchance, in future days,
The sculptured stone shall show,
With Paphian myrtle or with bays
Parnassian on my brow.
"But I, or ere that season come,
Escaped from every care,
Shall reach my refuge in the tomb,
And sleep securely there."
So sang, in Roman tone and style,
The youthful bard, ere long
Ordain'd to grace his native isle
With her sublimest song.
Who then but must conceive disdain,
Hearing the deed unblest
Of wretches who have dared profane
His dread sepulchral rest?
Ill fare the hands that heaved the stones
Where Milton's ashes lay,
That trembled not to grasp his bones
And steal his dust away!
O ill requited bard! neglect
Thy living worth repaid,
And blind idolatrous respect
As much affronts thee dead.
August 1790.
TO THE REV. WILLIAM BULL.
IF reading verse be your delight,
'Tis mine as much, or more, to write;
But what we would, so weak is man,
Lies oft remote from what we can.
For instance, at this very time
I feel a wish by cheerful rhyme
To soothe my friend, and, had I power,
To cheat him of an anxious hour;
Not meaning (for I must confess,
It were but folly to suppress)
His pleasure, or his good alone,
But squinting partly at my own.
But though the sun is flaming high
In the centre of yon arch, the sky,
And he had once (and who but he?)
The name for setting genius free,
Yet whether poets of past days
Yielded him undeserved praise.
And he by no uncommon lot
Was famed for virtues he had not;
The bones of Milton, who lies buried in Cripplegate Church, were disinterrelin the year 1790.
Or whether, which is like enough,
His Highness may have taken huff,
So seldom sought with invocation,
Since it has been the reigning fashion
To disregard his inspiration.
I seem no brighter in my wits,
For all the radiance he emits,
Than if I saw through midnight vapour.
The glimmering of a farthing taper.
Oh for a succedaneum, then,
To accelerate a creeping pen!
Oh for a ready succedaneum,
Quod caput, cerebrum, et cranium
Pondere liberet exoso,
Et morbo jam caliginoso!
'Tis here; this oval box well fill'd
With best tobacco, finely mill'd,
Beats all Anticyra's pretences
To disengage the encumber'd senses.
Oh Nymph of transatlantic fame,
Where'er thine haunt, whate'er thy name,
Whether reposing on the side
Of Oroonoquo's spacious tide,
Or listening with delight not small
To Niagara's distant fall,
'Tis thine to cherish and to feed
The pungent nose-refreshing weed
Which, whether pulverized it gain
A speedy passage to the brain,
Or whether, touch'd with fire, it rise
In circling eddies to the skies,
Does thought more quicken and refine
Than all the breath of all the Nine
Forgive the bard, if bard he be,
Who once too wantonly made free,
To touch with a satiric wipe
That symbol of thy power, the pipe;
So may no blight infest thy plains
And no unseasonable rains;
And so may smiling peace once more
Visit America's sad shore;
And thou, secure from all alarms,
Of thundering drums and glittering arms
Rove unconfined beneath the shade
Thy wide expanded leaves have made;
So may thy votaries increase,
And fumigation never cease.
May Newton with renew'd delights
Perform thine odoriferous rites,
While clouds of incense half divine
Involve thy disappearing shrine;
And so may smoke-inhaling Bull
Be always filling, never full.
EPITAPH ON MRS M. HIGGINS,
LAURELS may flourish round the conqueror's tomb,
But happiest they who win the world to come :
Believers have a silent field to fight,
And their exploits are veil'd from human sight.
They in some nook, where little known they dwell,
Kneel, pray in faith, and rout the hosts of hell;
Eternal triumphs crown their toils divine,
And all those triumphs, Mary, now are thine.
SONNET TO A YOUNG LADY ON HER BIRTH-DAY.
DEEM not, sweet rose, that bloom'st' midst many a thorn,
Thy friend, though to a cloister's shade consign'd,
Can e'er forget the charms he left behind,
Or pass unheeded this auspicious morn!
In happier days to brighter prospects born,
O tell thy thoughtless sex, the virtuous mind,
Like thee, content in every state may find,
And look on Folly's pageantry with scorn.
To steer with nicest art betwixt th' extreme
Of idle mirth, and affectation coy;
To blend good sense with elegance and ease;
To bid Affliction's eye no longer stream;
Is thine; best gift, the unfailing source of joy,
The guide to pleasures which can never cease!
ON A MISTAKE IN HIS TRANSLATION OF HOMER
COWPER had sinn'd with some excuse,
If, bound in rhyming tethers,
He had committed this abuse
Of changing ewes for wethers;
But, male for female is a trope,
Or rather bold misnomer,
That would have startled even Pope,
When he translated Homer.
ON THE BENEFIT RECEIVED BY HIS MAJESTY FROM
SEA-BATHING IN THE YEAR 1789.
O SOVEREIGN of an isle renown'd
For undisputed sway,
Wherever o'er yon gulf profound
Her navies wing their way,
I have heard about my wether mutton from various quarters. It was a blunder hardly pardonable in a man who has lived amid fields and meadows grazed by sheep almost these thirty years. I have accordingly satirized my self in two stanzas which I composed last night, while I lay awake, tormented with pain, and well dosed with land. anum. If you find them not very brilliant, therefore, you will know how to account for it -Letter to Joseph Hill, Esq., dated April 15, 1792.
With juster claims she builds at length
Her empire on the sea,
And well may boast the waves her strength,
Which strength restored to thee.
ON READING THE PRAYER FOR INDIFFERENCE, AN ODE, BY MRS GREVILLE
AND dwells there in a female heart,
By bounteous Heaven design'd,
The choicest raptures to impart,
To feel the most refined-
Dwells there a wish in such a breast
Its nature to forego,
To smother in ignoble rest
At once both bliss and woe!
Far be the thought, and far the strain,
Which breathes the low desire,
How sweet soe'er the verse complain,
Though Phoebus string the lyre.
Come, then, fair maid (in nature wise),
Who, knowing them, can tell
From generous sympathy what jovs
The glowing bosom swell:
In justice to the various powers
Of pleasing, which you share,
Join me, amid your silent hours,
To form the better prayer.
With lenient balm may Oberon hence
To fairy-land be driven,
With every herb that blunts the sense
Mankind received from heaven.
"Oh! if my sovereign Author please,
Far be it from my fate
To live unblest in torpid ease,
And slumber on in state;
"Each tender tie of life defied,
Whence social pleasures spring,
Unmoved with all the world beside,
A solitary thing-"
Some Alpine mountain, wrapt in snow.
Thus braves the whirling blast,
Eternal winter doom'd to know,
No genial spring to taste.
In vain warm suns their influence shed,
The zephyrs sport in vain,
He rears unchanged his barren head,
Whilst beauty decks the plain.
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