"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 by,
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!
That struggling and striving is labor in vain."
"Stick fast there while I go and look:"
"Don't go away, for fear I should fall:"
"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.1
“ME too, perchance, in future days,
The sculptured stone shall show,
With Paphian myrtle or with bays
Parnassian on my brow.
“But I, or e'er 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.
1 The bones of Milton, who lies buried in Cripplegate Church, were disinterred in the year 1790.
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 undeservéd praise,
And he by no uncommon lot
Was famed for virtues he had not,
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 vapor,
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.
O 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,
With 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 BIRTHDAY.
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,
Oh 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 the 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;1
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.
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