In your commanding air, we mark their state;
In your sweet words, their wisdom, and their weight;
Warm, in your gen'rous breast, their courage lies;
And all their pow'r, and mercy, in your eyes.
THE PATIENT AUTHOR.
THAT scribe for plodding day and night
Gives poor encouragement indeed!
The patience he has had to write
What none the patience have to read.
THE ATHEIST'S ARGUMENT.
THAT there's no God, John gravely swears,
And quotes in proof his own affairs;
"For how should such an atheist thrive,
"If there were any God alive?"
THE PERFUMED BEAU.
THAT thou dost cassia breathe, and foreign gums,
Enough to put thy mistress into fits;
Tho' Rome thy hair, and Spain thy gloves perfumes;
Few like, but all suspect, those borrow'd sweets.
The gifts of various nature come and go:
He that smells always well, does never so.
THE PECULIAR SHAME.
THAT thou dost shorten thy long nights with wine,
We all forgive thee; for so Cato did:
That thou writ'st poems without one good line;
Tully's example may that weakness hide.
Thou art a cuckold; so great Casar was:
Eat'st till thou spew'st; Antonius did the same: That thou lov'st whores; Jove loves a buxom lass: But that thou'rt whipt, is thy peculiar shame.
MR. DRYDEN'S WANTING AN EPITAPH.
THAT thou, great genius! here on earth art thrown,
With no inscription on the sacred stone,
Is not thy brother-poets fault, but shame;
Since, unenjoying thy celestial flame,
They knew not how to propagate thy fame:
Thyself alone could thy own glory raise;
Thy verse alone record thy verse's praise:
So thy own thoughts should thy own lines refine;
As dust of di'monds makes the di'mond shine.
THAT which her slender waist confin'd
Shall now my joyful temples bind:
No monarch but would give his crown,
His arms might do what this has done.
It was my heaven's extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer.
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,
Did all within this circle move!
A narrow compass! and yet there Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair; Give me but what this ribbon bound, Take all the rest the sun goes round.
THE Arabian bird, which never is but one,
Is only chaste, because she is alone:
But, had our mother nature made them two,
They would have done as doves and sparrows do.
KING WILLIAM'S ACTIONS DURING TWO CAMPAIGNS IN FLANDERS.
THE author sure must take great pains,
Who pretends to write his story,
In which of these two last campaigns
He's acquir'd the greatest glory:
For while that he march'd on to fight,
Like hero, nothing fearing,
Namur was taken in his sight,
And Mons within his hearing.
ON A MARRIED STATE.
THE bed unchaste, the harlot's eye,
Awhile their captives may allure;
Beauty, and guiltless love supply
A passion always to endure.
Where hearts, by virtue warm'd, unite,
Fate throws its angry shafts in vain;
This doubles ev'ry soft delight,
And lessens ev'ry woe and pain.
MUTABILITY OF WOMAN.
THE body which within this earth is laid,
Twice six weeks knew a wife, a saint, a maid;
Fair maid, chaste wife, pure saint; yet 'tis not strange,
She was a woman, therefore pleas'd to change;
And now she's dead, some woman doth remain,
For still she hopes once to be chang'd again.
ON LADY ESSEX,
WHO WAS A DUTCH WOMAN.
THE bravest hero, and the brightest dame,
From Belgia's happy clime Britannia drew:
One pregnant cloud, we find, does often frame
The awful thunder and the gentle dew.
THE bright, bewitching Fanny's eyes,
A thousand hearts have won,
Whilst she, regardless of the prize,
Securely keeps her own.
Ah! what a dreadful girl are you,
Who if you e'er design.
To make me happy, must undo
Nine hundred ninety-nine!
AN INCIDENT IN HIGH LIFE.
THE Bucks had din'd, and deep in council sat;
Their wine was brilliant-but their wit grew flat:
Up starts his Lordship, to the window flies,
And lo!" a race! race!" in rapture cries:
Where? quoth Sir John!" Why see, two drops of rain
"Start from the summit of the crystal pane:
"A thousand pounds! which drop with nimblest force,
"Performs its current down the slippery course!"
The bets were fix'd; in dire suspense they wait
For victory, pendant on the nod of Fate.
Now down the sash, unconscious of the prize,
The bubbles roll like pearls from Chloe's eyes.
But, ah! the glitt'ring joys of life are short!
How oft too jostling steeds have spoil'd the sport!
Lo! thus attraction, by coercive laws,
Th' approaching drops into one bubble draws.
Each curs'd his fate, that thus their project cross'd;
How hard their lot who neither won nor lost!
A DULL SPEAKER DISGUISING HIMSELF
IN A WIG.
THE choice he made for his disguise,
Display'd one instance of his wit:
For who this simple fact denies-
The wig was made a block to fit?
ON MR. PITT'S BEING PELTED BY THE
MOB ON LORD MAYOR'S DAY, 1787.
THE City-feast inverted here we find,
For Pitt had his desert before he din'd.
ON THE ACHIEVEMENT OVER THE DOOR
OF
THE coat exactly with his manners suits,
How near a-kin the master and the brutes!
His qualities were ne'er so well exprest,
Wolves his supporters, and a bear his crest.
A WISE SENTENCE.
THE constable of a country town
Before a justice brought,
Once on a time, a vagrant clown,
In petty trespass caught.
And long, with many a hum! and ah!
Much circumstance, much doubt,
Enlarg'd on some suppos'd fauxpas,
Could he have made it out.
Then to his Worship turn'd his speech,
At every period's close,
And ask'd, what punishment could reach
Enormities like those?
"What punishment?" with angry face,
The justice cry'd amain:
"Make him this moment take my place, "And hear your tale again!"
|