THE POET'S NEW YEAR'S GIFT, TO LADY THROCKMORTON. MARIA! I have every good For thee wished many a time, Both sad, and in a cheerful mood, But never yet in rhime. To wish thee fairer is no need, What favour then not yet possessed In wedded love already blest, To thy whole heart's desire? None here is happy but in part: Full bliss is bliss divine; There dwells some wish in every heart, And doubtless one in thine. That wish, on some fair future day, "Tis blameless, be it what it may) ODE TO APOLLO. ON AN INK GLASS ALMOST DRIED IN THE SUN. PATRON of all those luckless brains, Ah why, since oceans, rivers, streams, 1 That water all the nations, Pay tribute to thy glorious beams, In constant exhalations, Why, stooping from the noon of day, Too covetous of drink, Apollo, hast thou stolen away A poet's drop of ink? Upborne into the viewless air, It floats a vapour now, Impelled through regions dense and rare, By all the winds that blow. Ordained perhaps ere summer flies, To form an Iris in the skies, Though black and foul before. Illustrious drop! and happy then Of all that ever past my pen, Phoebus, if such be thy design, To place it in thy bow, Give wit, that what is left may shine PAIRING TIME ANTICIPATED. A FABLE. I SHALL not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau*, 'Tis clear that they were always able And e'en the child, who knows no better, A story of a cock and bull, Must have a most uncommon skull. It chanced then on a winter's day, * It was one of the whimsical speculations of this philosopher, that all fables which ascribe reason and speech to animals should be withheld from children, as being only vehicles of deception. But what child was ever deceived by them, or can be, against the evidence of his senses? |