(This division includes some pieces published anonymously during the Author's lifetime.)
A TALE, FOUNDED ON A FACT
WHICH HAPPENED IN JANUARY 1779.
WHERE Humber pours his rich commercial stream
There dwelt a wretch, who breathed but to blaspheme;
In subterraneous caves his life he led,
Black as the mine in which he wrought for bread.
When on a day, emerging from the deep,
A Sabbath-day, (such sabbaths thousands keep!)
The wages of his weekly toil he bore
To buy a cock-whose blood might win him more;
As if the noblest of the feathered kind
Were but for battle and for death designed;
As if the consecrated hours were meant
For sport to minds on cruelty intent;
It chanced (such chances Providence obey)
He met a fellow-labourer on the way,
Whose heart the same desires had once inflamed;
But now the savage temper was reclaimed,
Persuasion on his lips had taken place;
For all plead well who plead the cause of grace.
His iron heart with Scripture he assailed,
Wooed him to hear a sermon, and prevailed.
His faithful bow the mighty preacher drew;
Swift as the lightning-glimpse the arrow flew.
He wept; he trembled; cast his eyes around,
To find a worse than he; but none he found.
He felt his sins, and wondered he should feel;
Grace made the wound, and grace alone could heal.
Now farewell oaths, and blasphemies, and lies!
He quits the sinner's for the martyr's prize.
That holy day was washed with many a tear,
Gilded with hope, yet shaded, too, by fear.
The next, his swarthy brethren of the mine
Learned, by his altered speech, the change divine!
Laughed when they should have wept, and swore the day
Was nigh when he would swear as fast as they.
No," said the penitent," such words shall share
"This breath no more; devoted now to prayer.
"O! if Thou seest (Thine eye the future sees)
"That I shall yet again blaspheme, like these,
"Now strike me to the ground on which I kneel,
"Ere yet this heart relapses into steel :
"Now take me to that heaven I once defied,
Thy presence, Thy embrace!"—He spoke, and died!
HIC sepultus est
Inter suorum lacrymas
GULIELMUS NORTHCOT,
GULIELMI et MARIE filius
Unicus, unicè dilectus,
Qui floris ritu succisus est semihiantis,
Aprilis die septimo,
1780, Æt. 10.
Care, vale! Sed non æternùm, care, valeto!
Namque iterùm tecum, sim modò dignus, ero.
Tum nihil amplexus poterit divellere nostros,
Nec tu marcesces, nec lacrymabor ego.
FAREWELL! "But not for ever," Hope replies
Trace but his steps and meet him in the skies!
There nothing shall renew our parting pain;
Thou shalt not wither, nor I weep, again.
I AM just two and two, I am warm, I am cold,
And the parent of numbers that cannot be told,
I am lawful, unlawful- -a duty, a fault,-
I am often sold dear, good for nothing when bought;
An extraordinary boon, and a matter of course,
And yielded with pleasure when taken by force.
DEAR President, whose art sublime
Gives perpetuity to Time,
And bids transactions of a day,
That fleeting hours would waft away
To dark futurity, survive,
And in unfading beauty live,-
You cannot with a grace decline
A special mandate of the Nine-
Yourself, whatever task you choose,
So much indebted to the Muse.
Thus say the sisterhood :---We come-
Fix well your pallet on your thumb,
Prepare the pencil and the tints--
We come to furnish you with hints.
French disappointment, British glory,
Must be the subject of the story.
First strike a curve, a graceful bow,
Then slope it to a point below;
Your outline easy, airy, light,
Filled up becomes a paper kite.
Let Independence, sanguine, horrid,
Blaze, like a meteor in the forehead:
Beneath (but lay aside your graces)
Draw six-and-twenty rueful faces,
Each with a staring, steadfast eye,
Fixed on his great and good ally.
France flies the kite-'tis on the wing-
Britannia's lightning cuts the string.
The wind that raised it, ere it ceases,
Just rends it into thirteen pieces,
Takes charge of every fluttering sheet,
And lays them all at George's feet.
Iberia, trembling from afar,
Renounces the confederate war;
Her efforts and her arts o'ercome,
France calls her shattered navies home;
Repenting Holland learns to mourn
The sacred treaties she has torn ;
Astonishment and awe profound
Are stamped upon the nations round;
Without one friend, above all foes,
Britannia gives the world repose.
IMPROMPTU ON READING THE CHAPTER ON POLYGAMY, IN MR. MADAN'S THELYPHTHORA.
IF John marries Mary, and Mary alone,
'Tis a very good match between Mary and John.
Should John wed a score, oh, the claws and the scratches!
It can't be a match-'tis a bundle of matches.
ON A REVIEW CONDEMNING THELYPHTHORA.
I HAVE read the Review; it is learned and wise,
Clear, candid, and witty-Thelyphthora dies.
ON MADAN'S ANSWER TO NEWTON'S COMMENTS
ON THELYPHTHORA.
M. quarrels with N., because M. wrote a book
And N. did not like it, which M. could not brook ;
So he called him a bigot, a wrangler, a monk,
With as many hard names as would line a good trunk,
And set up his back, and clawed like a cat ;
But N. liked it never the better for that.
Now N. had a wife, and he wanted but one,
Which stuck in M.'s stomach as cross as a bone:
It has always been reckoned a just cause of strife
For a man to make free with another man's wife;
But the strife is the strangest that ever was known,
If a man must be scolded for loving his own.
Quantâ laboras in Charybdi!
HOR. Od. i. 27
AIRY DEL CASTRO was as bold a knight
As ever earned a lady's love in fight.
Many he sought, but one above the rest
His tender heart victoriously impressed.
In fairy-land was born the matchless dame,
The land of dreams, Hypothesis her name.
There Fancy nursed her in ideal bowers,
And laid her soft in amaranthine flowers;
Delighted with her babe, the enchantress smiled,
And graced with all her gifts the favourite child.
Her wooed Sir Airy, by meandering streams,
In daily musings and in nightly dreams;
With all the flowers he found, he wove in haste
Wreaths for her brow, and girdles for her waist;
His time, his talents, and his ceaseless care,
All consecrated to adorn the fair;
No pastime but with her he deigned to take,
And if he studied, studied for her sake.
And, for Hypothesis was somewhat long,
Nor soft enough to suit a lover's tongue,
He called her Posy, with an amorous art,
And graved it on a gem, and wore it next his heart.
But she, inconstant as the beams that play
On rippling waters in an April day,
With many a freakish trick deceived his pains,
To pathless wilds and unfrequented plains
Enticed him from his oaths of knighthood far,
Forgetful of the glorious toils of war.
'Tis thus the tenderness that Love inspires
Too oft betrays the votaries of his fires;
Borne far away on elevated wings,
They sport like wanton doves in airy rings,
And laws and duties are neglected things.
Nor he alone addressed the wayward fair,
Full many a knight had been entangled there;
But still, whoever wooed her or embraced,
On every mind some mighty spell she cast.
Some she would teach (for she was wondrous wise,
And made her dupes see all things with her eyes)
That forms material, whatsoe'er we dream,
Are not at all, or are not what they seem;
That substances and modes of every kind
Are mere impressions on the passive mind;
And he that splits his cranium, breaks at most
A fancied head against a fancied post:
Others, that earth, ere sin had drowned it all,
Was smooth and even as an ivory ball;
That all the various beauties we survey,
Hills, valleys, rivers, and the boundless sea,
Are but departures from the first design,
Effects of punishment and wrath divine.
She tutored some in Dædalus's art,
And promised they should act his wildgoose part,
On waxen pinions soar without a fall,
Swift as the proudest gander of them all.
But fate reserved Sir Airy to maintain
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