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UPON A VENERABLE RIVAL.

FULL thirty frosts since thou wert young Have chilled the withered grove,

Thou wretch! and hast thou lived so long,
Nor yet forgot to love?

Ye sages! spite of your pretences
To wisdom, you must own
Your folly frequently commences
When you acknowledge none.
Not that I deem it weak to love,
Or folly to admire ;

But ah! the pangs we lovers prove
Far other years require.

Unheeded on the youthful brow
The beams of Phoebus play;
But unsupported age stoops low
Beneath the sultry ray.

For once, then, if untutored youth,
Youth unapproved by years,
May chance to deviate into truth,
When your experience errs;

For once attempt not to despise
What I esteem a rule:

Who early loves, though young, is wise,-
Who old, though gray, a fool.

MORTALS! around your destined heads
Thick fly the shafts of death,
And lo! the savage spoiler spreads
A thousand toils beneath.

In vain we trifle with our fate,
Try every art in vain ;

At best we but prolong the date,
And lengthen out our pain.
Fondly we think all danger fled,
For death is ever nigh;
Outstrips our unavailing speed,
Or meets us as we fly.

Thus the wrecked mariner may strive

Some desert shore to gain,

Secure of life, if he survive

The fury of the main.

But there, to famine doomed a prey,

Finds the mistaken wretch

He but escaped the troubled sea,

To perish on the beach.

Since then in vain we strive to guard
Our frailty from the foe,

Lord, let me live not unprepared

To meet the fatal blow!

AN EPISTLE TO ROBERT LLOYD, ESQ.

1754.

'Tis not that I design to rob

Thee of thy birthright, gentle Bob,—
For thou art born sole heir and single
Of dear Mat Pror's easy jingle;
Nor that I mean, while thus I knit
My threadbare sentiments together,
To show my genius or my wit,

When God and you know I have neither;
Or such, as might be better shown
By letting poetry alone.

'Tis not with either of these views,
That I presume to address the Muse:
But to divert a fierce banditti,

(Sworn foes to everything that's witty),
That, with a black infernal train,
Make cruel inroads in my brain,
And daily threaten to drive thence
My little garrison of sense:

The fierce banditti which I mean,
Are gloomy thoughts led on by spleen.
Then there's another reason yet,
Which is, that I may fairly quit
The debt which justly became due
The moment when I heard from you:
And you might grumble, crony mine,
If paid in any other coin;

Since twenty sheets of lead, God knows,
(I would say twenty sheets of prose),
Can ne'er be deemed worth half so much
As one of gold, and yours was such.
Thus the preliminaries settled,

1

I fairly find myself pitch-kettled;
And cannot see, though few see better,
How I shall hammer out a letter.

First, for a thought--since all agree-
A thought-I have it-let me see-
'Tis gone again-plague on't! I thought
I had it but I have it not.

Dame Gurton thus and Hodge her son

1 Pitch kettled, a favourite phrase at the time when this Epistle was written, expressive of being puzzled, or what in the Spectator's time would have been called bamboozled.-Hayley.

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That useful thing, her needle, gone,
Rake well the cinders, sweep the floor,
And sift the dust behind the door;
While eager Hodge beholds the prize
In old grimalkin's glaring eyes;
And Gammar finds it on her knees
In every shining straw she sees.
This simile were apt enough,
But I've another, critic-proof.
The virtuoso thus at noon,
Broiling beneath a July sun,
The gilded butterfly pursues
O'er hedge and ditch, through gaps
And after many a vain essay
To captivate the tempting prey,
Gives him at length the lucky pat,
And has him safe beneath his hat:
Then lifts it gently from the ground;
But ah! 'tis lost as soon as found;
Culprit his liberty regains;

and

Flits out of sight and mocks his pains
The sense was dark, 'twas therefore m
With simile to illustrate it;

But as too much obscures the sight,
As often as too little light,

We have our similes cut short,

For matters of more grave import.

That Matthew's numbers run with ease
Each man of common sense agrees;

All men of common sense allow,
That Robert's lines are easy too;

mews,

Where then the preference shall we place,
Or how do justice in this case?

Matthew (says Fame) with endless pains
Smoothed and refined the meanest strains,
Nor suffered one ill-chosen rhyme

To escape him at the idlest time;
And thus o'er all a lustre cast,

That while the language lives shall last

An't please your ladyship, (quoth I,
For 'tis my business to reply);

Sure so much labour, so much toil,

Bespeak at least a stubborn soil.

Theirs be the laurel-wreath decreed,

Who both write well and write full speed;

Who throw their Helicon about

As freely as a conduit spout.

Friend Robert, thus like chien sçavant,

Lets fall a poem en passant,

Nor needs his genuine ore refine;

'Tis ready polished from the mine.

OF HIMSELF.

WILLIAM was once a bashful youth;
His modesty was such,

That one might say (to say the truth)
He rather had too much.

Some said that it was want of sense,
And others want of spirit,
(So blest a thing is impudence),
While others could not bear it.

But some a different notion had,
And at each other winking,
Observed, that though he little said,
He paid it off with thinking.
Howe'er, it happened, by degrees,
He mended and grew perter;
In company was more at ease,
And dressed a little smarter;

Nay, now and then would look quite gay,
As other people do ;

And sometimes said, or tried to say,

A witty thing or so.

He eyed the women, and made free

To comment on their shapes ;

So that there was, or seemed to be,

No fear of a relapse.

The women said, who thought him rough,

But now no longer foolish,

"The creature may do well enough, But wants a deal of polish."

At length, improved from head to heel,
'Twere scarce too much to say,

No dancing bear was so genteel,
Or half so dégagé.

Now that a miracle so strange

May not in vain be shown,

Let the dear maid who wrought the change

E'er claim him for her own.

Cutfield, July 1752.

AN APOLOGY

FOR NOT SHOWING HER WHAT I HAD WROTE.

DID not my Muse (what can she less?)
Perceive her own unworthiness,
Could she by some well-chosen theme,
But hope to merit your esteem,

She would not thus conceal her lays,
Ambitious to deserve your praise.
But should my Delia take offence,
And frown on her impertinence,
In silence, sorrowing and forlorn,
Would the despairing trifler mourn,
Curse her ill-tuned, unpleasing lute,
Then sigh and sit for ever mute.
In secret therefore let her play,
Squandering her idle notes away
In secret as she chants along,
Cheerful and careless in her song;
Nor heeds she whether harsh or clear,
Free from each terror, every fear,
From that, of all most dreaded, free,
The terror of offending thee.

At the same place.

DELIA, the unkindest girl on earth,

When I besought the fair,

That favour of intrinsic worth,
A ringlet of her hair,—

Refused that instant to comply
With my absurd request,
For reasons she could specify,
Some twenty score at least.

Trust me, my dear, however odd
It may appear to say,

I sought it merely to defraud
Thy spoiler of his prey.

Yet when its sister locks shall fade,
As quickly fade they must,
When all their beauties are decayed,
Their gloss, their colour, lost-

Ah then if haply to my share
Some slender pittance fall,
If I but gain one single hair,
Nor age usurp them all ;-

When you behold it still as sleek,
As lovely to the view,

As when it left thy snowy neck,—
That Eden where it grew,-

Then shall my Delia's self declare
That I professed the truth,
And have preserved my little share
In everlasting youth.

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