Hear the wood-lark charm the forest,
Telling o'er his little joys;
But, alas! a prey the surest
To each pirate of the skies.
Dearly bought the hidden treasure
Finer feelings can bestow:
Cords that vibrate sweetest pleasure
Thrill the deepest notes of wo,
AN OCCASIONAL ADDRESS SPOKEN BY MISS FONTENELLE ON HER
BENEFIT NIGHT, NOV. 26, 1792.
WHILE Europe's eye is fixed on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
While quacks of state must each produce his plan
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
First, in the sexes' intermixed connection.
One sacred Right of Woman is-Protection.
The tender flower that lifts its head, elate,
Helpless, must fall before the blasts of fate,
Sunk on the earth, defaced its lovely form,
Unless your shelter ward th' impending storın.
Our second Right-but needless here is caution,
To keep that Right inviolate's the fashion,
Each man of sense has it so full before him,
He'd die before he'd wrong it--'tis Decorum.
There was, indeed, in far less polished days,
A time when rough rude man had naughty ways;
Would swagger, swear, get drunk, kick up a riot,
Nay, even thus invade a lady's quiet.
Now, thank our stars! these Gothic times are fled;
Now, well-bred men-and you are all well-bred-
Most justly think (and we are much the gainers)
Such conduct neither spirit, wit, nor manners,
For Right the third, our last, our best, our dearest,
That right to fluttering female hearts the nearest,
Which even the Rights of Kings in low prostration
Most humbly own-'tis dear, dear Admiration!
In that blest sphere alone we live and move;
There taste that life of life-immortal love.
Smiles, glances, sighs, tears, fits, flirtations, airs,
'Gainst such an host what flinty savage dares-
When awful Beauty joins with all her charms,
Who is so rash as rise in rebel arms?
But truce with kings and truce with constitutions,
With bloody armaments and revolutions,
Let majesty your first attention summon
Ah! ca ira! THE MAJESTY OF WOMAN
TO MISS FONTENELLE,
ON SEEING HER IN A FAVOURITE CHARACTER.
SWEET naïveté of feature,
Simple, wild, enchanting elf,
Not to thee, but thanks to Nature,
Thou art acting but thyself.
Wert thou awkward, stiff, affected,
Spurning nature, torturing art;
Loves and graces all rejected,
Then indeed thou'dst act a part.
WRITTEN ON THE 25TH JANUARY 1793, THE BIRTHDAY OF THE
AUTHOR, ON HEARING A THRUSH SING IN A MORNING WALK.
SING on, sweet thrush, upon the leafless bough,
Sing on, sweet bird, I listen to thy strain;
See aged Winter, 'mid his surly reign,
At thy blythe carol clears his furrowed brow.
So in lone Poverty's dominion drear,
Sits meek Content with light unanxious heart;
Welcomes the rapid moments, bids them part,
Nor asks if they bring ought to hope or fear.
I thank thee, Author of this opening day!
Thou whose bright sun now gilds yon orient skies!
Riches denied, thy boon was purer joys,
What wealth could never give nor take away!
Yet come, thou child of poverty and care,
The mite high Heaven bestowed, that mite with thee I'll share
EPITAPH ON A LAP-DOG.
IN wood and wild, ye warbling throng,
Your heavy loss deplore!
Now half extinct your powers of song,
Sweet Echo is no more.
Ye jarring, screeching things around,
Scream your discordant joys!
Now half your din of tuneless song
With Echo silent lies.
ON MRS RIDDEL'S BIRTHDAY, 4TH NOVEMBER 1793.
OLD Winter, with his frosty beard,
Thus once to Jove his prayer preferred·
"What have I done of all the year,
To bear this hated doom severe ?
My cheerless suns no pleasure know;
Night's horrid car drags, dreary slow;
My dismal months no joys are crowning,
But spleeny English, hanging, drowning.
"Now, Jove, for once be mighty civil,
To counterbalance all this evil;
Give me, and I've no more to say,
Give me Maria's natal-day!
That brilliant gift shall so enrich me,
Spring, summer, autumn, cannot match me.'
""Tis done!" says Jove; so ends my story,
And Winter once rejoiced in glory.
ON A LADY FAMED FOR HER CAPRICE.
How cold is that bosom which folly once fired,
How pale is that cheek where the rouge lately glistened How silent that tongue which the echoes oft tired,
How dull is that ear which to flattery so listened!
If sorrow and anguish their exit await,
From friendship and dearest affection removed; How doubly severer, Eliza, thy fate,
Thou diedst unwept, as thou livest unloved.
Loves, Graces, and Virtues, I call not on you;
So shy, grave, and distant, ye shed not a tear:
But come, all ye offspring of Folly so true,
And flowers let us cull for Eliza's cold bier.
We'll search through the garden for each silly flower,
We'll roam through the forrest for each idle weed;
But chiefly the nettle, so typical, shower,
For none e'er approached her but rued the rash deed
We'll sculpture the marble, we'll measure the lay;
Here Vanity strums on her idiot lyre;
There keen Indignation shall dart on her prey,
Which spurning Contempt shall redeem from his ire.
HERE lies, now a prey to insulting neglect,
What once was a butterfly gay in life's beam:
Want only of wisdom denied her respect,
Want only of goodness denied her esteem.
EPISTLE FROM ESOPUS TO MARIA
FROM those drear solitudes and frowsy cells,
Where infamy with sad repentance dwells;
Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast,
And deal from iron hands the spare repast;
Where truant 'prentices, yet young in sin,
Blush at the curious stranger peeping in ;
Where tiny thieves not destined yet to swing,
Beat hemp for others, riper for the string:
From these dire scenes my wretched lines I date,
To tell Maria her Esopus' fate.
'Alas! I feel I am no actor here!'
'Tis real hangmen, real scourges bear! Prepare, Maria, for a horrid tale
Will turn thy very rouge to deadly pale;
Will make thy hair, though erst from gipsy polled,
By barber woven, and by barber sold,
Though twisted smooth with Harry's nicest care,
Like hoary bristles to erect and stare.
The hero of the mimic scene, no more
I start in Hamlet, in Othello roar;
Or haughty chieftain, 'mid the din of arms,
In Highland bonnet woo Malvina's charms;
While sans culottes stoop up the mountain high,
And steal from me Maria's prying eye.
Blest Highland bonnet! once my proudest dress,
Now prouder still, Maria's temples press.
I see her wave thy towering plumes afar,
And call each coxcomb to the wordy war;
I see her face the first of Ireland's sons,
And even out-Irish his Hibernian bronze;
The crafty colonel leaves the tartaned lines,
For other wars, where he a hero shines;
The hopeful youth, in Scottish senate bred,
Who owns a Bushby's heart without the head,
Comes 'mid a string of coxcombs to display,
That veni, vidi, vici, is his way;
The shrinking Bard adown an alley skulks,
And dreads a meeting worse than Woolwich hulks: Though there, his heresies in church and state Might well award him Muir and Palmer's fate: Still she undaunted reels and rattles on,
And dares the public like a noontide sun.
(What scandal called Maria's jaunty stagger,
The ricket reeling of a crooked swagger;
Whose spleen e'en worse than Burns's venom when
He dips in gall unmixed his eager pen-
And pours his vengeance in the burning line,
Who christened thus Maria's lyre divine;
The idiot strum of vanity bemused,
And even th' abuse of poesy abused;
Who called her verse a parish workhouse, made
For motley, foundling fancies, stolen or strayed?)
A workhouse! ah, that sound awakes my woes,
And pillows on the thorn my racked repose!
In durance vile here must I wake and weep,
And all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep!
That straw where many a rogue has lain of yore,
And vermined gipsies littered heretofore.
Why Lonsdale thus, thy wrath on vagrants pour ·
Must earth no rascal save thyself endure?
Thou know'st the Virtues cannot hate thee worse;
The Vices also, must they club their curse?
Or must no tiny sin to others fall,
Because thy guilt's supreme enough for all?
Maria, send me, too, thy griefs and cares;
In all of thee sure thy Esopus shares.
As thou at all mankind the flag unfurls,
Who on my fair one satire's vengeance hurls?
Who calls thee pert, affected, vain coquette,
A wit in folly, and a fool in wit?
Who says that fool alone is not thy due,
And quotes thy treacheries to prove it true?
Our force united on thy foes we'll turn,
And dare the war with all of woman born:
For who can write and speak as thou and I?
My periods that deciphering defy,
And thy still matchless tongue that conquers all reply.
As I stood by yon roofless tower,
Where the wa'-flower scents the dewy air,
Where th' howlet mourns in her ivy bower,
And tells the midnight moon her care;
The winds were laid, the air was still,
The stars they shot along the sky;
The fox was howling on the hill,
And the distant echoing glens reply.
The stream, adown its hazelly path,
Was rushing by the ruined wa's,
Hasting to join the sweeping Nith,
Whose listant roaring swells and fa's.
The cauld blue north was streaming forth
Her lights, wi' hissing eerie din ; Athort the lift they start and shift, Like fortune's favours, tint as win. By heedless chance I turned mine eyes, And, by the moonbeam, shook to see A stern and stalwart ghaist arise, Attired as minstrels wont to be.
Had I a statue been o stane,
His darin' look had daunted me; And on his bonnet graved was plain, The sacred posy-" Libertie !"
And frae his harp sic strains did flow,
Might roused the slumb'ring dead to hear
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