No voice divine the storm allay'd,
No light propitious shone;
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
We perish'd, each alone:

But I beneath a rougher sea,

And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he.

March 20, 1799.

TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

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, Fill'd 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, stedfast eye, Fix'd on his great and good ally. France flies the kite-'tis on the wingBritannia'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 shatter'd navies home, Repenting Holland learns to mourn The sacred treaties she has torn; Astonishment and awe profound Are stamp'd upon the nations round: Without one friend, above all foes, Britannia gives the world repose.

ON THE AUTHOR OF LETTERS ON LITERATURE.*

THE Genius of the Augustan age
His head among Rome's ruins rear'd,
And, bursting with heroic rage,
When literary Heron appear'd;
Thou hast, he cried, like him of old
Who set the Ephesian dome on fire,
By being scandalously bold,
Attain'd the mark of thy desire.
And for traducing Virgil's name
Shalt share his merited reward;
A perpetuity of fame,

That rots, and stinks, and is abhorr'd.

THE DISTRESSED TRAVELLERS;
OR, LABOUR IN VAIN.

A New Song, to a Tune never sung before.

I SING of a journey to Clifton,+

We would have performed, if we could;
Without cart or barrow, to lift on

Poor Mary and me through the mud.
Slee, sla, slud,

Stuck in the mud;

Oh it is pretty to wade through a flood!
So away we went, slipping and sliding;
Hop, hop, à la mode de deux frogs;
'Tis near as good walking as riding,
When ladies are dressed in their clogs.
Wheels, no doubt,

Go briskly about,

But they clatter and rattle, and make such a rout.

DIALOGUE

SHE.

"Well! now, I protest it is charming;
How finely the weather improves!
That cloud, though 'tis rather alarming,
How slowly and stately it moves.'

HE.

"Pshaw! never mind,

'Tis not in the wind,

"

We are travelling south, and shall leave it behind."

SHE.

"I am glad we are come for an airing,
For folks may be pounded, and penn'd,

Until they grow rusty, not caring

To stir half a mile to an end."

*Nominally by Robert Heron, Esq., but supposed to have been written by John

Pinkerton. 8vo. 1785.

† A village near Olney.

Mrs Unwin.

HE.

"The longer we stay,
The longer we may;

It's a folly to think about weather or way."

SHE.

"But now I begin to be frighted,
If I fall, what a way I should roll!
I am glad that the bridge was indicted,
Stay! stop! I am sunk in a hole!"

HE.

"Nay never care,

'Tis a common affair;

You'll not be the last that will set a foot there."

SHE.

"Let me breathe now a little, and ponder On what it were better to do;

That terrible lane I see yonder,

I think we shall never get through."

HE.

"So think I:

But, by the bye,

We never shall know, if we never should try."

SHE.

"But should we get there, how shall we get home
What a terrible deal of bad road we have past!
Slipping, and sliding, and if we should come
To a difficult stile, I am ruin'd at last!

Oh this lane!

Now it is plain

That struggling and striving is labour in vain."

HE.

"Stick fast there while I go and look;"

SHE.

"Don't go away, for fear I should fall:"

HE.

"I have examined it, every nook,

And what you see here is a sample of all.
Come, wheel round,

The dirt we have found

Would be an estate, at a farthing a pound."

Now, sister Anne,* the guitar you must take,
Set it, and sing it, and make it a song:
I have varied the verse, for variety's sake,
And cut it off short-because it was long.
'Tis hobbling and lame,

Which critics won't blame,

For the sense and the sound, they say, should be the same.

* Lady Austen.

STANZAS

ON THE LATE INDECENT LIBERTIES TAKEN WITH THE REMAINS OF MILTON *

"ME too, perchance, in future days,
The sculptured stone shall show,
With Paphian myrtle or with bays
Parnassian on my brow.

"But I, or ere that season come,
Escaped from every care,

Shall reach my refuge in the tomb,
And sleep securely there."

So sang, in Roman tone and style,
The youthful bard, ere long
Ordain'd to grace his native isle
With her sublimest song.

Who then but must conceive disdain,
Hearing the deed unblest

Of wretches who have dared profane
His dread sepulchral rest?

Ill fare the hands that heaved the stones
Where Milton's ashes lay,

That trembled not to grasp his bones
And steal his dust away!

O ill requited bard! neglect
Thy living worth repaid,
And blind idolatrous respect
As much affronts thee dead.
August 1790.

TO THE REV, WILLIAM BULL.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

June 22, 1782.

IF reading verse be your delight,
'Tis mine as much, or more, to write;
But what we would, so weak is man,
Lies oft remote from what we can.
For instance, at this very time
I feel a wish by cheerful rhyme
To soothe my friend, and, had I power,
To cheat him of an anxious hour;
Not meaning (for I must confess,
It were but folly to suppress)
His pleasure, or his good alone,
But squinting partly at my own.
But though the sun is flaming high
In the centre of yon arch, the sky,
And he had once (and who but he?)
The name for setting genius free,
Yet whether poets of past days
Yielded him undeserved praise.
And he by no uncommon lot

Was famed for virtues he had not;

The bones of Milton, who lies buried in Cripplegate Church, were disinterred in the year 1790.

Or whether, which is like enough,
His Highness may have taken huff,
So seldom sought with invocation,
Since it has been the reigning fashion
To disregard his inspiration,
I seem no brighter in my wits,
For all the radiance he emits,

Than if I saw through midnight vapour,
The glimmering of a farthing taper.
Oh for a succedaneum, then,
To accelerate a creeping pen!
Oh for a ready succedaneum,
Quod caput, cerebrum, et cranium
Pondere liberet exoso,

Et morbo jam caliginoso!

'Tis here; this oval box well fill'd
With best tobacco, finely mill'd,
Beats all Anticyra's pretences
To disengage the encumber'd senses.
Oh Nymph of transatlantic fame,
Where'er thine haunt, whate'er thy name,
Whether reposing on the side

Of Oroonoquo's spacious tide,

Or listening with delight not small
To Niagara's distant fall,

"Tis thine to cherish and to feed
The pungent nose-refreshing weed
Which, whether pulverized it gain
A speedy passage to the brain,
Or whether, touch'd with fire, it rise
In circling eddies to the skies,
Does thought more quicken and refine
Than all the breath of all the Nine-
Forgive the bard, if bard he be,
Who once too wantonly made free,
To touch with a satiric wipe
That symbol of thy power, the pipe;
So may no blight infest thy plains
And no unseasonable rains;
And so may smiling peace once more
Visit America's sad shore;

And thou, secure from all alarms,

Of thundering drums and glittering arms,
Rove unconfined beneath the shade

Thy wide expanded leaves have made;
So may thy votaries increase,

And fumigation never cease.
May Newton with renew'd delights
Perform thine odoriferous rites,
While clouds of incense half divine
Involve thy disappearing shrine;
And so may smoke-inhaling Bull
Be always filling, never full.