I am glad that the bridge was indicted,
Stay! stop! I am sunk in a hole!"
"Nay, never care,
"Tis a common affair
You'll not be the last, that will set a foot there."
"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."
"So think I:
But, by the bye,
We never shall know, if we never should try."
"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 ruined at last!
Oh this lane!
That struggling and striving is labor in vain."
"Stick fast there while I go and look ;"
"Don't go away, for fear I should fall:"
"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.
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.
Nominally by Robert Heron, Esq., but supposed to have been written by John Pinkerton. 8vo. 1785.
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."+
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,
* The bones of Milton, who lies buried in Cripplegate church, were disinterred; a pamphlet by Le Neve was published at the time, giving an account of what appeared on opening his coffin.
† Forsitan et nostros ducat de marmore vultus, Nectens aut Paphia myrti aut Parnasside lauri Fronde comas-At ego secura pace quiescam. Milton in Manso.
Cowper, no doubt, had in his memory the lines said
to have been written by Shakspeare on his tomb:
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.
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
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,
"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust inclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones."
And he by no uncommon lot
Was famed for virtues he had not;
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 vapor,
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-
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