(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 MARIÆ 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.
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,
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;
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