We, patriotick jacobins,

Whom heaven ordain'd to punish sins,
Will shoot at every mother's son,
With pebble, whizzing from air-gun ;
And you will not escape being smitten,
As did his majesty of Britain !

Nor is this all you may expect

If still you treat us with neglect ;
We'll change our squibs to cannonading
Sink federal ship, with all her lading,
Enrich us with our country's plunder,

And make e'en Washington knock under

SIMON SPUNKEY'S

EPISTLE EXCUSATORY,

ADDRESSED TO JOSEPH DENNIE, ESQ. EDITOR OF THE PORT FOLIO, AS AN APOLOGY FOR NOT MORE

FREQUENTLY WRITING FOR HIS

POETICAL DEPARTMENT.

SINCE Simon's muse no longer chatters
Of politicks and other matters,

The anxious publick wish to know
Whether the bard, to shades below,
Has hied with jacobin commission
To raise a mob, in fields Elysian,
Or gone to organize a club

Of demos, under Beelzebub.

Some knowing ones presume to say

The poet towers the other way,

Born high on Fancy's air-balloon,

Soars many a league beyond the moon,

Engag'd in some sublime affair

In building castles, in the air

Gone where e'en Herschel cannot find him, And leaves his partisans behind him.

Thus criticks form conjectures wise,
And Rumour tells a thousand lies;
But, if such tales as we have stated
Should, wantonly, be circulated,

Belknap may err, in our biography,
Or Doctor Morse in his "Geography,"
With less of prudence than temerity,
Mistate the matter to posterity,
And stories tell, about our silence,
To lesson our renown, a while hence.

These may be consequences: therefore,

I will unfold the why and wherefore,
Simon affords no rhyme, nor riddle,
Nor tunes of late, Apollo's fiddle.
No pithy rhymer ever chooses

To build his verse without the muses,

But not a muse, who wears a petticoat,
Will leave the banks of fair Connecticut ;*

Colon and Spondee,† void of reason,
Have hired the lasses, by the season,
Confin'd each little sweet divinity,

By magick spell to their vicinity.

'Tis true the nymphs once made excursion,

To visit Vermont, for diversion,

But, when accosted, in these regions,

They sped away, like frighted pigeons.

When May her blue eye roll'd voluptuoust In airy ringlets dancing up to us,

* A beautiful river, which divides New Hampshire from Vermont.

† Colon and Spondee were the signatures assumed by gentlemen who wrote for the publication in which this epistle first appeared.

"Born in yon blaze of orient sky,

"Sweet May, thy radiant charms unfold,

"Unclose thy blue voluptuous eye,

"And wave thy shadowy locks of gold!"

DARWIN.

In yonder sable swamp of hickory,
I Simon saw the nymph Terpsichore,
On banks of Otter Creek she blew sharp
On whistle now, and now on jewsharp;
'Twas all perfection, or so near it,

The raptur'd river stopp'd to hear it.
There too were Clio and Melpomene
With Barlow's recipe for hominy,*
Set to celestial musick sweeter

Than pious psalm-tune, common metre.
Tall spruces bow'd their heads, so taper,
And hakmataks† cut many a caper,
Thy forest, Thebes, show'd less agility,
When Orpheus fif'd with such ability!

Now chang'd the key, a plaintive strain, Melodious murmurs o'er the plain;

* Hominy is the Indian name for a kind of pudding made of the meal of maize, or Indian corn, called " Hasty Pudding." Joel Barlow, Esq. wrote a em, which was celebrated in America, entitled "Hasty Pudding.”

A kind of evergreen.