I think, for once, that I will venture,
To condescend to be your Mentor!
Perhaps it best your humour suits
To level women with the brutes,
Maintain the Turkish tenet droll,
The lovely creatures have no soul.
You have some wild whim in your pate,
Of innocence in savage state;
Become an advocate, I trow,
For frantick schemes of Jaques Rousseau.
Would you have queens to market trudge,
Depress a dutchess to a drudge,
In Beauty's empire make such ravages
That men become a set of savages?
Not so; but never will I vex
With your impertinence the sex;
Nor utter such extravaganzas
As sublimate your swelling stanzas ;
Nor, poring at the lovely creatures,
Spy solar systems in their features ;
For 'twould be saying, on the whole; "My dears, I know you have no soul; "But sweet Miss Peggy, or Miss Pol, "Thou art a mighty pretty doll!
"And made of such weak muslin stuff, "That nonsense suits you well enough !".
Is it your humour to degrade
Bright Hymen's court, to mart for trade?
Have pretty nymphs expos'd to sale,
And ladies vendued off by tale,
Prohibiting your Dutch-like strand,
All metaphors, as contraband;
But, in your foresaid fair, or market,
When lads and lasses meet to spark it,
Bid buxom damsel, lusty youth,
Deal, merely, in the naked truth,
And Mister Hodge address Miss Sue-
"If you'll love me, then I'll love you,
"For I am come to go a courting,
"Because you've got a handsome fortune."
A while, my "sweetest Fancy's child,
You warble native wood-notes wild,"
As though you tenanted the bushes,
With black birds, screech owls, crows, and
And next, with Della Cruscan flight,
You stem the cataract of light;
Attended (how supremely odd it is)
By shoals of heathen gods and goddesses;
Now you descend in vulgar style,
Below old Blackmore full a mile.
But you, like some tall sachem stalk,
With Satire's brandish'd tomahawk,
Perhaps, to joys of love, a stranger,
You act the part of dog in manger.
Say, would you cause by all your pother
One half our race to damn the other;
Daughters of Eve, and Adam's sons,
Turn bachelors, and Amazons;
Or long fac'd sour ecclesiasticks,
Of taper nuns, and gaunt monasticks ?
Let rapt attention chain thine ear;
Hear me and reverence what you hear,
While truths, more precious I unfold
Than splendid gems incas'd with gold.
I am not one of those, who own
The nerve of steel, the heart of stone,
But beauty's willing votary bow,
Nor blush allegiance to avow.
When angry clouds life's sun o'ercast,
Preluding rude Misfortune's blast;
When doubts perplex, when cares annoy,
And bar each avenue of joy ;
When the pale victim of disease,
Which baffled art cannot appease;
Torn by affliction's sharpest thong,
Till hope has ceas'd her siren song,
Sees shrouded Horrour's spectred form,
Ride moaning in the midnight storm;
The fairer sex possess the power
To tranquillize the torturing hour,
And bid mild sympathy impart
Her cordial to the bursting heart.*
To cheer with smiles the vale of woe
Is not the only power they know ;
But oft it is their sweet employ
To light with love the lamp of joy.
'Tis their's, in pleasure's brightest noon,
The fibres of the heart to tune
To tones of rapture, which might even
Prelude the harmony of heaven !†
* "When on my sickly couch I lay,
"Impatient both of night and day,
66 Lamenting, in unmanly strains,
"Call'd every power to ease my pains;
<< Now, with a soft and silent tread,
"Unheard she moves about my bed."
"I've paced much this weary mortal round,
"And sage experience bids me this declare;
"If Heav'n a draught of heavenly pleasure spare,
"One cordial in this melancholy vale,
""Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair,
"In other's arms breathe out the tender tale !"
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