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With one he stumbled on, and lost his walk.
I interrupt him with a sudden bow,
‘Adieu, dear Sir! lest you should lose it now.'
I cannot talk with civet in the room,
A fine puss-gentleman that's all perfume;
The sight's enough-no need to smell a beau—
Who thrusts his nose into a raree show?
His odoriferous attempts to please

Perhaps might prosper with a swarm of bees ;
But we that make no honey, though we sting,
Poets, are sometimes apt to maul the thing.
'Tis wrong to bring into a mixed resort
What makes some sick, and others à-la-mort,
An argument of cogence, we may say,
Why such a one should keep himself away.

A graver coxcomb we may sometimes see,
Quite as absurd, though not so light as he:
A shallow brain behind a serious mask,
An oracle within an empty cask,

The solemn fop; significant and budge;
A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge;
He says but little, and that little said
Owes all its weight, like loaded dice, to lead.
His wit invites you by his looks to come,
But when you knock it never is at home:
'Tis like a parcel sent you by the stage,
Some handsome present, as your hopes presage;
'Tis heavy, bulky, and bids fair to prove
An absent friend's fidelity and love;

But when unpacked, your disappointment groans
To find it stuffed with brickbats, earth, and stones.
Some men employ their health, an ugly trick,
In making known how oft they have been sick,
And give us in recitals of disease

A doctor's trouble, but without the fees;
Relate how many weeks they kept their bed,
How an emetic or cathartic sped;

Nothing is slightly touched, much less forgot,
Nose, ears, and eyes seem present on the spot

Now the distemper, spite of draught or pill,
Victorious seemed, and now the doctor's skill;
And now-alas for unforeseen mishaps!

They put on a damp nightcap and relapse;

They thought they must have died, they were so bad; Their peevish hearers almost wish they had.

Some fretful tempers wince at every touch,

You always do too little or too much :
You speak with life, in hopes to entertain,—
Your elevated voice goes through the brain;
You fall at once into a lower key,-

That's worse, the drone-pipe of an humble-bee.
The southern sash admits too strong a light,
You rise and drop the curtain-now 'tis night;
He shakes with cold;-you stir the fire and strive
To make a blaze-that's roasting him alive.
Serve him with venison, and he chooses fish ;
With sole-that's just the sort he would not wish:
He takes what he at first professed to loathe,
And in due time feeds heartily on both;
Yet still, o'erclouded with a constant frown,
He does not swallow, but he gulps it down.
Your hope to please him vain on every plan,
Himself should work that wonder, if he can-
Alas! his efforts double his distress,

He likes yours little, and his own still less.
Thus always teasing others, always teased,
His only pleasure is to be displeased.

AN AFTERNOON CALL

[From the Same.]

The circle formed, we sit in silent state,

Like figures drawn upon a dial-plate;

'Yes, Ma'am,' and 'No, Ma'am,' uttered softly, show Every five minutes how the minutes go; Each individual, suffering a constraint,

Poetry may, but colours cannot paint,

As if in close committee on the sky,
Reports it hot or cold, or wet or dry;
And finds a changing clime a happy source
Of wise reflection, and well-timed discourse.
We next inquire, but softly and by stealth,
Like conservators of the public health,

Of epidemic throats, if such there are,

And coughs, and rheums, and phthisic, and catarrh.
That theme exhausted, a wide chasm ensues,
Filled up at last with interesting news,

Who danced with whom, and who are like to wed,
And who is hanged, and who is brought to bed;
But fear to call a more important cause,
As if 'twere treason against English laws.
The visit paid, with ecstasy we come,
As from a seven years' transportation, home,
And there resume an unembarrassed brow,
Recovering what we lost we know not how,
The faculties that seemed reduced to nought,
Expression and the privilege of thought.

DEJECTION AND RETIREMENT. THE RETIRED STATESMAN [From Retirement.]

Virtuous and faithful HEBERDEN', whose skill
Attempts no task it cannot well fulfil,
Gives melancholy up to nature's care,
And sends the patient into purer air.

Look where he comes-in this embowered alcove,
Stand close concealed, and see a statue move:
Lips busy, and eyes fixed, foot falling slow,
Arms hanging idly down, hands clasped below,
Interpret to the marking eye distress,
Such as its symptoms can alone express.
That tongue is silent now; that silent tongue
Could argue once, could jest or join the song,

1 The celebrated Dr. William Heberden (1710-1800).

Could give advice, could censure or commend,
Or charm the sorrows of a drooping friend.
Renounced alike its office and its sport,

Its brisker and its graver strains fall short;
Both fail beneath a fever's secret sway,
And like a summer brook are past away.
This is a sight for Pity to peruse,

Till she resemble faintly what she views,
Till sympathy contract a kindred pain,

Pierced with the woes that she laments in vain.
This, of all maladies that man infest,
Claims most compassion, and receives the least:
Job felt it, when he groaned beneath the rod
And the barbed arrows of a frowning God;
And such emollients as his friends could spare,
Friends such as his for modern Jobs prepare.
Blest, rather curst, with hearts that never feel,
Kept snug in caskets of close hammered steel,
With mouths made only to grin wide and eat,
And minds that deem derided pain a treat;
With limbs of British oak, and nerves of wire,
And wit, that puppet-prompters might inspire,
Their sovereign nostrum is a clumsy joke
On pangs enforced with God's severest stroke.
But with a soul, that ever felt the sting
Of sorrow, sorrow is a sacred thing:
Not to molest, or irritate, or raise

A laugh at its expense, is slender praise;
He, that has not usurped the name of man,
Does all, and deems too little all, he can
To assuage the throbbings of the festered part,
And stanch the bleedings of a broken heart.
'Tis not, as heads that never ache suppose,
Forgery of fancy, and a dream of woes;
Man is a harp whose chords elude the sight,
Each yielding harmony, disposed aright;
The screws reversed (a task which if He please
God in a moment executes with ease)

Ten thousand thousand strings at once go loose,

Lost, till He tune them, all their power and use.
Then neither heathy wilds, nor scenes as fair
As ever recompensed the peasant's care,
Nor soft declivities with tufted hills,
Nor view of waters turning busy mills,
Parks in which Art preceptress Nature weds,
Nor gardens interspersed with flowery beds,
Nor gales, that catch the scent of blooming groves,
And waft it to the mourner as he roves,

Can call up life into his faded eye

That passes all he sees unheeded by:

No wounds like those a wounded spirit feels;

No cure for such, till God, who makes them, heals.
And thou, sad sufferer under nameless ill,

That yields not to the touch of human skill,
Improve the kind occasion, understand

A Father's frown, and kiss his chastening hand.
To thee the day-spring, and the blaze of noon,
The purple evening and resplendent moon,
The stars, that, sprinkled o'er the vault of night,
Seem drops descending in a shower of light,
Shine not, or undesired and hated shine,

Seen through the medium of a cloud like thine :
Yet seek Him, in his favour life is found;

All bliss beside, a shadow or a sound:

Then Heaven, eclipsed so long, and this dull Earth,
Shall seem to start into a second birth;

Nature, assuming a more lovely face,

Borrowing a beauty from the works of grace,
Shall be despised and overlooked no more,
Shall fill thee with delights unfelt before,
Impart to things inanimate a voice,

And bid her mountains and her hills rejoice;
The sound shall run along the winding vales,

And thou enjoy an Eden ere it fails.

'Ye groves,' the statesman at his desk exclaims, Sick of a thousand disappointed aims,

'My patrimonial treasure and my pride,
Beneath your shades your grey possessor hide,

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