Through deep reserve and air erect,
Mistaken Damon won respect;
But could the specious homage pass
With any creature, but an ass?
If conscious, they who fear'd the skin
Would scorn the sluggish brute within.
What awe-struck slaves the towers enclose,
Where Persian monarchs eat and doze!
What prostrate reverence all agree
To pay a prince they never see!
Mere vassals of a royal throne;
The Sophi's virtues must be shown,
To make the reverence his own.

As for Thalia-wouldst thou make her
Thy bride without a portion ?-take her:
She will with duteous care attend,
And all thy pensive hours befriend;
Will swell thy joys, will share thy pain,
With thee rejoice, with thee complain;
Will smooth thy pillow, plait thy bowers,
And bind thy aching head with flowers.
But be this previous maxim known—
If thou canst feed on love alone;
If, bless'd with her, thou canst sustain
Contempt, and poverty, and pain;
If so then rifle all her graces-
And fruitful be your fond embraces!
Too soon, by caitiff Spleen inspired,
Sage Damon to his groves retired,
The path disclaimed by sober Reason;
Retirement claims a later season,

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Ere active youth and warm desires,

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Have quite withdrawn their lingering fires.

With the warm bosom, ill agree
Or limpid stream or shady tree;
Love lurks within the rosy bower,
And claims the speculative hour;
Ambition finds his calm retreat,
And bids his pulse too fiercely beat;
Even social Friendship duns his ear,
And cites him to the public sphere.
Does he resist their genuine force?
His temper takes some froward course,
Till passion, misdirected, sighs

For weeds, or shells, or grubs, or flies!

Far happiest he whose early days,
Spent in the social paths of praise,
Leave, fairly printed on his mind,
A train of virtuous deeds behind:
From this rich fund the memory draws
The lasting meed of self-applause.

Such fair ideas lend their aid
To people the sequester'd shade:

Such are the Naiads, Nymphs, and Fawns,
That haunt his floods or cheer his lawns.
If, where his devious ramble strays,
He Virtue's radiant form surveys,
She seems no longer now to wear
The rigid mien, the frown severe; 1
To show him her remote abode,
To point the rocky arduous road;
But from each flower his fields allow,
She twines a garland for his brow.

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The rigid mien, the frown severe :' alluding to The Allegory' in Cebes's Tablet.

ECONOMY.

A RHAPSODY, ADDRESSED TO YOUNG POETS.

Insanis; omnes gelidis quæcunque lacernis
Sunt tibi, Nasones Virgiliosque vides.

PART FIRST.

MART.

To you, ye Bards! whose lavish breast requires
This monitory lay, the strains belong;

Nor think some miser vents his sapient saw,
Or some dull cit, unfeeling of the charms

That tempt profusion, sings; while friendly Zeal,
To guard from fatal ills the tribe he loves,
Inspires the meanest of the Muse's train!
Like you I loathe the grovelling progeny,
Whose wily arts, by creeping time matured,
Advance them high on Power's tyrannic throne,
To lord it there in gorgeous uselessness,
And spurn successless Worth that pines below!
See the rich churl, amid the social sons
Of wine and wit, regaling! hark, he joins
In the free jest delighted! seems to show
A meliorated heart! he laughs, he sings!
Songs of gay import, madrigals of glee,
And drunken anthems, set agape the board,
Like Demea,1 in the play, benign and mild,
And pouring forth benevolence of soul,
Till Micio wonder; or, in Shakspeare's line,
Obstreperous Silence, 2 drowning Shallow's voice,
And startling Falstaff, and his mad compeers.

'Silence: Justice Silence, in

He owns 'tis prudence, ever and anon
To smooth his careful brow, to let his purse
Ope to a sixpence's diameter !

He likes our ways; he owns the ways of wit
Are ways of pleasance, and deserve regard.
True, we are dainty good society,

But what art thou?

Alas! consider well, Thou bane of social pleasure, know thyself:

Thy fell approach, like some invasive damp

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Breathed through the pores of earth from Stygian caves
Destroys the lamp of mirth; the lamp which we,

Its flamens, boast to guard: we know not how,
But at thy sight the fading flame assumes

A ghastly blue, and in a stench expires.

True, thou seem'st changed; all sainted, all enskied :
The trembling tears that charge thy melting eyes
Say thou art honest and of gentle kind:
But all is false an intermitting sigh

Condemns each hour, each moment given to smiles,
And deems those only lost thou dost not lose.
Even for a demi-groat this open'd soul,
This boon companion, this elastic breast,
Revibrates quick; and sends the tuneful tongue
To lavish music on the rugged walls

Of some dark dungeon. Hence, thou Caitiff! fly;
Touch not my glass, nor drain my sacred bowl,
Monster, ingrate! beneath one common sky

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Why shouldst thou breathe? beneath one common roof
Thou ne'er shalt harbour, nor my little boat
Receive a soul with crimes to press it down.
Go to thy bags, thou Recreant! hourly go,
And, gazing there, bid them be wit, be mirth,
Be conversation. Not a face that smiles
Admits thy presence! not a soul that glows

With social purport, bid, or even or morn,
Invest thee happy! but when life declines,

May thy sure heirs stand tittering round thy bed,
And, ushering in their favourites, burst thy locks,
And fill their laps with gold, till Want and Care
With joy depart, and cry, "We ask no more."
Ah! never, never may the harmonious mind
Endure the worldly! Poets, ever void
Of guile, distrustless, scorn the treasured gold,
And spurn the miser, spurn his deity.
Balanced with friendship, in the poet's eye
The rival scale of interest kicks the beam,
Than lightning swifter. From his cavern'd store
The sordid soul, with self-applause, remarks
The kind propensity; remarks and smiles,
And hies with impious haste to spread the snare.
Him we deride, and in our comic scenes
Contemn the niggard form Molière has drawn:
We loathe with justice; but, alas! the pain
To bow the knee before this calf of gold;
Implore his envious aid, and meet his frown!

But 'tis not Gomez, 'tis not he whose heart
Is crusted o'er with dross, whose callous mind
Is senseless as his gold, the slighted Muse
Intensely loathes. 'Tis sure no equal task
To pardon him who lavishes his wealth
On racer, foxhound, hawk, or spaniel, all
But human merit; who with gold essays
All, but the noblest pleasure, to remove
The wants of Genius, and its smiles enjoy.
But
you, ye titled youths! whose nobler zeal
Would burnish o'er your coronets with fame;

Who listen pleased when poet tunes his lay;
Permit him not, in distant solitudes,