Why for that

He always was a well-conditioned lad,
One who'd work hard and well; and as for drink,
Save now and then mayhap at Christmas time,
Sober as wife could wish.

TRAVELLER.

Then is the girl A shrew, or else untidy?.. one to welcome Her husband with a rude unruly tongue? Or drive him from a foul and wretched home To look elsewhere for comfort? Is it so?

WOMAN.

She's notable enough; and as for temper
The best good-humour'd girl! You see yon house,
There by the aspen tree, whose grey leaves shine
In the wind? she lived a servant at the farm.
And often, as I came to weeding here,
I've heard her singing as she milk'd her cows
So cheerfully,.. I did not like to hear her,
Because it made me think upon the days
When I had got as little on my mind,
And was as cheerful too. But she would marry,
And folks must reap as they have sown. God help her!

TRAVELLER.

Why Mistress, if they both are well inclined, Why should not both be happy?

WOMAN.

They've no money.

TRAVELLER.

But both can work; and sure as cheerfully She'd labour for herself as at the farm.

WOMAN.

In truth it is not, Sir!

For when the horse lies down at night, no cares
About to-morrow vex him in his dreams:
He knows no quarter-day, and when he gets

Ay! idleness! the rich folks never fail
To find some reason why the poor deserve
Their miseries!.. Is it idleness, I pray you,
That brings the fever or the ague fit?
That makes the sick one's sickly appetite
From dry bread and potatoes turn away?
Is it idleness that makes small wages fail

For growing wants?.. Six years agone, these bells
Rung on my wedding-day, and I was told
What I might look for,.. but I did not heed
Good counsel. I had lived in service, Sir;
Knew never what it was to want a meal;

Lay down without one thought to keep me sleepless
Or trouble me in sleep; had for a Sunday
My linen gown, and when the pedlar came
Could buy me a new ribbon... And my husband,..
A towardly young man and well to do,..
He had his silver buckles and his watch;
There was not in the village one who look'd
Sprucer on holidays. We married, Sir,
And we had children, but while wants increas'd
Wages stood still. The silver buckles went,
So went the watch; and when the holiday coat
Was worn to work, no new one in its place.
For me.. you see my rags! but I deserve them,
For wilfully, like this new-married pair,
I went to my undoing.

watches gradually disappeared, and their Sunday's clothes became common without any other to supply their place,.. but," said he, “some good comes from this, for they will then work for whatever they can get."

Note to Cottle's Malvern Hills.

TOWNSMAN.

Now, Sir, you touch Upon the point. This man of half a million Had all these public virtues which you praise: But the poor man rung never at his door, And the old beggar, at the public gate, Who, all the summer long, stands hat in hand, He knew how vain it was to lift an eye To that hard face. Yet he was always found Among your ten and twenty pound subscribers, Your benefactors in the newspapers.

His alms were money put to interest

In the other world,. . donations to keep open
A running charity account with heaven,..

With all their flourish and their leafiness,
We have been told their destiny and use,
When the axe is laid unto the root, and they
Cumber the earth no longer.

Undone; .. for sins, not one of which is written
In the Ten Commandments. He, I warrant him,
Believed no other Gods than those of the Creed;
Bow'd to no idols, . . but his money-bags;
Swore no false oaths, except at the custom-house;
Kept the Sabbath idle; built a monument
To honour his dead father; did no murder;
Never sustain'd an action for crim-con;
Never pick'd pockets; never bore false-witness;
And never, with that all-commanding wealth,
Coveted his neighbour's house, nor ox, nor ass !

STRANGER.

You knew him then it seems?

TOWNSMAN.

As all men know The virtues of your hundred-thousanders; They never hide their lights beneath a bushel.

STRANGER.

Nay, nay, uncharitable Sir! for often
Doth bounty like a streamlet flow unseen,
Freshening and giving life along its course.

TOWNSMAN.

We track the streamlet by the brighter green
And livelier growth it gives; . . but as for this..
This was a pool that stagnated and stunk;
The rains of heaven engendered nothing in it
But slime and foul corruption.

STRANGER.

Yet even these

Are reservoirs whence public charity Still keeps her channels full.

When, for the trusted talents, strict account
Shall be required from all, and the old Arch-Lawyer
Plead his own cause as plaintiff.

STRANGER.

I must needs Believe you, Sir: . . these are your witnesses, These mourners here, who from their carriages Gape at the gaping crowd. A good March wind Were to be pray'd for now, to lend their eyes Some decent rheum; the very hireling mute Bears not a face more blank of all emotion Than the old servant of the family!

How can this man have lived, that thus his death Costs not the soiling one white handkerchief!

TOWNSMAN.

Who should lament for him, Sir, in whose heart
Love had no place, nor natural charity?
The parlour spaniel, when she heard his step,
Rose slowly from the hearth, and stole aside
With creeping pace; she never raised her eyes
To woo kind words from him, nor laid her head
Upraised upon his knee, with fondling whine.
How could it be but thus ? Arithmetic
Was the sole science he was ever taught;
The multiplication-table was his Creed,
His Pater-noster, and his Decalogue.

When yet he was a boy, and should have breathed
The open air and sunshine of the fields,
To give his blood its natural spring and play,
He in a close and dusky counting-house
Smoke-dried and sear'd and shrivell'd up his heart.
So from the way in which he was train'd up
His feet departed not; he toil'd and moil'd,
Poor muck-worm! through his three-score years and
And when the earth shall now be shovell'd on him,
If that which served him for a soul were still
Within its husk, 'twould still be dirt to dirt.

STRANGER.

Yet your next newspapers will blazon him
For industry and honourable wealth
A bright example.

TOWNSMAN.

Even half a million

[ten;

Gets him no other praise. But come this way
Some twelve months hence, and you will find his virtues
Trimly set forth in lapidary lines,

Faith with her torch beside, and little Cupids
Dropping upon his urn their marble tears.

Bristol, 1803.

TOLL on, toll on, old Bell! I'll neither pass
The cold and weary hour in heartless rites,
Nor doze away the time. The fire burns bright,
And, bless the maker of this Windsor-Chair!
(Of polish'd cherry, elbow'd, saddle-seated,)
This is the throne of comfort. I will sit

And study here devoutly: . . not my Euclid, . .
For Heaven forbid that I should discompose
That Spider's excellent geometry!

I'll study thee, Puss! Not to make a picture,
I hate your canvass cats and dogs and fools,
Themes that disgrace the pencil. Thou shalt give
A moral subject, Puss. Come, look at me; . .
Lift up thine emerald eyes! Ay, purr away!
For I am praising thee, I tell thee, Puss,
And Cats as well as Kings like flattery.
For three whole days I heard an old Fur-gown
Bepraised, that made a Duke a Chancellor;
Bepraised in prose it was, bepraised in verse;
Lauded in pious Latin to the skies;
Kudos'd egregiously in heathen Greek;
In sapphics sweetly incensed; glorified
In proud alcaics; in hexameters

Applauded to the very Galleries

That did applaud again, whose thunder-claps,
Higher and longer with redoubling peals
Rung, when they heard the illustrious furbelow'd
Heroically in Popean rhyme

Tee-ti-tum'd, in Miltonic blank bemouth'd;

Prose, verse, Greek, Latin, English, rhyme and blank,
Apotheosi-chancellor'd in all,

Till Eulogy, with all her wealth of words,
Grew bankrupt, all-too-prodigal of praise,
And panting Panegyric toil'd in vain
O'er-task'd in keeping pace with such desert.

Though I can poetize right willingly,

Puss, on thy well-streak'd coat, to that Fur-gown
I was not guilty of a single line:

'Twas an old furbelow, that would hang loose,
And wrap round any one, as it were made
To fit him only, so it were but tied
With a blue riband.

What a power there is
In beauty! Within these forbidden walls
Thou hast thy range at will, and when perchance
The Fellows see thee, Puss, they overlook
Inhibitory laws, or haply think

The statute was not made for Cats like thee;
For thou art beautiful as ever Cat

That wanton'd in the joy of kittenhood.

Ay, stretch thy claws, thou democratic beast, .
I like thine independence. Treat thee well,
Thou art as playful as young Innocence;
But if we act the governor, and break

The social compact, Nature gave those claws
And taught thee how to use them. Man, methinks,
Master and slave alike, might learn from thee
A salutary lesson: but the one

Abuses wickedly his power unjust,

The other crouches spaniel-like, and licks
The hand that strikes him. Wiser animal,

I look at thee, familiarised, yet free;
And, thinking that a child with gentle hand
Leads by a string the large-limb'd Elephant,
With mingled indignation and contempt
Behold his drivers goad the biped beast.

II.

SNUFF.

A DELICATE pinch! oh how it tingles up
The titillated nose, and fills the eyes
And breast, till in one comfortable sneeze
The full-collected pleasure bursts at last!
Most rare Columbus! thou shalt be for this
The only Christopher in my Kalendar.
Why but for thee the uses of the Nose
Were half unknown, and its capacity

Of joy. The summer gale that from the heath,
At midnoon glowing with the golden gorse,
Bears its balsamic odour, but provokes
Not satisfies the sense; and all the flowers,
That with their unsubstantial fragrance tempt
And disappoint, bloom for so short a space,
That half the year the Nostrils would keep Lent,
But that the kind tobacconist admits
No winter in his work; when Nature sleeps
His wheels roll on, and still administer
A plenitude of joy, a tangible smell.

What are Peru and those Golcondan mines
To thee, Virginia ? miserable realms,
The produce of inhuman toil, they send
Gold for the greedy, jewels for the vain.
But thine are common comforts!.. To omit
Pipe-panegyric and tobacco-praise,

Think what the general joy the snuff-box gives,
Europe, and far above Pizarro's name
Write Raleigh in thy records of renown!
Him let the school-boy bless if he behold

M

His master's box produced, for when he sees The thumb and finger of Authority

Stufft up the nostrils: when hat, head, and wig
Shake all; when on the waistcoat black, brown dust,
From the oft-reiterated pinch profuse
Profusely scatter'd, lodges in its folds,
And part on the magistral table lights,

Part on the open book, soon blown away,
Full surely soon shall then the brow severe
Relax; and from vituperative lips

Words that of birch remind not, sounds of praise,
And jokes that must be laugh'd at, shall proceed.
Westbury, 1799.

III.

COOL REFLECTIONS

My bones reach home (for, for the flesh upon them, It hath resolved itself into a dew,)

I shall have learnt owl-wisdom. Thou vile Phœbus,
Set me a Persian sun-idolater

Upon this turnpike road, and I'll convert him
With no inquisitorial argument

But thy own fires. Now woe be to me, wretch,

That I was in a heretic country born!

Else might some mass for the poor souls that bleach,

And burn away the calx of their offences

In that great Purgatory crucible,

Help me. O Jupiter! my poor complexion !

I am made a copper-Indian of already!

And if no kindly cloud will parasol me,
My very cellular membrane will be changed,..
I shall be negrofied.

A brook! a brook!

O what a sweet cool sound!

"Tis very nectar! It runs like life through every strengthen'd limb! Nymph of the stream, now take a grateful prayer.

1799.

O SPARE me.. spare me, Phoebus ! if indeed
Thou hast not let another Phaeton
Drive earthward thy fierce steeds and fiery car;
Mercy! I melt! I melt! No tree, no bush,
No shelter, not a breath of stirring air
East, West, or North, or South! Dear God of day,
Put on thy nightcap; crop thy locks of light,
And be in the fashion; turn thy back upon us,
And let thy beams flow upward; make it night
Instead of noon; . . one little miracle,

In pity, gentle Phoebus !

What a joy,

Oh what a joy, to be a seal and flounder
On an ice island! or to have a den

With the white bear, cavern'd in polar snow!

It were a comfort to shake hands with Death,..
He has a rare cold hand! to wrap one's self
In the gift shirt Dejanira sent,

Dipt in the blood of Nessus, just to keep
The sun off; or toast cheese for Beelzebub,..
That were a cool employment to this journey
Along a road whose white intensity
Would now make platina uncongealable
Like quicksilver.

Were it midnight, I should walk
Self-lanthorn'd, saturate with sunbeams. Jove!
O gentle Jove! have mercy, and once more
Kick that obdurate Phoebus out of heaven;
Give Boreas the wind-cholic till he roar
For cardamum, and drink down peppermint,
Making what's left as precious as Tokay;
Send Mercury to salivate the sky
Till it dissolve in rain. O gentle Jove !
But some such little kindness to a wretch
Who feels his marrow spoiling his best coat,..
Who swells with calorique as if a Prester
Had leaven'd every limb with poison-yeast; ..
Lend me thine eagle just to flap his wings
And fan me, and I will build temples to thee,
And turn true Pagan.

Not a cloud nor breeze,.. O you most heathen Deities! if ever

IV.

THE PIG.

A COLLOQUIAL POEM.

JACOB! I do not like to see thy nose
Turn'd up in scornful curve at yonder Pig.
It would be well, my friend, if we, like him,
Were perfect in our kind!.. And why despise
The sow-born grunter?.. He is obstinate,
Thou answerest; ugly, and the filthiest beast
That banquets upon offal.... Now I pray you
Hear the Pig's Counsel.

Is he obstinate?

We must not, Jacob, be deceived by words;
We must not take them as unheeding hands
Receive base money at the current worth,
But with a just suspicion try their sound,
And in the even balance weigh them well.
See now to what this obstinacy comes:
A poor mistreated, democratic beast,
He knows that his unmerciful drivers seek
Their profit, and not his. He hath not learnt
That Pigs were made for Man,.. born to be brawn'd
And baconized: that he must please to give

Just what his gracious masters please to take;
Perhaps his tusks, the weapons Nature gave

For self-defence, the general privilege;

Perhaps,.. hark Jacob! dost thou hear that horn?
Woe to the young posterity of pork!
Their enemy is at hand.

Again. Thou say'st

The Pig is ugly. Jacob, look at him!
Those eyes have taught the Lover flattery.
His face,.. nay Jacob, Jacob! were it fair
To judge a Lady in her dishabille ?
Fancy it drest, and with saltpetre rouged.
Behold his tail, my friend; with curls like that
The wanton hop marries her stately spouse:
So crisp in beauty Amoretta's hair