HYPOCHONDRIACUS.

By myself walking,
To myself talking,

When as I ruminate

On my untoward fate,
Scarcely seem I
Alone sufficiently,

Black thoughts continually
Crowding my privacy ;
They come unbidden,
Like foes at a wedding,
Thrusting their faces
In better guests places,
Peevish and malecontent,
Clownish, impertinent,
Dashing the merriment:
So in like fashions

Dim cogitations

Follow and haunt me,
Striving to daunt me,

In my heart festering,

In my ears whispering,

"Thy friends are treacherous,

"Thy foes are dangerous,

"Thy dreams ominous."

Fierce Anthropophagi,
Spectra, Diaboli,

What scared St. Anthony,

Hobgoblins, Lemures,

Dreams of Antipodes,
Night-riding Incubi
Troubling the fantasy,

All dire illusions

Causing confusions;

Figments heretical,

Scruples fantastical,

Doubts diabolical,

Abaddon vexeth me,

Mahu perplexeth me,

Lucifer teareth me

Jesu! Maria! liberate nos ab his diris tenta

tionibus Inimici.

A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO.

MAY the Babylonish curse
Strait confound my stammering verse,

If I can a passage see
In this word-perplexity,
Or a fit expression find,
Or a language to my mind,

(Still the phrase is wide or scant)

To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT!

Or in any terms relate

Half my love, or half my hate:

For I hate, yet love, thee so,
That, whichever thing I shew,

The plain truth will seem to be
A constrain'd hyperbole,

And the passion to proceed

More from a mistress than a weed.

Sooty retainer to the vine, Bacchus' black servant, negro fine;

Sorcerer, that mak'st us dote upon
Thy begrimed complexion,

And, for thy pernicious sake,
More and greater oaths to break
Than reclaimed lovers take

'Gainst women: thou thy siege dost lay

Much too in the female way,

While thou suck'st the lab'ring breath
Faster than kisses or than death.

Thou in such a cloud dost bind us,

That our worst foes cannot find us,

And ill fortune, that would thwart us,
Shoots at rovers, shooting at us ;

While each man, thro' thy height'ning steam,

Does like a smoking Etna seem,

And all about us does express
(Fancy and wit in richest dress)

A Sicilian fruitfulness.

Thou through such a mist dost shew us,
That our best friends do not know us,
And, for those allowed features,

Due to reasonable creatures,

Liken'st us to fell Chimeras,

Monsters that, who see us, fear us;

Worse than Cerberus or Geryon, Or, who first lov'd a cloud, Ixion.

Bacchus we know, and we allow His tipsy rites. But what art thou, That but by reflex can'st shew What his deity can do,

As the false Egyptian spell
Aped the true Hebrew miracle?
Some few vapours thou may'st raise,
The weak brain may serve to amaze,
But to the reins and nobler heart
Can'st nor life nor heat impart.

Brother of Bacchus, later born, The old world was sure forlorn, Wanting thee, that aidest more The god's victories than before All his panthers, and the brawls Of his piping Bacchanals. These, as stale, we disallow, Or judge of thee meant: only thou His true Indian conquest art; And, for ivy round his dart, The reformed god now weaves A finer thyrsus of thy leaves.