Some fickle creatures boast a soul
True as the needle to the pole;
Yet shifting, like the weather,
The needle's constancy forego
For any novelty, and show
Its variations rather.
Insensibility makes some
Unseasonably deaf and dumb.
When most you need their pity;
'Tis waiting till the tears shall fall
From Gog and Magog in Guildhall,—
Those playthings of the city.
The great and small but rarely meet
On terms of amity complete :
The attempt would scarce be madder,
Should any, from the bottom, hope
At one huge stride to reach the top
Of an erected ladder.
Courtier and patriot cannot mix
Their heterogeneous politics
Without an effervescence,
Such as of salts with lemon-juice,
But which is rarely known to induce,
Like that, a coalescence.
Religion should extinguish strife,
And make a calm of human life:
But even those who differ
Only on topics left at large,
How fiercely will they meet and charge! No combatants are stiffer.
prove, alas! my main intent,
Needs no great cost of argument,
No cutting and contriving;
Seeking a real friend, we seem
To adopt the chymist's golden dream
With still less hope of thriving.
Then judge, or ere you choose your man,
As circumspectly as you can,
And, having made election,
See that no disrespect of yours,
Such as a friend but ill endures,
Enfeeble his affection.
It is not timber, lead and stone,
An architect requires alone,
To finish a great building;
The palace were but half complete,
Could he by any chance forget
The carving and the gilding.
As similarity of mind,
Or something not to be defined,
First rivets our attention;
So, manners, decent and polite,
The same we practised at first sight,
Must save it from declension.
The man who hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves by thumping on your back,
His sense of your great merit,
Is such a friend, that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed,
To pardon, or to bear it.
Some friends make this their prudent plan"Say little, and hear all you can ;"
Safe policy, but hateful;
So barren sands imbibe the shower,
But render neither fruit nor flower,
Unpleasant and ungrateful.
They whisper trivial things, and small;
But, to communicate at all
Things serious, deem improper ;
Their feculence and froth they show
But keep the best contents below,
Just like the simmering copper.
These samples (for alas! at last These are but samples, and a taste 8. c.-6.
Of evils yet unmention'd ;)
May prove the task, a task indeed,
In which 'tis much, if we succeed,
However well-intention'd.
Pursue the theme, and you shall find
A disciplined and furnish'd mind
To be at least expedient,
And, after summing all the rest,
Religion ruling in the breast
A principal ingredient.
True friendship has, in short, a grace
More than terrestrial in its face,
That proves it Heaven-descended;
Man's love of woman not so pure,
Nor, when sincerest, so secure
To last till life is ended.
AFFLICTED PROTESTANT LADY IN FRANCE.
A STRANGER's purpose in these lays
Is to congratulate and not to praise ;
To give the creature the Creator's due
Were sin in me, and an offence to you.
From man to man, or e'en to woman paid,
Praise is the medium of a knavish trade,
A coin by Craft for Folly's use design'd,
Spurious, and only current with the blind.
The path of sorrow, and that path alone
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown:
No traveller ever reach'd that bless'd abode,
Who found not thorns and briers in his road.
The world may dance along the flowery plain,
Cheer'd as they go by many a sprightly strain;
Where Nature has her mossy velvet spread,
With unshod feet they yet securely tread;
Admonish'd, scorn the caution and the friend,
Bent all on pleasure, heedless of its end.
But He, who knew what human hearts would prove,
How slow to learn the dictates of his love,
That, hard by nature and of stubborn will,
A life of ease would make them harder still,
In pity to the souls his grace design'd
To rescue from the ruins of mankind,
Call'd for a cloud to darken all their years,
And said, 66
Go spend them in the vale of tears!"
O balmy gales of soul-reviving air!
O salutary streams that murmur there!
These flowing from the Fount of Grace above,
Those breathed from lips of everlasting love.
The flinty soil indeed their feet annoys,
Chill blasts of trouble nip their springing joys,
An envious world will interpose its frown
To mar delights superior to its own,
And many a pang experienced still within,
Reminds them of their hated inmate, Sin;
But ills of every shape and every name,
Transform'd to blessings, miss their cruel aim;
And every moment's calm that soothes the breast
Is given in earnest of eternal rest.
Ah, be not sad, although thy lot be cast
Far from the flock, and in a boundless waste!
No shepherd's tents within thy view appear,
But the chief Shepherd even there is near;
Thy tender sorrows and thy plaintive strain
Flow in a foreign land, but not in vain ;
Thy tears all issue from a source divine,
And every drop bespeaks a Saviour thine.
So once in Gideon's fleece the dews were found,
And drought on all the drooping herbs around.
TITHING-TIME AT STOCK IN ESSEX.
VERSES ADDRESSED TO A COUNTRY CLERGYMAN, COMPLAINING OF THE
DISAGREEABLENESS OF THE DAY ANNUALLY APPOINTED FOR RECEIV-
ING THE DUES AT THE PARSONAGE.
COME, ponder well, for 'tis no jest,
To laugh it would be wrong;
The troubles of a worthy priest
The burden of my song.
This priest he merry is and blithe
Three quarters of the year,
But oh! it cuts him like a scythe
When tithing time draws near.
He then is full of frights and fears,
As one at point to die,
And long before the day appears
He heaves up many a sigh.
For then the farmers come, jog, jog,
Along the miry road,
Each heart as heavy as a log,
To make their payments good.
In sooth the sorrow of such days
Is not to be express'd,
When he that takes and he that pays
Are both alike distress'd.
Now all unwelcome at his gates
The clumsy swains alight,
With rueful faces and bald pates ;-
He trembles at the sight.
And well he may, for well he knows
Each bumpkin of the clan,
Instead of paying what he owes,
Will cheat him if he can.
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