On waving boughs the plumy race
Sweet carol from the blossom'd spray;
While, glittering in each pictur'd vase,
The golden-scaled beauties play.
Domestic cares and duteous loye
In turn their tender thoughts employ;
And form within their green alcove
A happiness that cannot cloy.
BY J. B. S. MORRIT, ESQ.
LOST in a jarring world's tumultuous cries,
Unmark'd around us sink the good and wise;
Here BURGH is laid; a venerable name,
To Virtue sacred, not unknown to Fame;
Let those he lov'd, let those who lov'd him, tell
How dear he liv'd, and how lamented fell;
Tell of the void his social spirit left,
Of comforts long enjoy'd for ever reft,
Of wit that gilded many a sprightlier hour,
Of kindness when the scene of joy was o'er,
Of Truth's ethereal beam, by Learning given,
To guide his virtues to their native Heaven;
Nor shall their sorrowing voice be heard unmov'd,
While gratitude is left, or goodness lov'd;
But listening crowds this honour'd tomb attend,
And childrens' children bless their father's friend.
YE giant robbers of the nation,
Whose shuddering dread of reformation,
(Such dread the minor robber feels,
When Bow-street runners dog his heels)
Prompts you by every art to strive
To keep our fear of change alive,
Learn that the hackney'd old pretences
No more can cheat us of our senses.
In vain, again, with treble din
You raise the cry of " JACOBIN *!”
The long-exploded cry we hear
With nothing but a bitter sneer!
This stale attempt our souls to fright
From claiming antient law and right,
Betrays a poorness of invention,
As little skill as good intention.
Thus, says the tale, a country clown,
Who, when a friend or two came down
On Sundays at his cot to dine,
Gave apple-pie and leg of swine,
Once having, at some festal tide,
For thrice the number to provide,
*The author by no means intends to assert that the country never was in danger from jacobinical principles. He is fully satisfied that, at one time, it was in the utmost peril from the detestable principles and machinations of jacobinism. What he means to assert is, that, long after the danger was over, the cry of " Jacobin" continued to be raised, by venal scribblers, against every person, however loyal, who was desirous of correcting even the most flagrant abuses. There may, perhaps, still be a few inveterate Jacobins, but they can only be objects of contempt, or, at most, of vigilance.
After much racking of his brain,
What dinner he should give the train,
At length presented to their eyes,
Three legs of pork, three apple-pies.
We own, indeed, there was an hour
The bug-bear phantom had such power,
That, when you held it up to view,
It made us fifty follies do!
Heavens! how we sweated, pray'd, and trembled,
And asses more than men resembled!
Then, like that sage Hibernian elf,
To save his neck who hang'd himself,
To keep secure our lives and purses,
We both committed to your mercies.
But those your golden days are past,
We've through the juggle seen at last,
And that which once destroy'd our rest,
Is now become a standing jest.
So when, to guard from birds his crops,
HODGE in his fields a scare-crow props,
With furious phiz, and jacket flaming,
And wooden gun at spoilers aiming,
Awhile, the dread of feather'd bands,
The formidable malkin stands ;
But soon, familiar with its figure,
And finding out its want of vigour,
The birds, recover'd from their wonder,
Boldly resume the work of plunder,
Around their foe undaunted tread,
Or perch upon its empty head.
"Tis true that, in one trifling point,
My simile is out of joint:
WE are the tillers of the plain,
And you the plunderers of our grain,
Come! task your wits! produce some story
To brighten up your tarnished glory!
Have you no master-hand at fiction,
Who lives to truth in contradiction,
Whose fertile brain can hatch a tale,
To make John Bull turn sick and pale ?
Cannot that wordy wight, JOHN BOWLES,
That prince of pamphlet-making souls,
Who sees-may due reward betide him-
What no one else can see beside him;
Who saw, at NOTTINGHAM, a goddess
Paraded without shift or boddice;
Cannot even HE your cause supply
With some NEW panic spreading lie?
Unless you're now both quick and clever,
By Jove your empire's gone for ever!
Bestir you! or 'twill be your fate
To move contempt as well as hate.
You will, with all your dirty tools,
Be damn'd as knaves, and scorn'd ́as fools.
On hearing that the French had melted down their Saints to purchase Artillery.
QUOTH a reverend priest to a less reverend friend, "Where at length will the crimes of these French vil
Who their saints and their martyrs thus impiously sell, And convert into damnable engines of hell?"
"Prithee, why (quoth his friend) are you so much surpris'd,
That saints had their deserts, and were all canoniz'd?”
RECITED IN THE THEATRE, OXFORD, IN THE YEAR MDCCCXII.
HEARD ye the arrow hurtle in the sky?
Heard ye the dragon monster's deathful cry?
In settled majesty of fierce disdain,
Proud of his might, yet scornful of the slain,
The heavenly archer stands-no human birth,
No perishable denizen of earth;
Youth blooms immortal in his beardless face,
A god in strength, with more than godlike grace;
All, all divine-no struggling muscle glows,
Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows,
But animate with deity alone,
In deathless glory lives the breathing stone.
Bright kindling with a conqueror's stern delight,
His keen eye tracks the arrow's fateful flight;
Burns his indignant cheek with vengeful fire,
And his lip quivers with insulting ire:
Firm fixed his tread, yet light, as when on high
He walks th' impalpable and pathless sky:
The rich luxuriance of his hair, confined
In graceful ringlets, wantons on the wind,
That lifts in sport his mantle's drooping fold,
Proud to display that form of faultless mould.
The Apollo is in the act of watching the arrow with which he slew the serpent Python.
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