So says my maid; but they less civil
Give maid and master to the devil;
And then with menaces depart,
Which could you hear would pierce your heart.
Good sir, do make my levée fly me,
Or lend your porter to deny me.
THE LASS OF THE HILL.
ON the brow of a hill a young Shepherdess dwelt,
Who no pangs of ambition or love had e'er felt:
For a few sober maxims still ran in her head
That t'was better to earn, ere she ate her brown bread;
That to rise with the lark was conducive to health,
And, to folks in a cottage, contentment was wealth.
Now young Roger, who lived in the valley below,
Who at church and at market was reckoned a beau,
Had many times tried o'er her heart to prevail,
And would rest on his pitchfork to tell her his tale:
With his winning behaviour he melted her heart;
For quite artless herself, she suspected no art.
He had sigh'd and protested,-had knelt and implored,
He could lie with the grandeur and air of a lord:
Then her eyes he commended in language well drest,
And enlarged on the torments that troubled his breast;
Till his sighs and his tears had so wrought on her mind,
That in downright compassion to love she inclined.
But as soon as he'd melted the ice of her breast,
All the flames of his love in a moment had ceas'd,
And now he goes flaunting all over the dell,
And boasts of his conquest to Susan and Nell:
Tho' he sees her but seldom, he's always in haste,
And if ever he mentions her, makes her his jest.
All the day she goes sighing, and hanging her head,
And her thoughts are so pestered, she scarce earns her bread:
The whole village cries shame when a milking she goes,
That so little affection she shows to the cows:
But she heeds not their railing,-e'en let them rail on,
And a fig for the cows, now her sweetheart is gone!
Take heed pretty virgins of Britain's fair Isle
How you venture your hearts for a look or a smile,
For Cupid is artful, and virgins are frail,
And you'll find a false Roger in every vale,
Who to court you and tempt you will try all his skill: So remember the lass at the brow of the hill.
ON SEEING A PORTRAIT OF SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.
SUCH were the lively eyes and rosy hue
Of Robin's face, when Robin first I knew,
The gay companion and the favourite guest,
Loved without awe, and without views caress'd.
His cheerful smile and open honest look
Added new graces to the truth he spoke.
Then every man found something to commend,
The pleasant neighbour, and the worthy friend:
The generous master of a private house,
The tender father, and indulgent spouse.
The hardest censors at the worst believed,
His temper was too easily deceived
(A consequential ill goodnature draws,
A bad effect, but from a noble cause).
Whence then these clamours of a judging crowd,
Suspicious, griping, insolent, and proud-
Rapacious, cruel, violent, and unjust;
False to his friend, and traitor to his trust."
I HATE the town, and all its ways;
Ridottos, operas, and plays;
The ball, the ring, the mall, the Court,
Wherever the beau monde resort;
Where beauties lie in ambush for folks,
Earl Straffords and the Dukes of Norfolks;
All coffee-houses, and their praters,
All courts of justice and debaters;
All taverns, and the sots within 'em ;
All bubbles, and the rogues that skin 'em.
I hate all critics; may they burn all,
From Bentley to the Grub-street Journal;
All bards, as Dennis hates a pun;
Those who have wit, and who have none.
All nobles of whatever station;
And all the parsons in the nation.
I hate the world crammed altogether,
From beggars, up, the Lord knows whither!
Ask you then, Celia, if there be
The thing I love? My charmer, thee.
Thee more than light, than life adore,
Thou dearest, sweetest creature, more
Than wildest raptures can express,
Than I can tell, or thou canst guess.
Then tho' I bear a gentle mind,
Let not my hatred of mankind
Wonder within my Celia move,
Since she possesses all I love.
HAIL! pretty emblem of my fate!
Sweet flower, you still on Phoebus wait;
On him you look, and with him move,
By nature led, and constant love.
Know, pretty flower, that I am he,
Who am in all so like to thee;
I, too, my fair one court, and where
She moves, my eyes I thither steer.
But, yet this difference still I find,
The sun to you is always kind;
Does always life and warmth bestow:-
Ah! would my fair one use me so!
Ne'er would I wait till she arose
From her soft bed and sweet repose;
But, leaving thee, dull plant, by night
I'd meet my Phillis with delight.
Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford.
WHILE with labour assiduous due pleasure I mix,
And in one day atone for the business of six,
In a little Dutch chaise, on a Saturday night,
On my left hand my Horace, a nymph on my right;
No memoirs to compose, and no post-boy to move,
That on Sunday may hinder the softness of love.
For her neither visits nor parties at tea,
Nor the long-winded cant of a dull refugee.
This night and the next shall be hers, shall be mine,
To good or ill fortune the third we resign.
Thus scorning the world, and superior to fate,
I drive in my car in professional state.
So with Phia thro' Athens Pisistratus rode;
Men thought her Minerva, and him a new god.
But why should I stories of Athens rehearse
Where people knew love, and were partial to verse,
Since none can with justice my pleasures oppose
In Holland half-drowned in interest and prose?
By Greece and past ages what need I be tried
When The Hague and the present are both on my side;
And is it enough for the joys of the day
To think what Anacreon or Sappho would say?
When good Vandergoes and his provident vrow,
As they gaze on my triumph do freely allow,
That, search all the province, you'll find no man dar is
So blest as the Englishen Heer Secretáris.
WHERE the loveliest expression to features is join'd,
By Nature's most delicate pencil design'd;
Where blushes unbidden, and smiles without art,
Speak the softness and feeling that dwell in the heart;
Where in manners, enchanting, no blemish we trace;
But the soul keeps the promise we had from the face;
Sure philosophy, reason, and coldness must prove
Defences unequal to shield us from love :
Then tell me, mysterious Enchanter, O tell!
By what wonderful art, by what magical spell,
My heart is so fenced that for once I am wise,
And gaze without rapture on Amoret's eyes;
That my wishes, which never were bounded before,
Are here bounded by friendship, and ask for no more!
Is it reason? No, that my whole life will belie,
For who so at variance as reason and I?
Ambition, that fills up each chink of my heart,
Nor allows any softer sensation a part?
O, no! for in this all the world must agree,
One folly was never sufficient for me.
Is my mind on distress too intensely employ'd,
Or by pleasure relax'd, by variety cloy'd?
For alike in this only, enjoyment and pain
Both slacken the springs of those nerves which they strain. That I've felt each reverse that from Fortune can flow, That I've tasted each bliss that the happiest know,
Has still been the whimsical fate of my life,
Where anguish and joy have been ever at strife:
But, tho' versed in extremes both of pleasure and pain,
I am still but too ready to feel them again.
If, then, for this once in my life, I am free,
And escape from the snares that catch wiser than me;
'Tis that beauty alone but imperfectly charms;
For though brightness may dazzle, 'tis kindness that warms;
As on suns in the winter with pleasure we gaze,
But feel not their warmth, tho' their splendour we praise, So beauty our just admiration may claim,
But love, and love only, the heart can inflame!
Rt. Honble. Charles James Fox.
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