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Not dreaming of so dear a friend,
Deep in the abyss of Silver-End.*
Thus Martha, even against her will,
Perch'd on the top of yonder hill;
And you, though you must needs prefer
The fairer scenes of sweet Sancerre,†
Are come from distant Loire, to choose
A cottage on the banks of Ouse.
This page of Providence quite new,
And now just opening to our view,
Employs our present thoughts and pains
To guess, and spell what it contains:
But day by day, and year by year,
Will make the dark enigma clear;
And furnish us, perhaps, at last,
Like other scenes already past,
With proof, that we, and our affairs,
Are part of a Jehovah's cares:
For God unfolds by slow degrees,
The purport of his deep decrees;
Sheds every hour a clearer light
In aid of our defective sight;
And spreads, at length, before the soul
A beautiful and perfect whole,
Which busy man's inventive brain
Toils to anticipate, in vain.

Say, Anna, had you never known
The beauties of a rose full blown,
Could you, though luminous your eye,
By looking on the bud, descry,

Or

guess with a prophetic power,
The future splendour of the flower?
Just so, the Omnipotent, who turns
The system of a world's concerns,
From mere minutiæ can educe
Events of most important use;
And bid a dawning sky display
The blaze of a meridian day.

* An obscure part of Olney, near Cowper's residence. † Lady Austen's residence in France.

The works of man tend, one and all,

As needs they must, from great to small;
And vanity absorbs at length

The monuments of human strength.
But who can tell how vast the plan
Which this day's incident began?
Too small, perhaps, the slight occasion
For our dim-sighted observation ;
It pass'd unnoticed as the bird
That cleaves the yielding air unheard,
And yet may prove, when understood,
An harbinger of endless good.

Not that I deem, or mean to call
Friendship a blessing cheap or small:
But merely to remark, that ours,
Like some of Nature's sweetest flowers,
Rose from a seed of tiny size,

That seem'd to promise no such prize;
A transient visit intervening,
And made almost without a meaning,
(Hardly the effect of inclination,
Much less of pleasing expectation,)
Produced a friendship, then begun,
That has cemented us in one;
And placed it in our power to prove,
By long fidelity and love,

That Solomon has wisely spoken,—

"A threefold cord is not soon broken."

FROM

A LETTER TO THE REV. MR NEWTON.

(DATED MAY 28, 1782.)

[The original was addressed to the Rev. Mr Newton, a great smoker, as appears from the Poet's letters. ]

SAYS the pipe to the snuff-box, "I can't understand

What the ladies and gentlemen see in your face,

That you are in fashion all over the land,
And I am so much fallen into disgrace.

"Do but see what a pretty contemplative air

I give to the company -pray do but note 'em

You would think that the wise men of Greece were all there,

Or, at least, would suppose them the wise men of Gotham.

"My breath is as sweet as the breath of blown roses,
While you are a nuisance where'er you appear;
There is nothing but sniveling and blowing of noses,
Such a noise as turns any man's stomach to hear."

Then lifting his lid in a delicate way,

And opening his mouth with a smile quite engaging, The box in reply was heard plainly to say,

"What a silly dispute is this we are waging!

"If you have a little of merit to claim,

You may thank the sweet-smelling Virginian weed, And I, if I seem to deserve any blame,

The before-mentioned drug in apology plead.

"Thus neither the praise nor the blame is our own, No room for a sneer, much less a cachinnus,

We are vehicles, not of tobacco alone,

But of any thing else they may choose to put in us."

TO THE REV. WILLIAM BULL.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

June 22, 1782.

If reading verse be your delight,
'Tis mine as much, or more, to write;
But what we would, so weak is man,
Lies oft remote from what we can.
For instance, at this very time,
I feel a wish, by cheerful rhyme,
To soothe my friend, and, had I
To cheat him of an anxious hour;
Not meaning (for I must confess,
It were but folly to suppress,)

power,

His pleasure, or his good alone,
But squinting partly at my own.
But though the sun is flaming high
I' the centre of yon arch, the sky,
And he had once (and who but he ?)
The name for setting genius free,
Yet whether poets of past days
Yielded him undeserved praise,
And he by no uncommon lot
Was famed for virtues he had not;
Or whether, which is like enough,
His highness may have taken huff,
So seldom sought with invocation,
Since it has been the reigning fashion
To disregard his inspiration,

I seem no brighter in my wits,
For all the radiance he emits,
Than if I saw, through midnight vapour,
The glimmering of a farthing taper.
Oh, for a succedaneum, then,
To accelerate a creeping pen!
Oh, for a ready succedaneum,
Quod caput, cerebrum, et cranium
Pondere liberet exoso,

Et morbo jam caliginoso!

'Tis here; this oval box, well fill'd
With best tobacco, finely mill'd,
Beats all Anticyra's pretences

To disengage the encumber'd senses.
Oh, Nymph of Transatlantic fame,
Where'er thine haunt, whate'er thy name,

Whether reposing on the side

Of Oroonoquo's spacious tide,
Or listening with delight not small
To Niagara's distant fall,

'Tis thine to cherish and to feed
The pungent nose-refreshing weed,
Which, whether pulverized it gain
A speedy passage to the brain,
Or whether, touch'd with fire, it rise
In circling eddies to the skies,

Does thought more quicken and refine
Than all the breath of all the Nine-
Forgive the Bard, if Bard he be
Who once too wantonly made free,
To touch with a satiric wipe

That symbol of thy power, the pipe;
So may no blight infest thy plains,
And no unseasonable rains,

And so may smiling peace once more
Visit America's sad shore ;

And thou, secure from all alarms,

Of thundering drums, and glittering arms,
Rove unconfined beneath the shade
Thy wide expanded leaves have made;
So may thy votaries increase,
And fumigation never cease.

May Newton with renew'd delights
Perform thine odoriferous rites,
While clouds of incense, half divine,
Involve thy disappearing shrine ;
And so may smoke-inhaling, Bull
Be always filling, never full.

THE COLUBRIAD.

[The title is from coluber, a snake. The piece is a mock heroic recital of a real event. See Letter 108.]

CLOSE by the threshold of a door nail'd fast

Three kittens sat; each kitten look'd aghast.
I passing swift and inattentive by,

At the three kittens cast a careless eye;

Not much concern'd to know what they did there,
Not deeming kittens worth a poet's care.

But presently a loud and furious hiss

Caused me to stop, and to exclaim, "What's this ?"
When lo! upon the threshold met my view,
With head erect, and eyes of fiery hue,

A viper, long as Count de Grasse's queue.

Forth from his head his forked tongue he throws,
Darting it full against a kitten's nose;

Who having never seen, in field or house,

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