ODE TO PEACE.

COME, peace of mind, delightful guest! Return and make thy downy nest

Once more in this sad heart: Nor riches I nor power pursue, Nor hold forbidden joys in view; We therefore need not part.

Where wilt thou dwell, if not with me,
From avarice and ambition free,
And pleasure's fatal wiles?
For whom, alas! dost thou prepare
The sweets, that I was wont to share,
The banquet of thy smiles?

The great, the gay, shall they partake
The heaven, that thou alone can'st make?
And wilt thou quit the stream,

That murmurs through the dewy mead,
The grove and the sequestered shed,
To be a guest with them?

For thee I panted, thee I prized,
For thee I gladly sacrificed

Whate'er I loved before;
And shall I see thee start away,
And helpless, hopeless, hear thee say---
Farewell! we meet no more?

HUMAN FRAILTY.

WEAK and irresolute is man;
The purpose of to-day,
Woven with pains into his plan,

To-morrow rends away.

The bow well bent, and smart the spring,

Vice seems already slain;

But passion rudely snaps the string,

And it revives again.

Some foe to his upright intent
Finds out his weaker part;
Virtue engages his assent,

But pleasure wins his heart.

'Tis here the folly of the wise
Through all his art we view;
And, while his tongue the charge denies,
His conscience owns it true.

Bound on a voyage of awful length,
And dangers little known,

A stranger to superior strength,
Man vainly trusts his own.

But oars alone can ne'er prevail
To reach the distant coast;

The breath of heaven must swell the sail,
Or all the toil is lost.

THE MODERN PATRIOT. REBELLION is my theme all day; I only wish 'twould come

(As who knows but perhaps it may ?) A little nearer home.

Yon roaring boys, who rave and fight
On t'other side th' Atlantic,

I always held them in the right,
But most so when most frantic.

When lawless mobs insult the court,
That man shall be my toast,
If breaking windows be the sport,
Who bravely breaks the most.

But oh! for him my fancy culls
The choicest flowers she bears,
Who constitutionally pulls

Your house about your ears.

Such civil broils are my delight.

Though some folks can't endure them,
Who say the mob are mad outright,
And that a rope must cure them.

A rope! I wish we patriots had
Such strings for all who need 'em---
What! hang a man for going mad?
Then farewell British freedom.

ON OBSERVING

SOME NAMES OF LITTLE NOTE

RECORDED IN

THE BIOGRAPHIA BRITANNICA.

OH, fond attempt to give a deathless lot
To names ignoble, born to be forgot!
In vain, recorded in historic page,
They court the notice of a future age:
Those twinkling tiny lustres of the land
Drop one by one from Fame's neglecting hand;
Lethæan gulfs receive them as they fall,
And dark oblivion soon absorbs them all.

So when a child, as playful children use,
Has burnt to tinder a stale last year's news,
The flame extinct, he views the roving fire---
There goes my lady, and there goes the squire,
There goes the parson, oh! illustrious spark,
And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk!

REPORT

OF AN ADJUDGED CASE NOT TO BE FOUND IN ANY OF THE BOOKS.

BETWEEN Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose,
The spectacles set them unhappily wrong;

The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
To which the said spectacles ought to belong.

So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause With a great deal of skill, and a wig full of learning; While chief baron Ear sat to balance the laws,

So famed for his talent in nicely discerning.

In behalf of the Nose it will quickly appear,

And your lordship, he said, will undoubtedly find That the Nose has had spectacles always in wear, Which amounts to possession time out of mind.

Then holding the spectacles up to the court---
Your lordship observes they are made with a straddle
As wide as the ridge of the Nose is; in short,

Designed to sit close to it, just like a saddle.

Again, would your lordship a moment suppose
('Tis a case that has happened, and may be again)
That the visage or countenance had not a Nose,
Pray who would, or who could, wear spectacles then?

On the whole it appears, and my argument shows
With a reasoning, the court will never condemn,
That the spectacles plainly were made for the Nose,
And the Nose was as plainly intended for them.

Then shifting his side, (as a lawyer knows how)
He pleaded again in behalf of the Eyes:
But what were his arguments few people know,
For the court did not think they were equally wise.

So his lordship decreed, with a grave solemn tone,
Decisive and clear, without one if or but---
That, whenever the Nose put his spectacles on,

By day-light or candle-light---Eyes should be shut!

ON THE BURNING OF

LORD MANSFIELD'S LIBRARY,

Together with his MSS.

BY THE MOB, IN THE MONTH OF JUNE, 1780.

SO then---the Vandals of our isle,
Sworn foes to sense and law,
Have burnt to dust a nobler pile
Than ever Roman saw!

And Murray sighs o'er Pope and Swift,
And many a treasure more,

The well-judged purchase and the gift,
That graced his lettered store.

Their pages mangled, burnt, and torn,
The loss was his alone;
But ages yet to come shall mourn
The burning of his own.

ON THE SAME.

WHEN wit and genius meet their doom
In all-devouring flame,
They tell us of the fate of Rome,

And bid us fear the same.

O'er Murray's loss the muses wept,
They felt the rude alarm,

Yet bless'd the guardian care, that kept
His sacred head from harm.

There memory, like the bee, that's fed
From Flora's balmy store,
The quintessence of all he read,
Had treasured up before.

The lawless herd, with fury blind

Have done him cruel wrong;

The flowers are gone---but still we find

The honey on his tongue.