SHE

"Don't go away, for fear I should fall!”

HE

"I have examined it every nook,

And what you have here is a sample of all.
Come, wheel round,

The dirt we have found

Would be an estate at a farthing a pound."

9

Now, sister Anne, the guitar you must take,
Set it, and sing it, and make it a song;
I have varied the verse for variety's sake,
And cut it off short-because it was long.
'Tis hobbling and lame,

Which critics won't blame,

For the sense and the sound, they say, should be the same.

THE VALEDICTION

FAREWELL, false hearts! whose best affections fail
Like shallow brooks which summer suns exhale!
Forgetful of the man whom once ye chose,
Cold in his cause, and careless of his woes,

I bid you both a long and last adieu,

Cold in my turn, and unconcerned like you.

First, farewell Niger! whom, now duly proved,

I disregard as much as once I loved.

Your brain well furnished, and your tongue well taught To press with energy your ardent thought,

Your senatorial dignity of face,

Sound sense, intrepid spirit, manly grace,
Have raised you high as talents can ascend,
Made you a peer, but spoilt you for a friend!
Pretend to all that parts have e'er acquired;
Be great, be feared, be envied, be admired;
To fame as lasting as the earth pretend,
But not, hereafter, to the name of friend!
I sent you verse, and, as your lordship knows,
Backed with a modest sheet of humble prose;
Not to recall a promise to your mind,

Fulfilled with ease had you been so inclined,

4

But to comply with feelings, and to give
Proof of an old affection still alive.

Your sullen silence serves at least to tell

Your altered heart; and so, my lord, farewell!
Next, busy actor on a meaner stage,
Amusement-monger of a trifling age,
Illustrious histrionic patentee,

Terentius, once my friend, farewell to thee!
In thee some virtuous qualities combine
To fit thee for a nobler post than thine,
Who, born a gentleman, hast stooped too low,
To live by buskin, sock, and raree-show.
Thy schoolfellow and partner of thy plays

Where Nichol swung the birch and twined the bays,
And having known thee bearded and full grown,
The weekly censor of a laughing town,

I thought the volume I presumed to send,
Graced with the name of a long-absent friend,
Might prove a welcome gift and touch thine heart,
Not hard by nature, in a feeling part.

But thou, it seems, (what cannot grandeur do,
Though but a dream!) art grown disdainful too;
And, strutting in thy school of queens and kings
Who fret their hour and are forgotten things,
Hast caught the cold distemper of the day,
And, like his lordship, cast thy friend away.
Oh, Friendship! cordial of the human breast!
So little felt, so fervently professed!
Thy blossoms deck our unsuspecting years;
The promise of delicious fruit appears:
We hug the hopes of constancy and truth,
Such is the folly of our dreaming youth;
But soon, alas ! detect the rash mistake
That sanguine inexperience loves to make;
And view with tears the expected harvest lost,
Decayed by time, or withered by a frost.
Whoever undertakes a friend's great part
Should be renewed in nature, pure in heart,
Prepared for martyrdom, and strong to prove
A thousand ways the force of genuine love.
He may be called to give up health and gain,
To exchange content for trouble, ease for pain,
To echo sigh for sigh, and groan for groan,
And wet his cheeks with sorrows not his own.
The heart of man, for such a task too frail,
When most relied on is most sure to fail;
And, summoned to partake its fellow's woe,

Starts from its office like a broken bow.
Votaries of business and of pleasure prove
Faithless alike in friendship and in love.
Retired from all the circles of the gay,
And all the crowds that bustle life away,
To scenes where competition, envy, strife,
Beget no thunder-clouds to trouble life,
Let me, the charge of some good angel, find
One who has known and has escaped mankind,
Polite, yet virtuous, who has brought away
The manners, not the morals, of the day:
With him, perhaps with her, (for men have known
No firmer friendships than the fair have shown,)
Let me enjoy, in some unthought-of spot,
All former friends forgiven and forgot,
Down to the close of life's fast fading scene,
Union of hearts, without a flaw between.
"Tis grace, 'tis bounty, and it calls for praise,
If God give health, that sunshine of our days!
And if He add, a blessing shared by few,
Content of heart, more praises still are due:
But if He grant a friend, that boon possessed
Indeed is treasure, and crowns all the rest;
And giving one, whose heart is in the skies,
Born from above, and made divinely wise,
He gives, what bankrupt nature never can,
Whose noblest coin is light and brittle man,
Gold purer far than Ophir ever knew,

A soul, an image of Himself, and therefore true.

TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF THE HALIBUT

ON WHICH I DIned this day, MONDAY, APRIL 26, 1784

WHERE hast thou floated? in what seas pursued
Thy pastime? When wast thou an egg new spawned,
Lost in the immensity of ocean's waste?

Roar as they might, the overbearing winds

That rocked the deep, thy cradle, thou wast safe-
And in thy minikin and embryo state,

Attached to the firm leaf of some salt weed,

Didst outlive tempests, such as wrung and racked
The joints of many a stout and gallant bark,
And whelmed them in the unexplored abyss.
Indebted to no magnet and no chart,