Works

(To a Lawyer.)


My friend, the sophisticated tongue
Of lawyers can turn right to wrong;
And language, by your skill made pliant,
Can save an undeserving client....

I


Over the bay as our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine,
Far to the East lay the ocean paling
Under the skies of Augustine.--
There, in the boat as we sat together,...

Ah! - What should follow slips from my reflection;
Whatever follows ne'ertheless may be
As _' propos_ of hope or retrospection,
As though the lurking thought had follow'd free....

When amatory poets sing their loves
In liquid lines mellifluously bland,
And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves,
They little think what mischief is in hand;...

I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one;...

If from great nature's or our own abyss
Of thought we could but snatch a certainty,
Perhaps mankind might find the path they miss -
But then 't would spoil much good philosophy....

Nothing so difficult as a beginning
In poesy, unless perhaps the end;
For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning
The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend,...

Now, Marco dear,
My wishes hear:
While you're away
It's understood
You will be good,
And not too gay.
To every trace
Of maiden grace
You will be blind,
And will not glance...

Dooant forget the old fowks, -
They've done a lot for thee;
Remember tha'd a mother once,
Who nursed thi on her knee.
A father too, who tew'd all day
To mak thi what tha art,...

I cannot tell the story of Dorothy Q. more simply in prose than I have told it in verse, but I can add something to it. Dorothy was the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy, and the niece of Josiah Quincy, junior, the young patriot ...

Fools may pine, and sots may swill,
Cynics gibe, and prophets rail,
Moralists may scourge and drill,
Preachers prose, and fainthearts quail.
Let them whine, or threat, or wail!...

Made a face of biscuit-dough,
Which our black cook gave me once;
And this girl named So-and-So
Said 't was funnier than a dunce.

And she took it; put it on
Like a false-face. Had it drawn...

Dow's flat. That's its name;
And I reckon that you
Are a stranger? The same?
Well, I thought it was true,
For thar isn't a man on the river as can't spot the place at first view.
...

Tranquil as a sage and gentle as one who's cursed. I said:
I love you, oh my beauty, my charmer

many a time
your debauches without thirst, your soul-less loves,
your longing for the infinite...

Dreaming for ever, vainly dreaming,
Life to the last, pursues its flight;
Day hath its visions fairly beaming,
But false as those of night.
The one illusion, the other real,...

Doctor Faustus was a good man,
He whipt his scholars now and then;
When he whipt he made them dance
Out of England into France;
Out of France into Spain,
And then he whipt them back again.

They drift away. Ah, God! they drift for ever.
I watch the stream sweep onward to the sea,
Like some old battered buoy upon a roaring river,
Round whom the tide-waifs hang - then drift to sea.
...

Come, old friend! sit down and listen!
From the pitcher, placed between us,
How the waters laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!

Old Silenus, bloated, drunken,
Led by his inebriate Satyrs;...

Thus spoke great Bedel[1] from his tomb:
"Mortal, I would not change my doom,
To live in such a restless state,
To be unfortunately great;
To flatter fools, and spurn at knaves,...

On one Delacourt's complimenting Carthy on his Poetry

Carthy, you say, writes well - his genius true,
You pawn your word for him - he'll vouch for you.
So two poor knaves, who find their credit fail,...