Works

The Lady Mary Villiers lies
Under this stone; with weeping eyes
The parents that first gave her birth,
And their sad friends, laid her in earth.
If any of them, Reader, were...

This rich marble doth inter
The honoured wife of Winchester,
A viscount's daughter, an earl's heir,
Besides what her virtues fair
Added to her noble birth,
More than she could own from earth....

O thou who movest onward with a mind
Intent upon thy way, pause, though in haste!
'Twill be no fruitless moment. I was born
Within Savona's walls, of gentle blood.
On Tiber's banks my youth was dedicate...

There never breathed a man who, when his life
Was closing, might not of that life relate
Toils long and hard. The warrior will report
Of wounds, and bright swords flashing in the field,...

Epitaph To The Memory Of A Worthy Man, The Rev. Mr. Sleep, Curate Of Kingswear Church, Devon, Whose Devotional Elocution Was Remarkably Impregnated With Soporific Qualities.

Reader! since Parson Sleep is gone,...

Erected By Their Father The Lord Digby, In The Church Of Sherborne, In Dorsetshire, 1727.

Go! fair example of untainted youth,
Of modest wisdom, and pacific truth:
Composed in sufferings, and in joy sedate,...

Thy relics, Rowe, to this fair urn we trust,
And sacred place by Dryden's awful dust:
Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lies,
To which thy tomb shall guide inquiring eyes....

Here rests a woman, good without pretence,
Blest with plain reason, and with sober sense:
No conquests she, but o'er herself, desired,
No arts essay'd, but not to be admired....

Of manners gentle, of affections mild;
In wit, a man; simplicity, a child:
With native humour tempering virtuous rage,
Form'd to delight at once and lash the age:
Above temptation in a low estate,...

This modest stone, what few vain marbles can,
May truly say, Here lies an honest man:
A poet, blest beyond the poet's fate,
Whom Heaven kept sacred from the proud and great:...

Ere with cold beads of midnight dew
Had mingled tears of thine,
I grieved, fond Youth! that thou shouldst sue
To haughty Geraldine.

Immoveable by generous sighs,
She glories in a train...

A Prize Poem.


I know Canada is fair to see, and pleasant; it is well
On the banks of its broad river 'neath the maple trees to dwell;
But the heart is very wilful, and in sorrow or in mirth,...

O thou son of the dark locks and eloquent tongue,
With the brain of a statesman sagacious, and strong,
And the heart of a poet, half love, and half fire,
Thou hast many to love thee and more to admire;...

Tway Mice, full Blythe and Amicable,
Batten beside Erle Robert's Table.
Lies there ne Trap their Necks to catch,
Ne old black Cat their Steps to watch.
Their Fill they eat of Fowl and Fish;...

The First Epistle

Awake, my St. John!(1) leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of Kings.
Let us (since Life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)...

"To point a moral." - JOHNSON.


Fairest Lady and Noble, for once on a time,
Condescend to accept, in the humblest of rhyme,
And a style more of Gay than of Milton,...

En passant dans un p'tit bois,
O' le coucou chantait,
O' le coucou chantait;
Dans son joli chant il disait:
Coucou, coucou, coucou, coucou,
Et moi qui croyais qu'il disait;...

It is with humility really unassumed, it is with a sentiment even of awe, that I pen the opening sentence of this work: for of all conceivable subjects I approach the reader with the most solemn, the most comprehensive, the mos...

Now the shiades o' the elems da stratch muore an muore,
Vrom the low-zink'n zun in the west o' the sky;
An' the m'idens da stan out in clusters avore
The doors, var to chatty an' zee vo'ke goo by.
...

Late, when the sun was smouldering down the west,
She took my arm and laid her cheek to me;
The fainting twilight held her, and I guess'd
All she would tell, but could not let me see--...