Virtue conceal'd within our breast Is inactivity at best: But never shall the Muse endure To let your virtues lie obscure; Or suffer Envy to conceal Your labours for the public weal....
Patron of the tuneful throng, O! too nice, and too severe! Think not, that my country song Shall displease thy honest ear. Chosen strains I proudly bring, Which the Muses' sacred choir,...
Harley, the nation's great support, Returning home one day from court, His mind with public cares possest, All Europe's business in his breast, Observed a parson near Whitehall,...
I often wish'd that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a-year, A handsome house to lodge a friend, A river at my garden's end, A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land, set out to plant a wood....
Joan cudgels Ned, yet Ned's a bully; Will cudgels Bess, yet Will's a cully. Die Ned and Bess; give Will to Joan, She dares not say her life's her own. Die Joan and Will; give Bess to Ned,...
By the just vengeance of incensed skies, Poor Bishop Judas late repenting dies. The Jews engaged him with a paltry bribe, Amounting hardly to a crown a-tribe;...
Resolve me this, ye happy dead, Who've lain some hundred years in bed, From every persecution free That in this wretched life we see; Would ye resume a second birth, And choose once more to live on earth?
Ah! Strephon, how can you despise Her, who without thy pity dies! To Strephon I have still been true, And of as noble blood as you; Fair issue of the genial bed, A virgin in thy bosom bred:...
This, the most humorous example of vers de soci't' in the English language, well illustrates the position of a parson in a family of distinction at that period.
From a town that consists of a church and a steeple, With three or four houses, and as many people, There went an Address in great form and good order, Composed, as 'tis said, by Will Crowe, their Recorder.[1]...
That Downpatrick's Dean, or Patrick's down went, Like two arrand Deans, two Deans errant I meant; So that Christmas appears at Bellcampe like a Lent, Gives the gamesters of both houses great discontent....
Sure never did man see A wretch like poor Nancy, So teazed day and night By a Dean and a Knight. To punish my sins, Sir Arthur begins, And gives me a wipe,...
O, heavenly born! in deepest dells If fairest science ever dwells Beneath the mossy cave; Indulge the verdure of the woods, With azure beauty gild the floods, And flowery carpets lave. ...
To purchase kingdoms and to buy renown, Are arts peculiar to dissembling France; You, mighty monarch, nobler actions crown, And solid virtue does your name advance....