Works

Because I am by nature blind,
I wisely choose to walk behind;
However, to avoid disgrace,
I let no creature see my face.
My words are few, but spoke with sense;
And yet my speaking gives offence:...

I

Thy functions are ethereal,
As if within thee dwelt a glancing mind,
Organ of vision! And a Spirit aerial
Informs the cell of Hearing, dark and blind;
Intricate labyrinth, more dread for thought...

Is then no nook of English ground secure
From rash assault? Schemes of retirement sown
In youth, and 'mid the busy world kept pure
As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown,...

Round Thurlow's head in early youth,
And in his sportive days,
Fair Science pour'd the light of truth,
And Genius shed his rays.


See! with united wonder cried
The experienced and the sage,...

The grass of fifty Aprils hath waved green
Above the spent heart, the Olympian head,
The hands crost idly, the shut eyes unseen,
Unseeing, the locked lips whose song hath fled;...

O that those lips had language! Life has pass'd
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine'thy own sweet smile I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;...

O son of man, by lying tongues adored,
By slaughterous hands of slaves with feet red-shod
In carnage deep as ever Christian trod
Profaned with prayer and sacrifice abhorred...

Oh! gather whencesoe'er ye safely may
The help which slackening Pity requires;
Nor deem that he perforce must go astray
Who treads upon the footmarks of his sires.


...

In church your grandsire cut his throat;
To do the job too long he tarried:
He should have had my hearty vote
To cut his throat before he married.

I'm not the grandson of that ass Quin;[1]
Nor can you prove it, Mr. Pasquin.
My grandame had gallants by twenties,
And bore my mother by a 'prentice.
This when my grandsire knew, they tell us he...

While faster than his costive brain indites
Philo's quick hand in flowing letters writes;
His case appears to me like honest Teague's,
When he was run away with by his legs....

Though I beheld at first with blank surprise
This Work, I now have gazed on it so long
I see its truth with unreluctant eyes;
O, my Beloved! I have done thee wrong,...

Here lies old Hobson, Death hath broke his girt,
And here alas, hath laid him in the dirt,
Or els the ways being foul, twenty to one,
He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown....

Not for themselves did human kind
Contrive the parts by heaven assign'd
On life's wide scene to play:
Not Scipio's force, nor C'sar's skill
Can conquer glory's arduous hill,
If fortune close the way....

I.


My two-score years and ten are over,
Never again shall youth be mine.
The years are ready-winged for flying,
What crav'st thou still of feast and wine?...

Once, when midnight smote the air,
Eunuchs ran through Hell and met
On every crowded street to stare
Upon great Juan riding by:
Even like these to rail and sweat
Staring upon his sinewy thigh.

Grow up in beauty, as thou dost begin,
And be of all admired, Tomasin.

Torture will give a dozen pence or more
To keep a drab from bawling at his door.
The public taste is quite a different thing
Torture is positively paid to sing.

Tune - "The Sow's Tail."


He.

O Philly, happy be that day,
When roving through the gather'd hay,
My youthfu' heart was stown away,
And by thy charms, my Philly.

She.
...

Tune - "I had a horse."



I.

O poortith cauld, and restless love,
Ye wreck my peace between ye;
Yet poortith a' I could forgive,
An' twere na' for my Jeanie....