Works

IN THE YEAR 1715.

1 Dear, damn'd, distracting town, farewell!
Thy fools no more I'll tease:
This year in peace, ye critics, dwell,
Ye harlots, sleep at ease!
...

What is prudery?

'Tis a bledam,
Seen with wit and beauty seldom.
'Tis a fear that starts at shadows.
Tis, (no, 'tisn't) like Miss Meadows.
'Tis a virgin hard of feature,...

As when that hero, who, in each campaign,
Had braved the Goth, and many a Vandal slain,
Lay fortune-struck, a spectacle of woe!
Wept by each friend, forgiven by every foe:...

Beneath the shade a spreading Beech displays,
Hylas and Aegon sung their rural lays,
This mourn'd a faithless, that an absent Love,
And Delia's name and Doris' fill'd the Grove....

I've 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....

Again? new tumults in my breast?
Ah, spare me, Venus! let me, let me rest!
I am not now, alas! the man
As in the gentle reign of my Queen Anne.
Ah, sound no more thy soft alarms,...

What beck'ning ghost, along the moon-light shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
'Tis she!'but why that bleeding bosom gor'd,
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?...

In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav'nly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns;
What means this tumult in a vestal's veins?...

I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you

I am His Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool:
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.

Strange! all this difference should be
'Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!

Whence deathless 'Kit-cat' took its name,
Few critics can unriddle:
Some say from 'pastrycook' it came,
And some, from 'cat' and 'fiddle.'

From no trim beaux its name it boasts,...

DESIGNED FOR MRS OLDFIELD.

Prodigious this! the frail one of our play
From her own sex should mercy find to-day!
You might have held the pretty head aside,...

Nothing so true as what you once let fall,
"Most Women have no Characters at all."
Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
And best distinguish'd by black, brown, or fair.
...

Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se
Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures:
Et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe jocoso,
Defendente vicem modo Rhetoris atque Poetae,...

Neque sermonibus vulgi dederis te, nec in prmiis spem posueris rerum tuarum; suiste oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus. Quid de te alii loquantur, ipsi videant,sed loquentur tamen....

ADVERTISEMENT.
...

A soul as full of worth, as void of pride,
Which nothing seeks to show, or needs to hide,
Which nor to guilt nor fear its caution owes,
And boasts a warmth that from no passion flows....

In these gay thoughts the Loves and Graces shine,
And all the writer lives in every line;
His easy art may happy nature seem,
Trifles themselves are elegant in him.
Sure, to charm all was his peculiar fate,...