Since the refinement of this polish'd age Has swept immoral raillery from the stage; Since taste has now expung'd licentious wit, Which stamp'd disgrace on all an author writ;...
"But if any old Lady, Knight, Priest, or Physician, Should condemn me for printing a second edition; If good Madam Squintum my work should abuse, May I venture to give her a smack of my muse?" ...
Doubtless, sweet girl, the hissing lead, Wafting destruction near thy charms, And hurtling[1] o'er thy lovely head, Has fill'd that breast with fond alarms.
In law an infant, [2] and in years a boy, In mind a slave to every vicious joy; From every sense of shame and virtue wean'd, In lies an adept, in deceit a fiend; Vers'd in hypocrisy, while yet a child;...
I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth...
Lady! if for the cold and cloudy clime Where I was born, but where I would not die, Of the great Poet-Sire of Italy I dare to build[276] the imitative rhyme, Harsh Runic[277] copy of the South's sublime,...
O blood and thunder! and oh blood and wounds! These are but vulgar oaths, as you may deem, Too gentle reader! and most shocking sounds: And so they are; yet thus is Glory's dream...
When Bishop Berkeley said 'there was no matter,' And proved it - 't was no matter what he said: They say his system 't is in vain to batter, Too subtle for the airiest human head;...
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,...
O, Wellington! (or 'Villainton' - for Fame Sounds the heroic syllables both ways; France could not even conquer your great name, But punn'd it down to this facetious phrase -...
O ye! who teach the ingenuous youth of nations, Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain, I pray ye flog them upon all occasions, It mends their morals, never mind the pain:...
The world is full of orphans: firstly, those Who are so in the strict sense of the phrase (But many a lonely tree the loftier grows Than others crowded in the forest's maze);...
O Love! O Glory! what are ye who fly Around us ever, rarely to alight? There 's not a meteor in the polar sky Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight. Chill, and chain'd to cold earth, we lift on high...
The antique Persians taught three useful things, To draw the bow, to ride, and speak the truth. This was the mode of Cyrus, best of kings - A mode adopted since by modern youth....
'There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, - taken at the flood,' - you know the rest, And most of us have found it now and then; At least we think so, though but few have guess'd...