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?" ...
Dear simple girl, those flattering arts, (From which thou'dst guard frail female hearts,) Exist but in imagination, Mere phantoms of thine own creation; For he who views that witching grace,...
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.
Oh, thou, in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth, Muse, formed or fabled at the minstrel's will! Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth, Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill:...
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand: I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:...
Come, blue-eyed maid of heaven! - but thou, alas, Didst never yet one mortal song inspire - Goddess of Wisdom! here thy temple was, And is, despite of war and wasting fire,...
Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child! Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart? When last I saw thy young blue eyes, they smiled, And then we parted, - not as now we part,...
Not in those climes where I have late been straying, Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed, Not in those visions to the heart displaying Forms which it sighs but to have only dreamed,...
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,...