What flocks of critics hover here to-day, As vultures wait on armies for their prey, All gaping for the carcase of a play! With croaking notes they bode some dire event,...
FROM harmony, from heavenly harmony This universal frame began: When nature underneath a heap Of jarring atoms lay, And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was heard from high,...
Ask not the cause, why sullen Spring So long delays her flowers to bear; Why warbling birds forget to sing, And winter storms invert the year: Chloris is gone, and fate provides...
We act by fits and starts, like drowning men, But just peep up, and then pop down again. Let those who call us wicked change their sense; For never men lived more on Providence....
Poets, like disputants, when reasons fail, Have one sure refuge left--and that's to rail. Fop, coxcomb, fool, are thunder'd through the pit; And this is all their equipage of wit....
Most modern wits such monstrous fools have shown, They seem not of Heaven's making, but their own. Those nauseous harlequins in farce may pass; But there goes more to a substantial ass:...
Sacred To The Immortal Memory Of Sir Palmes Fairbone, Knight, Governor Of Tangier; In Execution Of Which Command, He Was Mortally Wounded By A Shot From The Moors, Then Besieging The Town, In The Forty-Sixth Year Of His Age. Oc...
And now 'tis time; for their officious haste, Who would before have borne him to the sky, Like eager Romans, ere all rites were past, Did let too soon the sacred eagle[1] fly. ...
All human things are subject to decay, And when fate summons, monarchs must obey. This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long;...
Below this marble monument is laid All that heaven wants of this celestial maid. Preserve, O sacred tomb! thy trust consign'd; The mould was made on purpose for the mind:...
So shipwreck'd passengers escape to land, So look they, when on the bare beach they stand, Dropping and cold, and their first fear scarce o'er, Expecting famine on a desert shore....
Farewell, fair Armida, my joy and my grief, In vain I have loved you, and hope no relief; Undone by your virtue, too strict and severe, Your eyes gave me love, and you gave me despair;...
Who ever saw a noble sight, That never view'd a brave sea-fight! Hang up your bloody colours in the air, Up with your fights, and your nettings prepare; Your merry mates cheer, with a lusty bold spright....
There lived, as authors tell, in days of yore, A widow somewhat old, and very poor: Deep in a cell her cottage lonely stood, Well thatch'd, and under covert of a wood. This dowager, on whom my tale I found,...
Now turning from the wintry signs, the sun, His course exalted, through the Ram had run, And whirling up the skies, his chariot drove Through Taurus, and the lightsome realms of love;...