Works

Esteem is frequently misplaced,
Where she may even stand disgraced;
We must allow to wealth and birth
Precedence, which is due on earth:
But our esteem is only due
Unto the worth of man and virtue....

The country shelters the disgrace
Of every courtier out of place:
When, doomed to exercise and health,
O'er his estate he scatters wealth;
There he builds schemes for others' ruin,...

As Cupid, with his band of sprites,
In Paphian grove set things to rights,
And trimmed his bow and tipped his arrows,
And taught, to play with Lesbia, sparrows,
Thus Hymen said: "Your blindness makes,...

A florist - wit had run a rig -
Had set his fancy on a pig;
Which followed master like a dog,
And petted was, although a hog.

The master thus addressed the swine:...

The wind was high, the window shook,
The miser woke with haggard look;
He stalked along the silent room,
He shivered at the gleam and gloom,
Each lock and every corner eyed,...

(To a Young Heir.)


No sooner was thy father's death
Proclaimed to some, with bated breath,
Than every gambler was agog
To win your rents and gorge your prog.
...

A sage awakened by the dawn,
By music of the groves was drawn
From tree to tree: responsive notes
Arose from many warbling throats.
As he advanced, the warblers ceased;...

A pin which long had done its duty,
Attendant on a reigning beauty, -
Had held her muffler, fixed her hair,
And made its mistress _debonnaire_, -
Now near her heart in honour placed,...

Of all the burthens mortals bear
Time is most galling and severe;
Beneath his grievous load oppressed
We daily meet a man distressed:
"I've breakfasted, and what to do
I do not know; we dine at two."...

The moralist, my dear niece, has said that -

"The man of sense will read a work of note
In the like humour as the author wrote."
...

Pythagoras, at daybreak drawn
To meditate on dewy lawn,
To breathe the fragrance of the morning,
And, like philosophers, all scorning
To think or care where he was bound,...

I scorn the man who builds his fame
On ruins of another's name:
As prudes, who prudishly declare
They by a sister scandaled are;
As scribblers, covetous of praise,...

(To a Young Nobleman.)


Begin, my lord, in early youth,
To bear with, nay encourage, truth.
And blame me not, for disrespect,
That I the flatterer's style reject.
...

Lives there a bard for genius famed
Whom Envy's tongue hath not declaimed?
Her hissing snakes proclaim her spite;
She summons up the fiends of night;
Hatred and malice by her stand,...

A husband said unto his wife:
"Who deals in slander deals in strife;
Are we the heralds of disgrace,
To thunder, love, at all our race -
And, indiscriminate in rage,
To spare nor friend nor sex nor age?...

The setting dog the stubble tried,
And snuffed the breeze with nostrils wide;
He set - the sportsmen from behind,
Conscious of game, the net unwind.

A partridge, which as warder stood,...

As specks appear on fields of snow,
So blemishes on beauty show.

A peacock fed in a farm-yard
Where all the poultry eyed him hard -
They looked on him with evil eye,...

Lest captious men suspect your story,
Speak modestly its history.
The traveller, who overleaps the bounds
Of probability, confounds;
But though men hear your deeds with phlegm,...