Poor floating isle, tost on ill fortune's waves, Ordain'd by fate to be the land of slaves; Shall moving Delos now deep-rooted stand; Thou fix'd of old, be now the moving land!...
Virtue conceal'd within our breast Is inactivity at best: But never shall the Muse endure To let your virtues lie obscure; Or suffer Envy to conceal Your labours for the public weal....
Patron of the tuneful throng, O! too nice, and too severe! Think not, that my country song Shall displease thy honest ear. Chosen strains I proudly bring, Which the Muses' sacred choir,...
Harley, the nation's great support, Returning home one day from court, His mind with public cares possest, All Europe's business in his breast, Observed a parson near Whitehall,...
I 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....
Resolve me this, ye happy dead, Who've lain some hundred years in bed, From every persecution free That in this wretched life we see; Would ye resume a second birth, And choose once more to live on earth?
O, heavenly born! in deepest dells If fairest science ever dwells Beneath the mossy cave; Indulge the verdure of the woods, With azure beauty gild the floods, And flowery carpets lave. ...
To purchase kingdoms and to buy renown, Are arts peculiar to dissembling France; You, mighty monarch, nobler actions crown, And solid virtue does your name advance....
As when the deluge first began to fall, That mighty ebb never to flow again, When this huge body's moisture was so great, It quite o'ercame the vital heat;...
Of all inhabitants on earth, To man alone I owe my birth, And yet the cow, the sheep, the bee, Are all my parents more than he: I, a virtue, strange and rare,...
Begotten, and born, and dying with noise, The terror of women, and pleasure of boys, Like the fiction of poets concerning the wind, I'm chiefly unruly when strongest confined....
I'm up and down, and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out; Though hundreds have employ'd their leisure, They never yet could find my measure. I'm found almost in every garden,...
Though I, alas! a prisoner be, My trade is prisoners to set free. No slave his lord's commands obeys With such insinuating ways. My genius piercing, sharp, and bright, Wherein the men of wit delight....
I marched three miles through scorching sand, With zeal in heart, and notes in hand; I rode four more to Great St. Mary, Using four legs, when two were weary: To three fair virgins I did tie men,...
The joy of man, the pride of brutes, Domestic subject for disputes, Of plenty thou the emblem fair, Adorn'd by nymphs with all their care! I saw thee raised to high renown,...
A bard, on whom Phoebus his spirit bestow'd, Resolving t'acknowledge the bounty he owed, Found out a new method at once of confessing, And making the most of so mighty a blessing:...