'Tis strange what different thoughts inspire In men, Possession and Desire! Think what they wish so great a blessing; So disappointed when possessing! A moralist profoundly sage...
"Here learn from moral truth and wit refined, How vice and folly have debased mankind; Strong sense and humour arm in virtue's cause; Thus her great votary vindicates her laws:...
Who dares affirm this is no pious age, When charity begins to tread the stage? When actors, who at best are hardly savers, Will give a night of benefit to weavers?...
Dick, thou'rt resolved, as I am told, Some strange arcana to unfold, And with the help of Buckley's[1] pen, To vamp the good old cause again: Which thou (such Burnet's shrewd advice is)...
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!...
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?
This, the most humorous example of vers de soci't' in the English language, well illustrates the position of a parson in a family of distinction at that period.
We are little brethren twain, Arbiters of loss and gain, Many to our counters run, Some are made, and some undone: But men find it to their cost, Few are made, but numbers lost....
In youth exalted high in air, Or bathing in the waters fair, Nature to form me took delight, And clad my body all in white. My person tall, and slender waist, On either side with fringes graced;...
Better we all were in our graves, Than live in slavery to slaves; Worse than the anarchy at sea, Where fishes on each other prey; Where every trout can make as high rants...
An ass's hoof alone can hold That poisonous juice, which kills by cold. Methought, when I this poem read, No vessel but an ass's head Such frigid fustian could contain;...
Sir Robert,[2] wearied by Will Pulteney's teasings, Who interrupted him in all his leasings, Resolved that Will and he should meet no more, Full in his face Bob shuts the council door;...
If Noisy Tom[1] should in the senate prate, "That he would answer both for church and state; And, farther, to demonstrate his affection, Would take the kingdom into his protection;"...