O gold! thy luring lustre first prevail'd
On man to tempt the fretful winds and waves,
And hunt new fancies. Still, thy glaring form
Bids commerce thrive, and o'er the Indian waves,
O'er-stemming danger, draw the labouring keel
From China's coast to Britain's colder clime,
Fraught with the fruits and herbage of her vales.
In them, whatever vegetable springs,
How loathsome and corrupted, triumphs here,
The bane of life, of health the sure decay:
Yet, yet we swallow, and extol the draught,
Though nervous ails should spring, and vapourish
qualms
Our senses and our appetites destroy.
Look round, ye sippers of the poison'd cup From foreign plant distill'd! No more repine That nature, sparing of her sacred sweets, Hath doom'd you in a wilderness to dwell; While round Britannia's streams she kindly rears Green sage and wild thyme. These were sure decreed,
As plants of Britain, to regale her sons
With native moisture, more refreshing, sweet,
And more profuse of health and vigour's balm,
Than all the stems that India can boast.
Well! I protest there's no such thing as dealing
With these starch'd poets-with these Men of Feeling!
Epilogue to the Prince of Tunis.
MALIGNANT planets! do ye still combine
Against this wayward, dreary life of mine?
Has pitiless oppression-cruel case !—
Gain'd sole possession of the human race?
By cruel hands has every virtue bled,
And innocence from men to vultures fled ?
Thrice happy had I liv'd in Jewish time,
When swallowing pork or pig was deem'd a crime;
My husband long had bless'd my longing arms,
Long, long had known love's sympathetic charms!
My children, too,—a little suckling race,
With all their father growing in their face,-
From their prolific dam had ne'er been torn,
Nor to the bloody stalls of butchers borne.
Ah, luxury! to you my being owes
Its load of misery-its load of woes!
With heavy heart I saunter all the day;
Gruntle and murmur all my hours away!
In vain I try to summon old desire
For favourite sports-for wallowing in the mire :
Thoughts of my husband, of my children, slain,
Turn all my wonted pleasure into pain!
How oft did we, in Phoebus' warming ray,
Bask on the humid softness of the clay!
Oft did his lusty head defend my tail
From the rude whispers of the angry gale;
While nose-refreshing puddles stream'd around,
And floating odours hail'd the dung-clad ground.
Near by a rustic mill's enchanting clack,
Where plenteous bushels load the peasant's back,
In straw-crown'd hovel, there to life we came,
One boar our father, and one sow our dam.
While tender infants on our mother's breast,
A flame divine in either shone confest :
In riper hours, love's more than ardent blaze
Enkindled all his passion, all his praise !
No deadly, sinful passion fired his soul;
Virtue o'er all his actions gain'd controul !
That cherub which attracts the female heart,
And makes them soonest with their beauty part,
Attracted mine;-I gave him all my love,
In the recesses of a verdant grove:
'Twas there I listen'd to his warmest vows,
Amidst the pendant melancholy boughs;
'Twas there my trusty lover shook for me
A shower of acorns from the oaken tree;
And from the teeming earth, with joy, plough'd out
The roots salubrious with his hardy snout.
But, happiness! a floating meteor thou,
That still inconstant art to man and sow,
Left'st us in gloomiest horrors to reside,
Near by the deep-dy'd sanguinary tide,
Where whetting steel prepares the butch'ring knives,
With greater ease to take the harmless lives
Of cows, and calves, and sheep, and hogs, who fear
The bite of bull-dogs, that incessant tear
Their flesh, and keenly suck the blood-distilling ear!
At length the day, the eventful day, drew near,
Detested cause of many a briny tear!
I'll weep, till sorrow shall my eyelids drain,
A tender husband, and a brother slain!
Alas! the lovely languor of his eye,
When the base murderers bore him captive by ;
His mournful voice, the music of his groans,
Had melted any hearts-but hearts of stones!
O! had some angel at that instant come,
Given me four nimble fingers and a thumb,
The blood-stain'd blade I'd turn'd upon his foe,
And sudden sent him to the shades below-
Where, or Pythagoras' opinion jests,
Beasts are made butchers-butchers chang'd to beasts.
Wisely in early times the law decreed,
For human food few quadrupeds should bleed ;
But monstrous man, still erring from the laws,
The curse of heaven upon his banquet draws!
Already has he drain'd the marshes dry
For frogs, new victims of his luxury;
And soon the toad and lizard may come home,
In his voracious paunch to find a tomb;
Cats, rats, and mice, their destiny may mourn,
In time their carcasses on spits may turn ;
They may rejoice to-day-while I resign
Life, to be number'd 'mongst the feeling swine.
AN EXPEDITION TO FIFE AND THE
ISLAND OF MAY,
On board the Blessed Endeavour of Dunbar,
Capt. Roxburgh, Commander.
LIST, O ye slumberers on the peaceful shore,
Whose lives are one unvariegated calm
Of stillness and of sloth! And hear, O nymph!
In heaven ycleped Pleasure; from your throne
Effulgent send a heavenly radiant beam,
That, cheer'd by thee, the Muse may bend her way:
For from no earthly flight she builds her song,
But from the bosom of green Neptune's main
Would fain emerge, and, under Phoebe's reign,
Transmit her numbers to inclining ears.
Now, when the warbling songsters quit the groves, And solemn sounding whisperings lull the spray, To meditation sacred, let me roam
O'er the bless'd floods that wash our natal shore,
And view the wonders of the deep profound,
While now the western breezes reign around,
And Boreas, sleeping in his iron cave,
Regains his strength and animated rage,
To wake new tempests, and inswell new seas.
And now Favonius wings the sprightly gale;
The willing canvass, swelling with the breeze,
Gives life and motion to our bounding prow,
While the hoarse boatswain's pipe, shrill-sounding
Calls all the tars to action.
Hardy sons!
Who shudder not at life-devouring gales,
But smile amidst the tempest's sounding jars,
Or 'midst the hollow thunders of the war.
Fresh sprung from Greenland's cold, they hail
The happier clime, the fresh autumnal breeze,
By Sirius guided, to allay the heat
That else would parch the vigour of their veins.
Hard change, alas! from petrifying cold
Instant to plunge to the severest ray
That burning Dog-star or bright Phoebus sheds.
Like comet whirling through the ethereal void,
Now they are redden'd with the solar blaze,
Now froze and tortur'd by the frigid zone.
Thrice happy Britons! whose well-temper'd clay Can face all climes, all tempests, and all seas. These are the sons that check the growing war;
|