Page images
PDF
EPUB

With grim delight he views the sportive band,
Intent on blood, and lifts his murderous hand:
Twangs the bent bow-resounds the fateful dart,
Swift-wing'd, and trembles in a porker's heart.

Ah! hapless porker! what can now avail

Thy back's stiff bristles, or thy curly tail?

90

Ah! what avail those eyes so small and round,
Long pendent ears, and snout that loves the ground?

Not unrevenged thou diest!-In after times
From thy spilt blood shall spring unnumber'd crimes.
Soon shall the slaught'rous arms that wrought thy woe,
Improved by malice, deal a deadlier blow;

When social Man shall pant for nobler game,

And 'gainst his fellow man the vengeful weapon aim.

As love, as gold, as jealousy inspires,

As wrathful hate, or wild ambition fires,

95

100

Ver. 90. Ah! what avails, &c.-See Pope's Description of the Death of a Pheasant.

Ver. 93. "With leaden eye that loves the ground."

Ver. 94. The first effusion of blood attended with the most dreadful consequences

to mankind.

Ver. 97. Social Man's wickedness opposed to the simplicity of savage life.

Ver. 100 and 101. Different causes of war among men.

N

Urged by the statesman's craft, the tyrant's rage,
Embattled nations endless wars shall wage,

Vast seas of blood the ravaged field shall stain,

And millions perish—that a King may reign!

For blood once shed, new wants and wishes rise;

105

Each rising want invention quick supplies.

To roast his victuals is Man's next desire,

So two dry sticks he rubs, and lights a fire.

Hail fire! &c. &c.

Ver. 106. Invention of fire-first employed in cookery, and produced by rubbing dry sticks together.

No. XVII.

MARCH 5.

We are obliged to a learned Correspondent for the following ingenious imitation of BION.-We will not shock the eyes of our Fair Readers with the original Greek, but the following Argument will give them some idea of the nature of the Poem here imitated.

ARGUMENT.

Venus is represented as bringing to the Poet, while sleeping, her son Cupid, with a request that he would teach him Pastoral Poetry-Bion complies, and endeavours to teach him the rise and progress of that art :-Cupid laughs at his instructions, and in his turn teaches his master the Loves of Men and Gods, the Wiles of his Mother, &c.-Pleased with his lessons, says Bion, I forgot what I lately taught Cupid, and recollect in its stead, only what Cupid taught me.

IMITATION, &c.

WRITTEN AT SAINT ANN'S HILL

SCARCE had sleep my eyes o'erspread,

Ere Alecto sought my bed;

In her left hand a torch she shook,

And in her right led J―n H—ne T—ke.

O thou! who well deserv'st the bays, Teach him, she cried, Sedition's lays— She said, and left us; I, poor fool, Began the wily priest to school; Taught him how M-ra sung of lights Blown out by troops o' stormy nights; How E-sk-e, borne on rapture's wings, At clubs and taverns sweetly sings Of self-while yawning Whigs attendSelf first, last, midst, and without end! How B-df-d piped, ill-fated Bard! Half drown'd, in empty Palace-yard: How L-sd-ne, nature's simple child, At B-w-d trills his wood-notes wild— How these and more (a phrensied choir) Sweep with bold hand Confusion's lyre, Till madding crowds around them storm "FOR ONE GRAND RADICAL REFORM!"

T-ke stood silent for a while,
Listening with sarcastic smile;
Then in verse of calmest flow,
Sung of treasons, deep and low;
Of rapine, prisons, scaffolds, blood,
Of war against the great and good;

Of Venice, and of Genoa's doom,

And fall of unoffending Rome;

Of monarchs from their station hurl'd,

And one waste desolated world.

Charm'd by the magic of his tongue,

I lost the strains I lately sung,

While those he taught, remain impress'd
For ever on my faithful breast.

DORUS.

Something like the same idea seems to have dictated the following Stanzas, which appear to be a loose Imitation of the beautiful Dialogue of Horace and Lydia, and for which, though confessedly in a lower style of poetry, and conceived rather in the slang, or Brentford dialect, than in the classical Doric of the foregoing Poem, we many thanks to return to an ingenious Academical Correspondent.

have

THE NEW COALITION.

I.

F. WHEN erst I coalesced with North,

And brought my Indian bantling forth,

In place--I smiled at faction's storm,
Nor dreamt of radical Reform.

« PreviousContinue »