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VII.

TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH,

ON HIS WILFUL MISREPRESENTATION OF CERTAIN GREAT POETS.

I.

Ir to the punishment for lies

Each conscious slanderer, when he dies,

Must go without exemption,

I fear, though of a loftier sort,

With S-E, and other rogues in short,
Thou 'rt damn'd beyond redemption.

JI.

THOU 'rt aged, WILLIAM. O repent!
Give to thy struggling conscience vent,

To soothe, when dead, the Omniscient.
Here, among men, thou need'st no curse ;
POPE's self would swear thy own bad verse
Is punishment sufficient.

VIII.

TO MESSRS. SOUTHEY AND WORDSWORTH, ON THEIR DEFAMATION OF CERTAIN GREAT NAMES IN POETRY.

WHEN ZOÏLUS the mighty bard revil'd

Whose fame he hated, he was ston'd or burn'd ;

But that was all; the sheets his spleen defil'd
Live not to prove how well the doom was earn'd.

You, Zoïluses both, a harder fate

Must undergo; for, printed on your page,

Your envy will survive its proper date,

And crucify (1) you in a future age.

IX.

PHILANTHROPY.

PRETTY SALLY 's wondrous fair,

To all mankind a charming creature ;
So soft her voice, so free her air,
Gentle in manners, speech, and feature ;
Her humor and her dimples tally.
No special smiles, no graces rare ;
Alike to all she graceful bends her,
And, should none better claim her care,
Leers on the footboy that attends her,
And spreads her charms to catch a valet.
A common case; why should you stare?
A man's a man to pretty SALLY.

(1) Some say that the unfortunate grammarian was nailed to a cross, by order of PTOLEMY.

X.

THE DEMAGOGUE.

CLEON magnanimously fights
For what he calls the people's rights,
Ready in any mud to dabble,

To help across the sovereign rabble.
CLEON is right; for CLEON 's of them.
CLEON is made a man of note;
And CLEON sings another note,
Talks of the honor of the Crown,

And damns the people up and down.

Lord CLEON 's right he ranks above them.

XI.

THE PANEGYRIST.

SOFT VAPPA sings of birds and bees,
And bubbling brooks, and flowers, and trees;

And KA proclaims him greater even

Than HOMER and the Bard of Heaven.

Wouldst know the reason? Seek it here :

KA publishes, himself, next year.

XII.

TO A FLIRT.

WEAK, silly creature! worthless jade!
In vain are all thy charms display'd,
Thou needlessly thy wits art tasking ;
Since all is equal game to thee,
Enough, fling not thyself at me ;
I would not have thee for the asking.

XIII.

TO A COQUETTE.

THINK'ST thou, because one fool admires,
The world an equal passion fires?

I would not for the world deny it.
But if thou wouldst the truth discover,
Treat all just as thou treat'st thy lover.
If they, the world, all put together,
Will bear to be thus toss'd and shaken
By all thy fits of changeful weather,

Why then I 'm damnably mistaken.

I would to God thou 'dst only try it!

XIV. (1)

TO A MANNIKIN.

THOU four-foot fool! short thing of lath!
Begone. Crawl safely from my path.
'T were right to strip thee of thy breeches :
But then the proverb tells what pitch is.

XV.

TO JS W-N W-BB.

FOOL! that durst let thy hireling cross my path ! (2) Was 't not enough I spar'd thee on my page ?

(1) This epigram, written many years since, was printed in the additions to the Vision of Rubeta. It is here republished because of an absurd mistake which was there committed; the substitution of swiftly for safely in the second line of the copy.

(2) One of the publishers of the Vision, Mr. JN, who claims to be a cousin of Mr. W-BB's, informed my agent that the editor of the Courier was not in town when that miserable specimen of mendacity and ignorance (see the last page of this volume) was suffered to make its appearance in his paper. But he allowed it to remain uncontradicted; and thus endorsed the falsehood. To me the injury this has done can be but transient; the exposition I have made of the iniquity will be eternal. I do such men too much honor, I am well aware, to notice them in any way; but it must

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