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Around her haggard eye-balls roll;
A thousand fiends possess her soul.

The artful, unsuspected sprite,
With fatal aim, attacks by night.

Her troops advance with silent tread,
And stab the hero in his bed;

Or shoot the wing'd malignant lie,
And female honours pine and die.

So prowling wolves, when darkness reigns,
Intent on murder, scour the plains;
Approach the folds where lambs repose,
Whose guileless breasts suspect no foes;

The savage gluts his fierce desires,
And bleating innocence expires.

Slander smil'd horribly, to view
How wide her conquests daily grew:
Around the crowded levees wait,
Like oriental slaves of state;
Of either sex whole armies prest,

Is it a breach of friendship's law,

To say what female friends I saw ?

Slander assumes the idol's part,

And claims the tribute of the heart:

The best, in some unguarded hour,

Ilave bow'd the knee, and own'd her pow'r.

Then let the poet not reveal

What candour wishes to conceal.

If I beheld some faulty fair,

Much worse delinquents crowded there:
Prelates in sacred lawn I saw,

Grave physic, and loquacious law;

Courtiers, like summer flies, abound;

And hungry poets swarm around.

But now my partial story ends,

And makes

my

females full amends.

If Albion's isle such dreams fulfils,

"Tis Albion's isle which cures these ills,

Fertile of ev'ry worth and grace

Which warm the heart and flush the face,

Fancy disclos'd a smiling train

Of British nymphs that tripp'd the plain.
Good-nature first, a sylvan queen,
Attir'd in robes of cheerful green;

A fair and smiling virgin she!

With ev'ry charm that shines in thee.
Prudence assum'd the chief command,
And bore a mirror in her hand;
Grey was the matron's head by age,
Her mind by long experience sage;
Of ev'ry distant ill afraid,

And anxious for the simp'ring maid.
The Graces danc'd before the fair;
And white-rob'd Innocence was there.
The trees with golden fruits were crown'd,
And rising flow'rs adorn'd the ground;
The sun display'd each brighter ray,
And shone in all the pride of day:

When Slander sicken'd at the sight,

BY HAMMOND.

To his Friend, written under the Confinement of a long

Indisposition.

WHILE calm you sit beneath your secret shade,

And lose in pleasing thought the summer-day,

Or tempt the wish of some unpractis'd maid, Whose heart at once inclines and fears to stray:

The sprightly vigour of my youth is fled,
Lonely and sick, on death is all my thought;
Oh spare, Persephone, this guiltless head!
Love, too much love, is all thy suppliant's fault.

No virgin's easy faith I e'er betray'd,

My tongue ne'er boasted of a feign'd embrace: No poisons in the cup have I convey'd,

Nor veil'd destruction with a friendly face:

No secret horrors gnaw this quiet breast,
This pious hand ne'er robb'd the sacred fane;
I ne'er disturb'd the gods' eternal rest

With curses loud-but oft have pray'd in vain.

No stealth of time has thinn'd my flowing hair,
Nor age yet bent me with his iron hand:
Ah! why so soon the tender blossom tear,

Ere autumn yet the ripen'd fruit demand?

Ye gods, whoe'er in gloomy shades below,

Now slowly tread your melancholy round; Now wandering view the paleful rivers flow,

And musing hearken to their solemn sound:

Oh, let me still enjoy the cheerful day,
Till, many years unheeded o'er me roll'd,
Pleas'd in my age, I trifle life away,

And tell how much we lov'd, ere I grew old.

But you who now, with festive garlands crown'd, In chace of pleasure the gay moments spend, By quick enjoyment heal love's pleasing wound,

And grieve for nothing but your absent friend.

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