Page images
PDF
EPUB

Labour'd, and many a night pursu'd in dreams,
Just when it meets his hopes, and proves the Heav'n
He wanted, for a wealthier to enjoy!

And now perhaps the glorious hour is come,
When, having no stake left, no pledge t' endear
Her int'rests, or that gives her sacred cause
A moment's operation on his love,

He burns with most intense and flagrant zeal,
To serve his country. Ministerial grace
Deals him out money from the public chest;
Or, if that mine be shut, some private purse
Supplies his need with a usurious loan,
To be refunded duly, when his vote
Well-manag'd shall have earn'd it's worthy price.
O' innocent, compar'd with arts like these,
Crape, and cock'd pistol, and the whistling ball
Sent through the trav❜ller's temples! He, that finds
One drop of Heav'n's sweet mercy in his

cup, Can dig, beg, rot, and perish, well content,

So he may wrap himself in honest rags
At his last gasp; but could not for a world
Fish up his dirty and dependent bread

From pools and ditches of the commonwealth,
Sordid and sick'ning at his own success.

VOL. II.

Ambition, av'rice, penury incurr'd

By endless riot, vanity, the lust
Of pleasure and variety, dispatch,

As duly as the swallows disappear,

The world of wand'ring knights and squires to town.
London ingulphs them all! The shark is there,
And the shark's prey; the spendthrift, and the leech
That sucks him: there the sycophant, and he
Who, with bareheaded and obsequious bows,
Begs a warm office, doom'd to a cold jail
And groat per diem if his patron frown.

The levee swarms, as if in golden pomp

Were character'd on every statesman's door,

"BATTER'D AND BANKRUPT FORTUNES MENDED

HERE."

These are the charms, that sully and eclipse
The charms of nature. "Tis the cruel gripe,
That leau, hard-handed Poverty inflicts,
The hope of better things, the chance to win,
The wish to shine, the thirst to be amus'd,
That at the sound of Winter's hoary wing
Unpeople all our counties of such herds
Of flutt'ring, loit'ring, cringing, begging, loose,
And wanton vagrants, as make London, vast
And boundless as it is, a crowded coop.

O thou, resort and mart of all the Earth, Checker'd with all complexions of mankind, And spotted with all crimes; in whom I see Much that I love, and more that I admire, And all that I abhor; thou freckled fair, That pleasest and yet shock'st me, I can laugh, And I can weep, can hope, and can despond, Feel wrath and pity, when I think on thee! Ten righteous would have sav❜d a city once, And thou hast many righteous.-Well for theeThat salt preserves thee; more corrupted else, And therefore more obnoxious at this hour, Than Sodom in her day had pow'r to be, For whom God heard his Abr'ham plead in vain.

THE TASK.

BOOK IV.

« PreviousContinue »