BE GENTLE.

In vain you tell your parting lover,

You wish fair winds may waft him over:
Alas! what winds can happy prove,

That bear me far from what I love?

Alas! what dangers on the main
Can equal those that I sustain
From slighted vows and cold disdain?

Be gentle, and in pity choose

To wish the wildest tempest loose;
That, thrown again upon the coast
Where first my shipwrecked heart was lost,
I may once more repeat my pain;
Once more in dying notes complain
Of slighted vows, and cold disdain !

PRIOR.

POETASTERS.

A SIMILE.

Dear Thomas, did'st thou never pop
Thy head into a tinman's shop?
There, Thomas, did'st thou never see
('Tis but by way of simile)

A squirrel spend his little rage,

In jumping round a rolling cage;

The cage, as either side turned up,

Striking a ring of bells at top?

Moved in the orb, pleased with the chimes,

The foolish creature thinks he climbs:

But, here or there, turn wood or wire,
He never gets two inches higher.

So fares it with those merry blades,
That frisk it under Pindus' shades,
In noble song and lofty odes,

They tread on stars, and talk with gods;
Still dancing in an airy round,

Still pleased with their own verses' sound;
Brought back, how fast soe'er they go,
Always aspiring, always low.

THE DEATH OF DR. SWIFT.

THE time is not remote when I
Must by the course of nature die;
When, I foresee, my special friends
Will try to find their private ends:
And, though 'tis hardly understood
Which way my death can do them good,
Yet thus, methinks, I hear them speak:
"See how the Dean begins to break!
Poor gentleman, he droops apace!
You plainly find it in his face.

That old vertigo in his head

Will never leave him till he's dead.

Besides, his memory decays,

He recollects not what he says;

He cannot call his friends to mind;
Forgets the place where last he dined;
Plies you with stories o'er and o'er,
He told them fifty times before.

PRIOR.

How does he fancy we can sit

To hear his out-of-fashion wit?

But he takes up with younger folks,
Who for his wine will bear his jokes.
Faith! he must make his stories shorter,
Or change his comrades once a quarter;
In half the time he talks them round,
There must another set be found."

*

In such a case they talk in tropes,
And by their fears express their hopes.
Some great misfortune to portend,
No enemy can match a friend.

With all the kindness they profess,

The merit of a lucky guess

(When daily how-d'ye's come of course,

And servants answer, "Worse and worse!")

Would please them better, than to tell,
That, "God be praised, the Dean is well."
Then he who prophesied the best,
Approves his foresight to the rest:
"You know I always feared the worst,
And often told you so at first."
He'd rather choose that I should die,
Than his predictions prove a lie.

Not one foretells I shall recover;

But all agree to give me over.

Behold the fatal day arrive!

"How is the Dean?"-"He's just alive." Now the departing prayer is read;

He hardly breathes-the Dean is dead.

Before the passing-bell begun,

The news through half the town is run. "Oh! may we all for death prepare! What has he left? and who's his heir?" "I know no more than what the news is; "Tis all bequeathed to public uses." "To public uses! there's a whim! What had the public done for him? Mere envy, avarice, and pride: it all-but first he died. And had the Dean, in all the nation, No worthy friend, no poor relation? So ready to do strangers good, Forgetting his own flesh and blood!"

He

gave

Now Grub-street wits are all employed;

With elegies, the town is cloyed;
Some paragraph in every paper,

To curse the Dean, or bless the Drapier.
The doctors, tender of their fame,
Wisely on me lay all the blame.
"We must confess, his case was nice;
But he would never take advice.
Had he been ruled, for aught appears,
He might have lived these twenty years:
For, when we opened him, we found
That all his vital parts were sound."

Now Curll his shop from rubbish drains: Three genuine tomes of Swift's remains!

And then, to make them pass the glibber,
Revised by Tibbalds, Moore, and Cibber.

He'll treat me as he does my betters,
my letters;

Publish my will, my life,

Revive the libels born to die:

Which Pope must bear as well as I.

Here shift the scene, to represent
How those I love my death lament.
Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay
A week, and Arbuthnot a day.

St. John himself will scarce forbear
To bite his pen, and drop a tear.
The rest will give a shrug, and cry,
"I'm sorry-but we all must die!"
Indifference, clad in wisdom's guise,

All fortitude of mind supplies:
For how can stony bowels melt
In those who never pity felt!

When we are lashed, they kiss the rod,
Resigning to the will of God.

Why do we grieve that friends should die?

No loss more easy to supply.

One year is past; a different scene!

No farther mention of the Dean,

Who now, alas! no more is missed,

Than if he never did exist.

Where's now the favourite of Apollo?
Departed :—and his works must follow;
Must undergo the common fate;

His kind of wit is out of date.

A MODERN LADY.

THE modern dame is waked by noon (Some authors say not quite so soon),

SWIFT.