To nimble-footed waiters give command
The cloth to lay. Instinctively they come;
And, lo! the table, wrapt in cloudy steams,
Groans with the weight of the transporting fare,
That breathes frankincense on the guests around.
Now, while stern winter holds his frigid sway,
And to a period spins the closing year;
While festivals abound, and sportive hours
Kill the remembrance of our weaning time,
Let not Intemperance, destructive fiend!
Gain entrance to your halls. Despoil'd by him,
Shall cloyed appetite, forerunner sad
Of rank disease, inveterate clasp your frame;
Contentment shall no more be known to spread
Her cherub wings round thy once happy dwelling,
But misery of thought, and racking pain,
Shall plunge you headlong to the dark abyss.
YE maidens modest! on whose sullen brows
Hath weaning chastity her wrinkles cull'd,
Who constant labour o'er consumptive oil,
At midnight knell, to wash sleep's nightly balm
From closing eyelids, with the grateful drops
Of tea's blest juices; list the obsequious lays,
That come not, with Parnassian honours crown'd,
To dwell in murmurs o'er your sleepy sense,
But, fresh from orient blown, to chase far off
Your lethargy, that dormant needles roused
May pierce the waving mantua's silken folds.
For many a dame, in chamber sadly pent,
Hath this reviving limpid call'd to life:
And well it did, to mitigate the frowns
Of anger, reddening on Lucinda's brow
With flash malignant, that had harbour'd there,
If she at masquerade, or play, or ball,
Appeared not in her newest, best attire.
But Venus, goddess of the eternal smile,
Knowing that stormy brows but ill become
Fair patterns of her beauty, hath ordain'd
Celestial tea-a fountain that can cure
The ills of passion, and can free the fair
From frowns and sighs, by disappointment earn'd.
To her, ye fair, in adoration bow!
Whether at blushing morn or dewy eve;
Her smoking cordials greet your fragrant board,
With Sushong, Congo, or coarse Bohea crown'd.
At midnight skies, ye mantua-makers, hail
The sacred offering: for the haughty belles
No longer can upraid your lingering hands,
With trains upborne aloft by dusty gales
That sweep the ball-room. Swift they glide along,
And, with their sailing streamers, catch the eye
Of some Adonis, mark'd to love a prey,
Whose bosom ne'er had panted with a sigh,
But for the silken draperies that enclose
Graces which nature has by art conceal'd.
Mark well the fair! observe their modest eye,
With all the innocence of beauty blest;
Could slander o'er that tongue its power retain,
Whose breath is music? Ah, fallacious thought!
The surface is ambrosia's mingled sweets,
But all below is death. At tea-board met,
Attend their prattling tongues; they scoff, they rail
Unbounded; but their darts are chiefly aim'd
At some gay fair, whose beauties far eclipse
Her dim beholders, who, with haggard eyes,
Would blight those charms where raptures long have
dwelt
In ecstacy, delighted and sufficed.
In vain hath Beauty, with her varied robe,
Bestow'd her glowing blushes o'er her cheeks,
And called attendant graces to her aid,
To blend the scarlet and the lily fair;
In vain did Venus in her favourite mould
Adapt the slender form to Cupid's choice;
When slander comes, her blasts too fatal prove;
Pale are those cheeks where youth and beauty
glow'd-
Where smiles, where freshness, and where roses grew;
Ghastly and wan their Gorgon picture comes,
With every fury grinning from the looks
Of frightful monster. Envy's hissing tongue
With deepest vengeance wounds, and every wound
With deeper canker, deeper poison teems.
O gold! thy luring lustre first prevail'd
On man to tempt the fretful winds and waves,
And hunt new fancies. Still, thy glaring form
Bids commerce thrive, and o'er the Indian waves,
O'er-stemming danger, draw the labouring keel
From China's coast to Britain's colder clime,
Fraught with the fruits and herbage of her vales.
In them, whatever vegetable springs,
How loathsome and corrupted, triumphs here,
The bane of life, of health the sure decay:
Yet, yet we swallow, and extol the draught,
Though nervous ails should spring, and vapourish qualms
Our senses and our appetites destroy.
Look round, ye sippers of the poison'd cup From foreign plant distill'd! No more repine That Nature, sparing of her sacred sweets, Hath doom'd you in a wilderness to dwell;
While round Britannia's streams she kindly rears
Green sage and wild thyme. These were sure decreed,
As plants of Britain, to regale her sons
With native moisture, more refreshing, sweet,
And more profuse of health and vigour's balm
Than all the stems that India can boast.
Well! I protest there's no such thing as dealing
With these starch'd poets—with these men of feeling!
Epilogue to "The Prince of Tunis."
MALIGNANT planets! do ye still combine
Against this wayward, dreary life of mine?
Has pitiless oppression-cruel case!-
Gain'd sole possession of the human race!
By cruel hands has every virtue bled,
And innocence from men to vultures filed?
Thrice happy had I lived in Jewish time,
When swallowing pork or pig was doom'd a crime;
My husband long had blest my longing arms,
Long, long had known love's sympathetic charms!
My children, too-a little suckling race,
With all their father growing in their face—
From their prolific dam had ne'er been torn,
Nor to the bloody stalls of butchers borne.
Ah, luxury! to you my being owes
Its load of misery, its load of woes!
With heavy heart I saunter all the day;
Gruntle and murmur all my hours away!
In vain I try to summon old desire
For favourite sports-for wallowing in the mire;
Thoughts of my husband, of my children, slain,
Turn all my wonted pleasure into pain!
How oft did we, in Phoebus' warming ray,
Bask on the humid softness of the clay!
Oft did his lusty head defend my tail
From the rude whispers of the angry gale;
While nose-refreshing puddles stream'd around,
And floating odours hail'd the dung-clad ground.
Near by a rustic mill's enchanting clack,
Where plenteous bushels load the peasant's back,
In straw-crown'd hovel, there to life we came,
One boar our father, and one sow our dam.
While tender infants on our mother's breast
A flame divine in either shone confest:
In riper hours, love's more than ardent blaze
Inkindled all his passion, all his praise!
No deadly, sinful passion fired his soul,
Virtue o'er all his actions gain'd control!
That cherub which attracts the female heart,
And makes them soonest with their beauty part,
Attracted mine; I gave him all my love,
In the recesses of a verdant grove:
'Twas there I listen'd to his warmest vows,
Amidst the pendant melancholy boughs;
'Twas there my trusty lover shook for me
A shower of acorns from the oaken tree;
And from the teeming earth, with joy, plough'd out The roots salubrious with his hardy snout.
But, happiness! a floating meteor thou, That still inconstant art to man and sow, Left'st us in gloomiest horrors to reside, Near by the deep-dyed sanguinary tide,
Where whetting steel prepares the butchering knives,
With greater ease to take the harmless lives
Of cows, and calves, and sheep, and hogs, who fear
The bite of bull-dogs, that incessant tear
Their flesh, and keenly suck the blood-distilling ear!
At length the day, the eventful day, drew near,
I'll weep, till sorrow shall my eyelids drain,
Detested cause of many a briny tear!
A tender husband and a brother slain!
Alas! the lovely languor of his eye,
When the base murderers bore him captive by;
His mournful voice, the music of his groans,
Had melted any hearts, but hearts of stones!
O! had some angel at that instant come,
Given me four nimble fingers and a thumb,
The blood-stain'd blade I'd turn'd upon his foe,
And sudden sent him to the shades below-
Where, or Pythagoras' opinion jests,
Beasts are made butchers-butchers changed to beasts. Wisely in early times the law decreed,
For human food few quadrupeds should bleed;
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