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HUMAN FRAILTY.

I.

WEAK and irresolute is man ;

The purpose of to-day, Woven with pains into his plan, To-morrow rends away.

11.

The bow well bent, and smart the spring,
Vice seems already slain;
But passion rudely snaps the string,
And it revives again.

III.

Some foe to his upright intent
Finds out his weaker part;
Virtue engages his assent,
But pleasure wins his heart.

IV.

'Tis here the folly of the wise

Through all his art we view;

And, while his tongue the charge denies, His conscience owns it true.

V.

Bound on a voyage of awful length
And dangers little known,
A stranger to superior strength,
Man vainly trusts his own.

VI.

But oars alone can ne'er prevail

To reach the distant coast,

The breath of heav'n must swell the sail, Or all the toil is lost.

THE MODERN PATRIOT.

I.

REBELLION is my theme all day;
I only wish 'twould come

(As who knows but perhaps it may ?)

A little nearer home.

II.

Yon roaring boys, who rave and fight
On t'other side th' Atlantic,

I always held them in the right,

But most so when most frantic.

III.

When lawless mobs insult the court,
That man shall be my toast,
If breaking windows be the sport,
Who bravely breaks the most.

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Such civil broils are my delight; Tho' some folks can't endure 'em, Who say the mob are mad outright, And that a rope must cure 'em.

VI.

A rope! I wish we patriots had

Such strings for all who need 'em.... What! hang a man for going mad? Then farewell British freedom.

ON OBSERVING

SOME NAMES OF LITTLE NOTE

RECORDED IN THE BIOGRAPHIA BRITANNICA.

Он, fond attempt to give a deathless lot
To names ignoble, born to be forgot!
In vain, recorded in historic page,
They court the notice of a future age :
Those twinkling tiny lustres of the land
Drop one by one from Fame's neglecting hand;
Lethaan gulphs receive them as they fall,
And dark oblivion soon absorbs them all.

So when a child, as playful children use,
Has burnt to tinder a stale last year's news,
The flame extinct, he views the roving fire....
There goes my lady, and there goes the squire,
There goes the parson, oh! illustrious spark,
And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk!

REPORT

OF AN ADJUDGED CASE, NOT TO BE FOUND IN ANY

OF THE BOOKS.

I.

BETWEEN Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose.... The spectacles set them unhappily wrong;

The point in dispute was, as all the world knows, To which the said spectacles ought to belong.

II.

So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause
With a great deal of skill, and a wig full of learning;
While chief baron Ear set to balance the laws,
So fam'd for his talent in nicely discerning.

III.

In behalf of the Nose, it will quickly appear,
And your lordship, he said, will undoubtedly find,
That the Nose has had spectacles always in wear,
Which amounts to possession time out of mind.

IV.

Then holding the spectacles up to the court.... Your lordship observes they are made with a straddle,

As wide as the ridge of the Nose is; in short,
Design'd to sit close to it, just like a saddle.

V.

Again, would your lordship a moment suppose ('Tis a case that has happen'd, and may be again) That the visage or countenance had not a nose! Pray who would, or who could, wear spectacles then?

VI.

On the whole, it appears....and my argument shows, With a reasoning the court will never condemn, That the spectacles plainly were made for the Nose, And the Nose was as plainly intended for them.

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