Yet bitter felt it still to die Deserted, and his friends so nigh. He long survives, who lives an hour And so long he, with unspent power, And ever as the minutes flew, Entreated help, or cried-"Adieu !" At length, his transient respite past, No poet wept him; but the page That tells his name, his worth, his age, And tears by bards or heroes shed I therefore purpose not, or dream, To give the melancholy theme But misery still delights to trace No voice divine the storm allay'd, And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he. MONUMENTAL INSCRIPTION ΤΟ WILLIAM NORTHCOT. HIC sepultus est Unicus, unicè dilectus, Qui floris ritu succisus est semihiantis, 1780, Et. 10. Care, vale! Sed non æternum, care, valeto! TRANSLATION. FAREWELL!" But not for ever," Hope replies, A RIDDLE. I AM just two and two, I am warm, I am cold, I am often sold dear, good for nothing when bought; ANSWER. FROM THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, Vol. LXXVI. P. 1224. Made me swear like a trooper ; Of beauty's soft Kiss, I now long for such riddles again. J. T. IN SEDITIONEM HORRENDAM, CORRUPTELIS GALLICIS UT FERTUR, LONDINI NUPER EXORTAM. PERFIDA, crudelis, victa et lymphata furore, TRANSLATION. FALSE, cruel, disappointed, stung to the heart, COWPER had sinn'd with some excuse, But, male for female is a trope, When he translated Homer. I have heard about my wether mutton from various quarters. It was a blunder hardly pardonable in a man who has lived amid fields and meadows, grazed by sheep, almost these thirty years. I have accordingly satirized myself in two stanzas which I composed last night, while I lay awake, tormented with pain, and well dosed with laudanum. If you find them not very brilliant, therefore, you will know how to account for it.Letter to Joseph Hill, April 15, 1792. STANZAS SUBJOINED TO THE YEARLY BILL OF MORTALITY OF THE PARISH OF ALL-SAINTS, NORTHAMPTON1, ANNO DOMINI 1787. Pallida Mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas, HORACE. Pale Death with equal foot strikes wide the door WHILE thirteen moons saw smoothly run All these, life's rambling journey done, Was man (frail always) made more frail Did famine or did plague prevail, No; these were vigorous as their sires, Like crowded forest-trees we stand, Green as the bay tree, ever green, The gay, the thoughtless, have I seen, Read, ye that run, the aweful truth With which I charge my page! A worm is in the bud of youth, 1 Composed for John Cox, parish clerk of Northampton. No present health can health insure No medicine, though it oft can cure, And oh! that humble as my lot, And scorn'd as is my strain, These truths, though known, too much forgot, I may not teach in vain. So prays your Clerk with all his heart, And, ere he quits the pen, Begs you for once to take his part, And answer all-Amen! COULD I, from Heaven inspired, as sure presage To whom the rising year shall prove his last, As I can number in my punctual page, How each would trembling wait the mournful sheet On which the press might stamp him next to die; And, reading here his sentence, how replete With anxious meaning, heavenward turn his eye! Time then would seem more precious than the joys |