Then, lifting his lid in a delicate way, [ing, And opening his mouth with a smile quite engagThe box in reply was heard plainly to say, If What a silly dispute is this we are waging! [weed, you have a little of merit to claim, You may thank the sweet-smelling Virginian And I, if I seem to deserve any blame, The beforemention'd drug in apology plead. Thus neither the praise nor the blame is our own, No room for a sneer, much less a cachinnus, We are vehicles, not of tobacco alone, But of any thing else they may choose to put in us. THE FLATTING MILL. AN ILLUSTRATION. WHEN a bar of pure silver or ingot of gold Thus tortured and squeezed, at last it appears This process achieved, it is doom'd to sustain Alas for the poet! who dares undertake His head and his heart are both likely to ache If he wish to instruct, he must learn to delight, Smooth, ductile, and even his fancy must flow, Must tinkle and glitter like gold to the sight, And catch in its progress a sensible glow. After all he must beat it as thin and as fine And unless you adorn it, a nausea follows. EPITAPH ON A FREE BUT TAME REDBREAST, A FAVOURITE OF MISS SALLY HURDIS. THESE are not dewdrops, these are tears, For absent Robin, who she fears, With too much cause, is dead. One morn he came not to her hand As he was wont to come, And, on her finger perch'd, to stand Picking his breakfast-crumb. Alarm'd, she call'd him, and perplex'd She sought him, but in vainThat day he came not, nor the next, Nor ever came again. She therefore raised him here a tomb, Though where he fell, or how, None knows, so secret was his doom, Nor where he moulders now. Had half a score of coxcombs died Poor Sally's tears had soon been dried, But Bob was neither rudely bold Nor was, like theirs, his bosom cold, March, 1792. SONNET, ADDRESSED TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ. HAYLEY-thy tenderness fraternal shown Not more to admire the bard than love the man. AN EPITAPH. HERE lies one who never drew Armed men have gladly made Would advance, present, and fire— ON RECEIVING HAYLEY'S PICTURE. In language warm as could be breathed or penn'd |