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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.

II.

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.

IV.

But O! for him my fancy culls
The choicest flow'rs she bears,

Who constitutionally pulls

Your house about your ears.

V.

Such civil broils are my delight,

Though some folks can't endure them, Who say the mob are mad outright, And that a rope must cure them.

VI.

A rope! I wish we patriots had

Such strings for all who need 'emWhat! hang a man for going mad!

Then farewell British freedom.

On observing some names of little note recorded in the Biographia Britannica.

OH, 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;
Lethæan gulfs 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!

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