A SONNET
WEEPING, murmuring, complaining,
Lost to every gay delight;
MYRA, too sincere for feigning,
Fears th' approaching bridal night.
Yet, why impair thy bright perfection?
Or dim thy beauty with a tear?
Had MYRA followed my direction,
She long had wanted cause of fear.
“You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips."
AN EPIGRAM ADDRESSED TO THE GENTLEMEN REFLECTED ON IN THE ROSCIAD,
A POEM, BY THE AUTHOR
Worried with debts and past all hopes of bail,
His pen he prostitutes t' avoid a gaol.
ROSCOM.
LET not the 'hungry' Bavius' angry stroke
Awake resentment, or your rage provoke;
But pitying his distress, let virtue shine,
And giving each your bounty, 'let him dine';
For thus retain'd, as learned counsel can,
Each case, however bad, he'll new japan;
And by a quick transition, plainly show
'Twas no defect of yours, but 'pocket low',
That caused his 'putrid kennel' to o'erflow.
“Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
'TWAS you, or I, or he, or all together,
'Twas one, both, three of them, they know not whether;
This, I believe, between us great or small,
You, I, he, wrote it not--'twas Churchill's all.
WHEN lovely woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray,
What charm can soothe her melancholy,
What art can wash her guilt away?
The only art her guilt to cover,
To hide her shame from every eye,
To give repentance to her lover,
And wring his bosom, is -- to die.
('Imitated from the Spanish'.)
SURE 'twas by Providence design'd,
Rather in pity, than in hate,
That he should be, like Cupid, blind,
To save him from Narcissus' fate.