Classic Poem

Brent

A POEM

To Thomas Palmer Esq.

H APPY are you, whom Quantock over-looks,
Blest with keen healthy air, and chrystal brooks;
While wretched we the banefull influence mourn
Of cold Aquarius, and his weeping Urn.
Eternal mists their dropping curse distill
And drizly vapours all the ditches fill:
The swampy Land's a bog, the fields are seas
And too much moisture is the grand disease.
Here every eye with brackish rheum o'reflows
And a fresh drop still hangs at every nose.
Here the winds rule with uncontested right,
The wanton Gods att pleasure take their flight;
No sheltering hedg, no tree, or spreading bough
Obstruct their course, but unconfin'd they blow;
With dewy wings they sweep the watry meads
And proudly trample o're the bending reeds.
We are to North, and Southern blasts expos'd,
Still drown'd by one, or by the other froz'd.
Tho' Venice boast, Brent is as famed a seat,
For here we live in seas, and sail thro' every street;
And this great priviledge we farther gain,
We never are oblig'd to pray for rain.
And 'tis as fond to wish for sunny days,
For tho' the God of light condense his rays
And try his pow'r, we must in water'ly;
The marsh will still be such, and Brent will ne're be dry.

Sure this is nature's gaol for rogues design'd;
Whoever lives in Brent, must live confin'd.
Moated around, the water is our fence;
None comes to us, and none can go from hence:
But should a milder day invite abroad
To wade thro' mire, and wallow in the mudd,
Some envious rine will quickly thwart the road;
And then a small round twig is all your hopes,
You pass not bridges, but you dance on ropes.
Than when to more unwholsom ale bewitch'd
All dogs here take the water, and we find
No creature but of an amphibious kind:
Rabbits with ducks, and geese here sail with hens,
And all for food must paddle in the fens;
Nay when provision fails, the hungry mouse
Will fear no pool to reach a neighb'ring house.
The good old Hen clucks boldly thro' the stream
And chicken newly hatch'd assay to swim.
All have a moorish tast, cow, sheep, and swine,
Eat all like frog, and savour of the rine.
Bread is our only sawce, a barley cake
Hard as your cheese, and as your trencher black.
Our choicest drink (and that's the greatest curse)
Is but bad water made by brewing worse;
Better to tast the ditch pure, and unmixt
Than when to more unwholsom ale bewitch'd.

To him that hath is alway given more
And a new stock supplies the rising store.
Not only rain from bounteous heaven descends,
But th'Ocean with an after-flood befriends;
For nature this as a reliefe designs
To salt the stinking water of the rines;
As when of late enraged Neptune sware
Brent was his own, part of his lawfull share;
He said, and held his trident o're the plain,
And soon the waves assert their antient claim,
They scorn the shore, and o're the marshes sound,
And mudwall cotts are levell'd with the ground;
Tho' the course buildings are so humbly low
That when the house is fal'n, you hardly know.
Buried we are alive; the spatious Dome
Has like the grave but one poor scanty room,
Neither so large, or lofty as a tomb.
Thus, as in th'Ark, here in one common sty
Men and their fellow-brutes with equal honour'ly.

No joyous birds here stretch their tunefull throats
And pierce the yeilding air with thrilling notes,
But the hoarse seapies with an odious cry
Skim o're the marsh, and tell that storms are nigh.
The curst night-raven, and the hooping owl,
Disturb our rest, and scare the guilty soul.
The beasts are of no better kind, that fill
The brakes, and caverns of the neighbouring hill,
But are all digging moles, or prowling brocks,
The lurking serpent, and the crafty fox.
Serpents innumerous o're the mountain roam;
Man's greatest foe thought this his safest home,
Nor could expect an hated place to find
More likely to be void of humane kind;
And yet if dust be doom'd the serpents' meat,
'Tis wond'rous strange, if here they ever eat.

Agues, and coughs with us as constant reign,
As th'itch in Scotland, or the flux in Spain.
Under the bending Nowl's declining brow,
Where toadstools only to perfection grow,
A Cave there is, I thought by nature made,
For want of trees a necessary shade.
Hither I came, and void of fear or thought
Drew near the entrance of the pensive grott.
But ah! — This was the place, the dismal cell,
Where spitting colds, and shivering agues dwell,
The constant home of that malitious fiend
That with her third-day visit plagues mankind;
Here a small fire glow'd in a smoaky grate,
And hovering o're the flames old Febris sate;
A thick coarse mantle on her shoulders hung,
She gnashd her teeth through cold, and her lean fingers wrung.
A stinking lake her craving thirst supplied,
From which a muddy stream did silent glide;
Greedy she drank of the unwholsome brook,
But still the more she drank, the more she shook.
When me the Fury saw, she rais'd her head,
And anger to her paleness gave a red.
Lost I had been, undone! Had I not brought
Of Indian Cortex an enchanted pot;
Thus arm'd with sacred spells, I forward pass
And with the magick bark besmear'd her haggard face.
Dreadfull she shriek'd, and with one mighty shake
The Hag down sunk into the neighbouring lake.
The unhappy frogs perceiv'd the fiend was come,
And all the croaking tribes forsake their home;
And from the pool to milder banks repair,
The deadly chilling cold they could not bear,
And their pale quivering lips confest an Ague there.
With equal hast I quit the fatal grot,
And safe retire, thanks to my sov'raign pot.

Had mournfull Ovid been to Brent condemn'd,
His Tristibus He would more movingly have pen'd.
Gladly he would have chang'd this miry slough
For colder Pontus, and the Scythian snow.
The Getes were not so barbarous a race,
As the grim natives of this motly place,
Of reason void, and thought, whom instinct rules,
Yet will be rogues tho' nature meant 'em fools,
A strange half-humane, and ungainly brood,
Their speech uncouth, as are their manners rude;
When they would seem to speak the mortals roar
As loud as waves contending with the shore;
Their widen'd mouths into a circle grow,
For all their vowells are but A and O.
The beasts have the same language, and the cow
After her owner's voice is taught to low;
The lamb to baw, as doth her keeper, tries,
And puppies learn to howl from children's cries.

Some think us honest, but thro' this beliefe,
That where all steal, there no one is a thief.
Rogues of all kinds you may at leisure choose;
One finds a horse, another fears the noose
And humbly is content to take the shoes.

It never yet could be exactly stated
What time of th'year this ball was first created.
Some plead for summer, but the wise bethought 'em
That th'earth like other fruits was ripe in Autumn;
While gayer wits the Vernal bloom preferr,
And think the smiling world did first appear
In th'youthfull glory of the budding year.
But the bleak Noul, and all the marshes round
(A sort of chaos, and unfinish'd ground)
Were made in winter, one may safely swear,
For winter is the only season there.

Of four prime Elements all things below
By various mixtures were compos'd, but now
(At least with us) they are reduc'd to two.
The dayly want of fire our chimneys mourn,
Cowdung, and turf may smoke, but never burn.
Water and earth are all that Brent can boast,
The air in mists and dewy steams is lost;
We live on fogs, and in this moory sink
When we are thought to breath, we rather drink.

It's said the world at length in flames must dy
And thus interr'd in its own ashes lie.
If any part shall then remain entire
And be excepted from that common fire,
Sure 'twas this watry spot that nature meant,
For tho' the world be burn'd, this never will be Brent.English