Short Poems

You ask me the Nymph that delights me the most,
Why — Sir, here's my Service, Belinda 's the Toast .

NOW , bitter cold, the thin and vagrant air
Steals from the frozen shadows of the trees;
Dead are the hills that were so green and fair,
Hushed are the streams, and, joyless as the seas
Far-stretched beneath the cheerless polar sky,
The sad, snow-shrouded fields, in solemn silence lie.

C HLOE'S in every part Divine,
C HLOE'S the Goddess of her Sex:
Who'd think that where such Beauties shine,
The Nymph could ever Swain perplex?

Tom Jingle 's Rivers murmur as they go,
But cold and weak as native Fountains flow;
That they should murmur on , I think it fit;
For who could rest contented with their Wit?

Old Olivia wears a Mask ,
If any one the Reason ask,
This, Answer plain, reveals it:
Her Face of late's so ugly grown,
She does not care to fright the Town,
And so forsooth conceals it .

As on these fading Leaves I wrote my Name ,
Belinda cry'd, her Heart could show the same .
The same alas! in ev'ry Point I fear;
Eras'd by the next Touch, as this is here.

Like Semele should Caelia try her Charms,
Should Jove with equal Ardour fill her Arms;
Well might the Nymph revenge the blasted Dame,
And fire the Thund'rer with a fiercer Flame.

ON A FARTHING GATHERER .

Here lies Jamie Wight, wha was wealthy and proud,
Few shar'd his regard, and far fewer his goud;
He liv'd unesteem'd, and he died unlamented,
The Kirk gat his gear, and auld Jamie is sainted!

ON A CRABBED OLD MAID .

Here slaethorn Mary's hurcheon bouk,
Resigns its fretful bristles —
And is she dead! no — reader, look,
Her grave's o'ergrown with thistles.

If piety and charity, refin'd
By all the graces of an humble mind,
Can saints on earth for joys of heaven prepare;
Then M ORTON'S holy soul inhabits there
Earth, in thy bosom keep his precious dust
Till the last trumpet raise to life the just.