Short Poems

With angel-face, and faultless form,
How strange! that you're not to my liking;
Yet, when you cuff your spouse, and storm,
I own your beauty, — vastly striking!

Wouldst thou find my ashes? Look
In the pages of my book;
And, as these thy hand doth turn,
Know here is my funeral urn.

The martial pageant that absorbed our gaze
And fired my pulses, when the gladdened air
Quickened with joy the sun's majestic rays,
All disappeared! All save thy face so fair,
Which seemed to say, " A desert at the best
Is life, o'er which the floating mirage-gleams
Incite our paces, until we find rest
Beside some angel of our better dreams. "

In vain, satyric tomes, you write,
Your verses hurt not, 'faith,
But recipes in prose indite!
— — Your prose is instant death.

Because your books are richly bound,
You feel a scholar through and through?
Then one Cremona, smooth and sound,
Might make a fiddler of you, too!

The jolly members of a toping club,
Like pipestaves, are but hoop'd into a tub;
And in a close confederacy link,
For nothing else, but only to hold drink.

Do not mine affection slight,
'Cause my locks with age are white:
Your breasts have snow without, and snow within,
While flames of fire in your bright eyes are seen.

Could Kate for Dick compose the gordian string,
The Tyburn knot how near the nuptial ring!
A loving wife, obedient to her vows,
I bound in duty to exalt her spouse.

Would honest Tom G — — d get rid of a scold,
The torture, the plague of his life!
Pray tell him to take down his lion of gold,
And hang up his brazen-fac'd wife.

A CATCH .

Give the toast — my good fellow, be jovial and gay,
And let the brisk moments pass jocund away!
Here's the King — take your bumpers, my brave British souls,
Who guards your fair freedom should crown your full bowls;
Let him live — long and happy, see Lewis brought down,
And taste all the comforts, no cares of a crown.