Hardly a man is now alive
Who recalls that in 1795
Occurred the death of a Mr. James Boswell;
A joke on his doctor, who'd thought that he was well.

Hard helmets and high boots
tumescent in the sun,
got-up in rubber skin
and leather hide,
black, strapped, laced,
buckled with grommets,
chrome and brassy-eyed,
their dress itself is an act of sex,
as the body, used,
tumbles to its end
like jointed dolls we outgrew
and threw aside.
So the exalted race
to their base death
in self-abuse begins,
as the body's transient existence
sings its violent end,
to replace that dull, dull death
that waits upon the rest of us
behind a desk,
behind another desk,

1. Hard heart of mine, O that the Lord Would
2. I hear the heavenly pilgrims tell Their
this hard heart subdue! O come thou blest life
sins are all forgiven; And while on earth their
giving word, And form my soul anew.
bodies dwell, Their souls enjoy a heaven.

3. The Christians sing redeeming love,
And talk of joys divine;
And soon they say in realms above,
In glory they shall shine.

4. But, ah! 'tis all an unknown tongue,
I never knew that love;
I cannot sing that heavenly song,
Nor tell of joys above.

TIDE ROUND A FINGER.

The bell that strikes the warning hour,
Reminds me that I should not linger,
And winds around my heart its power,
Tight as the string around my finger.

A sweet good-night I give, and then
Far from my thoughts I need must fling her,
Who bless'd that lovely evening, when
She tied the string around my finger.

Lovely and virtuous, kind and fair,
A sweet-toned belle, Oh! who shall ring her!

Of the two spoiled, barn-sour geldings
we owned that year, it was Red —
skittish and prone to explode
even at fourteen years — who'd let me
hold to my face his own: the massive labyrinthine
caverns of the nostrils, the broad plain
up the head to the eyes. He'd let me stroke
his coarse chin whiskers and take
his soft meaty underlip
in my hands, press my man's carnivorous
kiss to his grass-nipping upper half of one, just
so that I could smell
the long way his breath had come from the rain
and the sun, the lungs and the heart,

SENT TO MISS BELL H——, WITH A PAIR OF BUCKLES .

Happy trifles, can ye bear
Sighs of fondness to the fair?
If your pointed tongues can tell,
How I love my charming Bell:
Fondly take a lover's part,
Plead the anguish of my heart.

 Go—ye trifles—gladly fly,
(Gracious in my fair one's eye)
Fly—your envy'd bliss to meet;
Fly, and kiss the charmer's feet.

 Happy there, with waggish play,
Though you revel day by day,
Like the donor, every night,
(Robb'd of his supreme delight)
To subdue your wanton pride,

What more delightful than to wander forth
In spring, before the sun has chas'd away
The freshness of the morn; or shook the dew
From off the tender grass? Nature seems
As young, as when the morning light first broke
On Eden; as calm the river's surface;
And the birds as sweetly tune their morning
Hymn. Beneath the shade of oak reflected
In the sleeping stream, I set me down,
And muse and gaze on the unrival'd scene.
Would that my thoughts could speak, my tongue describe
The pleasures, that a scene like this affords!

Happy the man, who on the mountain-side
Bending o'er fern and flowers his basket fills:
Yet he will never know the outline-power,
The awful Whole of the Eternal Hills.

So some there are, who never feel the strength
In thy blind eyes, majestic and complete,
Which conquers those, who motionlessly sit,
O dear divine old Giant, at thy feet.

Happy the Man who his whole time doth bound
Within th'inclosure of his little ground.
Happy the Man whom the same humble place,
(Th'hereditary Cottage of his Race)
From his first rising infancy has known.
And by degrees sees gentle bending down,
With natural propension to that Earth
Which both preserv'd his Life, and gave him Birth.
Him no false distant lights by Fortune set,
Could ever into foolish wandrings get.
He never dangers either saw or fear'd:
The dreadful storms at Sea he never heard.
He never heard the shril alarms of War,

Happy the feeling from the bosom thrown
In perfect shape (whose beauty Time shall spare
Though a breath made it) like a bubble blown
For summer pastime into wanton air;
Happy the thought best likened to a stone
Of the sea-beach, when, polished with nice care,
Veins it discovers exquisite and rare,
Which for the loss of that moist gleam atone
That tempted first to gather it. That here,
O chief of Friends! such feelings I present
To thy regard, with thoughts so fortunate,
Were a vain notion; but the hope is dear,