So parting fummer bids her flow'ry prime
Attend the fun to drefs fome foreign clime,
While with'ring seasons in fucceffion, here,
Strip the gay gardens, and deform the year.
But thou, fince Nature bids, the world refign,
'Tis now thy daughter's daughter's time to shine.
With more address, or fuch as pleases more,
She runs her female exercises o'er,
Unfurls her closes, raps or turns the fan,
And smiles, or blushes at the creature man.
With quicker life, as gilded coaches pass,
In fideling courtesy she drops the glafs.
With better strength, on vifit-days fhe bears
To mount her fifty flights of ample stairs.
Her mein, her fhape, her temper, eyes and tongue Are fure to conquer.- for the rogue is young:
And all that's madly wild, or oddly gay,
We call it only pretty Fanny's way.
Let time that makes you homely, make you fage,
The sphere of wisdom is the sphere of age.
'Tis true, when beauty dawns with early fire,
And hears the flattering tongues of soft desire,
If not from virtue, from its gravest ways
The foul with pleafing avocation ftrays.
But beauty gone, 'tis easier to be wife;
As harpers better, by the lofs of eyes.
Henceforth retire, reduce your roving airs,
Haunt lefs the plays, and more the public pray'rs,
Reject the Mechlin head, and gold brocade,
Go pray, in fober Norwich crape array'd.
Thy pendent diamonds let thy Fanny take,
(Their trembling luftre fhows how much you shake) Or bid her wear thy necklace row'd with pearl, You'll find your Fanny an obedient girl.
So for the reft, with lefs incumbrance hung,
You walk thro' life, unmingled with the young;
And view the fhade and substance as you pass
With joint endeavour trifling at the glass,
Or Folly dreft, and rambling all her days,
To meet her counterpart, and grow by praife:
Yet still fedate yourself, and gravely plain,
You neither fret, nor envy at the vain.
'Twas thus, if man with woman we compare, The wife Athenian croft a glittering fair,
Unmov'd by tongues and fights, he walk'd the place,
Thro' tape, toys, tinfel, gimp, perfume and lace;
Then bends from Mars's hill his awful eyes,
And What a world I never want? he cries :
But cries unheard: for folly will be free.
So parts the buzzing gaudy crowd, and he :
As careless he for them, as they for him;
He wrapt in wisdom, and they whirl'd by whim.
HOME hither, boy, we'll hunt to-day
The Book-Worm, ravening beast of prey,
Produc'd by parent earth, at odds,
As fame reports it, with the Gods.
Him frantic hunger wildly drives
Against a thousand authors lives:
Thro' all the fields of wit he flies;
Dreadful his head with cluft'ring eyes,
With horns without, and tusks within,
And scales to serve him for a skin.
Obferve him nearly, left he climb
To wound the bards of ancient time,
Or down the vale of fancy go
To tear fome modern wretch below.
On ev'ry corner fix thine eye,
Or ten to one he flips thee by.
See where his teeth a paffage eat:
We'll rouse him from the deep retreat.
But who the shelter's forc'd to give?
'Tis facred Virgil, as I live!
From leaf to leaf, from fong to fong,
He draws the tadpole form along,
He mounts the gilded edge before,
He's up, he fcuds the cover o'er,
He turns, he doubles, there he past,
And here we have him, caught at last.
Infatiate brute, whofe teeth abufe
The sweeteft fervants of the mufe.
(Nay never offer to deny,
I took thee in the fact to fly.)
His roses nipt in ev'ry page,
My poor Anacreon mourns thy rage.
By thee my Ovid wounded lies;
By thee my Lesbia's sparrow dies :
Thy rabid teeth have half destroy'd
The work of love in Biddy Floyd,
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