Original Poems, Volume 1

Front Cover
A. Kincaid and W. Creech, and J. Balfour, 1773 - English poetry

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 154 - Stock, stone, or other homely pedigree, In his defence his servants are as bold As if he had been born of beaten gold. The Jewish Rabbins, though their enemies, In this conclude them honest men and wise ; For 'twas their duty, all the learned think, T" espouse his cause by whom they eat and drink.
Page 156 - A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o'er-informed the tenement of clay...
Page 139 - tis sung, by Tiber's Brook, 130 Presage of sway from twice six vultures took. Th' admiring throng loud acclamations make, And omens of his future empire take. The sire then shook the honours of his head, And from his brows damps of oblivion shed Full on the filial...
Page 141 - This is thy province, this thy wondrous way, New humours to invent for each new play: This is that boasted bias of thy mind, By which one way to dulness 'tis inclined: Which makes thy writings lean on one side still, And, in all changes, that way bends thy will. Nor let thy mountain-belly make pretence Of likeness; thine's a tympany of sense. A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ, But sure thou'rt but a kilderkin of wit.
Page 136 - Even I, a dunce of more renown than they, Was sent before but to prepare thy way; And, coarsely clad in Norwich drugget, came To teach the nations in thy greater name.
Page 168 - A man so various that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome : Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Page 167 - Who cost too much and did too little good. These were for laying honest David by On principles of pure good husbandry. With them joined all the haranguers of the throng That thought to get preferment by the tongue.
Page 170 - His cooks with long disuse their trade forgot ; Cool was his kitchen, though his brains were hot. Such frugal virtue malice may...
Page 160 - Given by the love of all your native land, Than a successive title, long and dark, Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah's ark.
Page 188 - Those are the only serpents he can write ; The height of his ambition is, we know, But to be master of a puppet-show, On that one stage his works may yet appear, And a month's harvest keeps him all the year.

Bibliographic information