For, catch it nicely by the head,
It must come out, alive or dead.
Why, Strephon, will you
tell the reft?
And must you needs describe the chest?
That careless wench! no creature warn her
To move it out of yonder corner !
But leave it standing full in sight,
For you to exercise your spite?
In vain the workman shew'd his wit,
With rings and hinges counterfeit,
To make it seem in this disguise
A cabinet to vulgar eyes,
Which Strephon ventur'd to look in,
Resolv'd to go through thick and thin.
He lifts the lid: there needs no more,
He smelt it all the time before.
As, from within Pandora's box,
When Epimetheus op'd the locks,
A sudden universal crew
Of human evils upward few;
He still was comforted to find
That hope at last remain'd behind.
So Strephon lifting up the lid,
To view what in the chest was hid,
The vapours flew from out the vent;
But Strephon, cautious, never meant
The
The bottom of the pan to grope,
And foul his hands in search of hope.
O! ne'er may such'a vile machine
Be once in Cælia's chamber seen!
0! may she better learn to keep
Those secrets of the boary deep* i
As mutton-cutlets, + prime of meat,
Which, though with art you salt and beat,
As laws of cookery require,
And roast them at the clearest fire;
If from I adown the hopeful chops,
The fat upon a cinder drops,
To stinking smoke it turns the fame,
Pois’ning the Aesh from whence it came,
And up exhales a greasy stench,
For which you curse the careless wench:
So things which must not be exprest,
When plumpt into the reeking chest,
Send up an excremental smell
To taint the parts from whence they fell;
The petticoats and gown perfume,
And waft a stink round ev'ry room.
Thus finishing his grand survey, The swain disgusted slunk away;
* Milton.
+ Primo virorum.
I Vid.
DnD's
Works and N. P-y's.
M 3
Repeating in his am'rous fits,
“Oh! Cælia, Celia, Cælia sh -."
But vengeance, goddess never sleeping,
Soon punish'd Strephon for his peeping:
His foul imagination links
Each dame he fees with all her stinks;
And, if unsav'ry odours fly,
Corceives a lady standing by.
All women his description fits,
And both ideas jump like wits;
By vicious fancy coupled fast,
And still appearing in contrast.
I pity wretched Strephon, blind
To all the charms of woman-kind.
Should I the queen of love refuse,
Because she rose from stinking ooze?
To him that looks behind the scene,
Statira’s but some pocky quean.
When Calia all her glory fhows,
If Strephon would but stop his nose,
Who now so impiously blasphemes
Her ointments, daubs, and paints, and
He soon would learn to think like me,
And bless his ravilh'd eyes to see
Such order from confusion sprung,
Such gaudy tulips rais'd from dung.
Written in the Year 1730.
F neither brass nor marble can withstand The mortal force of Time's destructive
hand; If mountains fink to vales, if cities die, And less’ning rivers mourn their fountains
dry: When my old casfock (said a Welsh divine) Is out at elbows; why should I repine?
REVOLUTION at MARKET-HILL.
Written in the Year 1730.
FR
ROM distant regions Fortune sends
An odd triumvirate of friends; Where Phoebus pays a scanty ftipend, Where never yet a codling ripen'd: * Scarron hath written a larger poem on the same subject.
M4
Hither
Hither the frantic goddess draws
Three suff'rers in a ruin'd cause:
By faction banish'd here unite,
A dean, a f Spaniard, and a knight1;
Unite, both on conditions cruel;
The dean and Spaniard find it too well:
Condemn'd to live in service hard;
On either side his honour's guard,
The dean, to guard his honour's back,
Must build a castle at & Drumlack :
The Spaniard, fore against his will,
Must raise a fort at Market-bill.
And thus the pair of humble gentry
At north and south are posted centry;
While in his lordly castle fixt
The knight triumphant reigns betwixt:
And, what the wretches most resent,
To be his slaves must
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