Not a cloud nor breeze, ..`

O you most heathen Deities! if ever

My bones reach home (for, for the flesh upon them, That hath resolved itself into a dew),

I shall have learnt owl-wisdom. Thou vile Phœbus, Set me a Persian sun-idolater

Upon this turnpike road, and I'll convert him

With no inquisitorial argument

But thy own fires.

Now woe be to me wretch,

That I was in a heretic country born!

Else might some mass for the poor souls that bleach,

And burn away the calx of their offences

In that great Purgatory crucible,

Help me. O Jupiter! my poor complexion!
I am made a copper-Indian of already,
And if no kindly cloud will parasol me,

My very cellular membrane will be changed,..
I shall be negrofied.

A brook! a brook!

Oh what a sweet cool sound!

"Tis very nectar!

It runs like life thro' every strengthen'd limb!

Nymph of the stream, now take a grateful prayer.

THE PIG.

A COLLOQUIAL POEM.

Jacob! I do not love to see thy nose
Turned up in scornful curve at yonder Pig.
It would be well, my friend, if we, like him
Were perfect in our nature! why dislike
The sow-born grunter?.. He is obstinate,
Thou answerest; ugly, and the filthiest beast
That banquets upon offal. Now I pray you
Hear the Pig's Counsel.

Is he obstinate?
We must not, Jacob, be deceived by words,
By sophist sounds. A democratic beast
He knows that his unmerciful drivers seek
Their profit and not his. He hath not learnt
That Pigs were made for man, born to be brawn'd
And baconized; that he must please to give

Just what his gracious masters please to take;
Perhaps his tusks, the weapons Nature gave
For self-defence, the general privilege;

Perhaps, hark Jacob! dost thou hear that horn?
Woe to the young posterity of pork!

Their enemy

is at hand.

Again. Thou say'st

The Pig is ugly. Jacob, look at him!
Those eyes have taught the Lover flattery.
His face,.. nay Jacob, Jacob! were it fair
To judge a Lady in her dishabille?
Fancy it drest, and with salt-petre rouged.
Behold his tail, my friend; with curls like that
The wanton hop marries her stately spouse;
So crisp in beauty Amoretta's hair

Rings round her lover's soul the chains of love.
And what is beauty, but the aptitude
Of parts harmonious? give thy fancy scope
And thou wilt find that no imagined change
Can beautify this beast. Place at his end
The starry glories of the Peacock's pride;

Give him the Swan's white breast; for his horn-hoofs

Shape such a foot and ankle as the waves

Crowded in eager rivalry to kiss,

When Venus from the enamour'd sea arose;.

Jacob, thou canʼst but make a monster of him,
All alteration man could think, would mar

His Pig-perfection.

A dirty life.

The last charge,.. he lives

Here I could shelter him

With noble and right-reverend precedents,

And show by sanction of authority

That 'tis a very honourable thing

To thrive by dirty ways. But let me rest
On better ground the unanswerable defence.
The Pig is a philosopher, who knows
No prejudice. Dirt? Jacob, what is dirt?
If matter, why the delicate dish that tempts
An o'ergorged Epicure to the last morsel
That stuffs him to the throat-gates is no more.
If matter be not, but as Sages say,
Spirit is all, and all things visible
Are one, the infinitely modified,

Think, Jacob, what that Pig is, and the mire
Wherein he stands knee-deep?

And there! that breeze

Pleads with me, and has won thee to the smile That speaks conviction. O'er yon blossom'd field Of beans it came, and thoughts of bacon rise.

The DANCING BEAR.

Recommended to the Advocates for the SLAVE-TRADE.

Rare music! I would rather hear cat-courtship
Under my bed-room window in the night,
Than this scraped cat-gut's screak. Rare dancing too!
Alas poor Bruin! How he foots the pole,
And waddles round it with unwieldy steps

Swaying from side to side! . . The dancing master
Hath had as profitless a pupil in him

As when he would have tortured my poor toes
To minuet grace, and made them move like clock-work
In musical obedience. Bruin! Bruin!

Thou art but a clumsy biped!.. and the mob

With noisy merriment mock his heavy pace,

And laugh to see him led by the nose; .. themselves Led by the nose, embruted, and in the eye

Of Reason from their Natures purposes

As miserably perverted.