MATTHEW GREEN.

From THE SPLEEN.

When by its magic lantern Spleen
With frightful figures spreads life's scene
Hail! water-gruel healing power!
Whom doctors secretly adore.

Some recommend the bowling-green;
Some hilly walks; all exercise;
Fling but a stone, the giant dies.

"CONFORMITY TO CHURCH AND STATE."

I go, pursuant to my plan,
To Mecca with the caravan.

Reforming schemes are none of mine;
To mend the world's a vast design;
Like theirs, who tug in little boat,
To pull to them the ship afloat.

Contentment, parent of delight,
So much a stranger to our sight,
Say, goddess, in what happy place
Mortals behold thy blooming face?
Thy gracious auspices impart,
And for thy temple choose my heart.
They whom thou deignest to inspire,
Thy science learn to bound desire;
By happy alchemy of mind
They turn to pleasure all they find.

DEAN JONATHAN SWIFT.

[Oh thou, whatever title please thine ear,
Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver,
Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air,
Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy-chair.
POPE'S Dunciad.]

STELLA'S BIRTHDAY.

1720.

All travellers at first incline
Where'er they see the fairest sign;
And if they find the chambers neat,
And like the cellar and the meat,
Will call again, and recommend
The Angel Inn to every friend.

What though the painting grows decayed,
The house will never lose its trade;
Nay, though the treacherous tapster Thomas
Hangs a new Angel two doors from us,
As fine as daubers' hands can make it,
In hopes that strangers may mistake it,
We think it both a shame and sin
To quit the true old Angel Inn.

Now this is Stella's case in fact,
An angel's face, a little cracked;
(Could poets or could painters fix
How angels look at thirty-six ;)
This drew us in at first to find
In such a form an angel's mind;
And every virtue now supplies
The fainting rays of Stella's eyes.
See at her levee crowding swains,
Whom Stella freely entertains

With breeding, humour, wit, and sense
And puts them but to small expense.

K

Then Cloe, still go on to prate
Of thirty-six and thirty-eight; .
But should you live to see the day
When Stella's locks must all be grey,
When age must print a furrowed trace
On every feature of her face . . .
All men of sense will pass your door,
And crowd to Stella's at fourscore.

From CADENUS TO VANESSA.

'Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools,
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.

From DAPHNE.

Send me hence ten thousand miles,
From a face that always smiles.

TO A LADY.

Thought the life of every lady
Should be one continual play-day.

ON THE LEGION-CLUB.

Not a bow-shot from the college:

Half the globe from sense and knowledge.

ALEXANDER POPE.

[When Pope can in one couplet fix

More sense than I can do in six.

Awake my St. John ! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Let us, since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die,—
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of Man,
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot,
Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield;
The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore,
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
Eye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God, to man.

Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known,

'Tis ours to trace Him only in our own.

He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,
What varied beings people every star―
May tell why Heaven has made us as we are.
Ask of thy Mother Earth why oaks are made
Taller and stronger than the weeds they shade!
Or ask of yonder argent fields above,

Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove!

MATTHEW GREEN.

From THE SPLEEN.

When by its magic lantern Spleen
With frightful figures spreads life's scene
Hail! water-gruel healing power!
Whom doctors secretly adore.

Some recommend the bowling-green;
Some hilly walks; all exercise;
Fling but a stone, the giant dies.

"CONFORMITY TO CHURCH AND STATE."

I go, pursuant to my plan,
To Mecca with the caravan.

Reforming schemes are none of mine;
To mend the world's a vast design;
Like theirs, who tug in little boat,
To pull to them the ship afloat.

Contentment, parent of delight,
So much a stranger to our sight,
Say, goddess, in what happy place
Mortals behold thy blooming face?
Thy gracious auspices impart,
And for thy temple choose my heart.
They whom thou deignest to inspire,
Thy science learn to bound desire;
By happy alchemy of mind.

They turn to pleasure all they find.