If beauties of inferior kind,
Thus charm, to your's can I be blind.
Know then, I love each living creature!
Each pleafing form of art or nature:
Ev'n lifeless things enamour'd view,
(Not with that fondness I do you)
I love a well-proportion'd column;
A well-carv'd buft; a well-bound volume:
Each mafter-piece of every art
Claims a due portion in my heart:
Nay more, from charms which all admire,
My thoughts to heaven itself aspire;
Smit with your beauties, lovely maid!
I ftill want fuch-as ne'er will fade.
Amidst my cramps and other strange ills,
I am eager to converse with angels;
Such angels, as great Milton drew,
More friendly-not more fair-than you.
With love extenfive I embrace
The feather'd or unfeather'd race;
A peacock I have often seen
More charming than Burke's* captive Queen.
* Queen of France, whose person Mr. Burke speaks of with deferved enthusiasm.
With rapture I behold a lamb
Sporting around its anxious dam:
Nay, fuch my love for harmless creatures,
That you yourself, with those fine features,
With gauze your neck, with plumes your head dreft,
Are rivall'd by a Robin-red-breast.
To call it love indeed's the fashion; Though oft with me 'tis pure compaffion: "Tis pity for their helpless state,
That not a reptile I can hate;
But, as with pleasure I behold
The infect, streak'd with mimick gold,
I, as my fellow-creature, greet
The fnail, that crawls beneath my feet.
Thus, Chloe, ev'n my love for you
Has nothing selfish in its view:
I love each rural nymph I see;
But don't expect them to love me.
For you, with youthful ardour burn;
But dare not hope for a return:
No: trouble not your head about me,
But do not ridicule and flout me.
I love my spaniel and my pointer,
Though do not wish them to requite me, But only not to fnarl, or bite me.
Ah! do not therefore call me fool,
Nor fend me to Moorfields* to school,
Because I fondly gaze on you,
As every mortal man must do,
With admiration and delight,
Who is not void of tafte-or fight.
NE QUID AB AMICO EXPECTES QUOD TUTE AGERE POSSIS.
WHEN autumn now had deck'd the plain
With waving crops of golden grain,
To crown the anxious farmer's care,
And for their harvest all prepare:
A Lark had left her infant brood,
To range the fields in queft of food;
But charg'd them, as conceal'd they lay,
(If chance the farmer came that way)
To liften what they heard him mention,
That might difcover his intention,
a man shoud alwaye be at his beard shaving is the vulgar, provert
How foon he meant to cut his wheat,
That they might thence in time retreat.
Having her caution thus express'd,
She left them cuddling in their nest—
But, when return'd, in wild affright
They begg'd her to remove that night:
For that the farmer told his fon,
'Twas time their harvest was begun;
And that he'd call his neighbours in,
And the next morning would begin.
If that be all, the mother faid,
We need not yet be much afraid:
He that depends upon his neighbour,
Will find him fparing of his labour.
People are flow to serve their friends,
Unless it answers their own ends.
The lark next morning does the fame, Again the careful farmer came;
And, fince his neighbours thus had us'd him,
And so unhandsomely refus'd him;
Piqu'd as he was, he bids his fon
Ride o'er and afk his uncle John,
And cousin George, and coufin Tom;
For they, he said, would gladly come.
The young ones now inform'd the mother, The farmer had engag'd his brother;
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