For Love, that little urchin,
About this widow lurching,

Had slily fix'd his dart;
The silent creeping flame
Boil'd sore in ev'ry vein,

And glow'd about her heart.

So when a pipe we smoke,
And from a flint provoke

The sparks that twinkling play, The touchwood, old and dry, With heat begins to fry,

And gently wastes away.

With art she patch'd up nature,
Reforming ev'ry feature,

Restoring ev'ry grace:
To gratify her pride,

She stopp'd each cranny wide,
And painted o'er her face.

Nor red, nor eke the white,
Was wanting to invite,

Nor coral lips that pout:

But, oh! in vain she tries
With darts to arm those eyes

That dimly squint about.
Volume II.

E

With order and with care
Her pyramid of hair

Sublimely mounts the sky;
And, that she might prevail,
She bolster'd up her tail

With rumps three stories high.

With many a rich perfume
She purify'd her room,

As there was need, no doubt; For on these warm occasions Offensive exhalations

Are apt to fly about.

On beds of roses lying,
Expecting, wishing, dying,
Thus languish'd for her love
The Cyprian Queen of old,
As merry bards have told,
All in a myrtle grove,

In pale of mother church
She fondly hop'd to lurch,

But, ay me! hop'd in vain ;

No doctor could be found
Who this her case profound

Durst venture to explain.

At length a youth full smart,
Who oft by magic art

Had div'd in many a hole;
Or kilderkin, or tun,
Or hogshead, 'twas all one,
He'd sound it with his pole.

His art, and eke his face,
So suited to her case,

Engag'd her love-sick heart; Quoth she, "My prety Diver, * With thee I'll live for ever, "And from thee never part.

"For thee my bloom reviving, "For thee fresh charms arising, "Shall melt thee into joy; "Nor doubt, my pretty Sweeting! "Ere nine months are completing, "To see a bonny boy."

As ye have seen, no doubt,
A candle when just out

In flames break forth agen;
So shone this widow bright,
All blazing in despight

Of threescore years and ten.

CANIDIA'S EPITHALAMIUM.

UPON THE SAME.

TIME, as malevolent as old,

To blast Canidia's face,

(Which once 'twas rapture to behold) With wrinkles and disgrace.

Not so in blooming beauty bright,
Each envying virgin's pattern,
She reign'd with undisputed right
A priestess of St. Cattern. *

Each sprightly soph, each brawny thrum,
Spent his first runnings here,
And hoary doctors dribbling come,

To languish and despair.

Low at her feet the prostrate Arts

Their humble homage pay;

To her, the tyrant of their hearts,

Each bard directs his lay.

* She was bar-keeper to the Cattern-wheel in Oxford,

But now, when impotent to please,
Alas! she would be doing;
Reversing Nature's wise decrees,
She goes herself a-wooing.

Tho' brib'd with all her pelf, the swain
Most awkwardly complies,
Press'd to bear arms, he serves in pain,
Or from his colours flies.

So does an ivy, green when old,
And sprouting in decay,

In juiceless, joyless arms, infold
A sapling young and gay.

The thriving plant, if better join'd,
Would emulate the skies,

But to that wither'd trunk confin'd,
Grows sickly, pines, and dies.