For any novelty, and show
Its variations rather.
Insensibility makes some
Unseasonably deaf and dumb,
When most you need their pity;
'Tis waiting till the tears shall fall
From Gog and Magog in Guildhall,
Those playthings of the city.
The great and small but rarely meet
On terms of amity complete;
The attempt would scarce be madder,
Should any, from the bottom, hope
At one huge stride to reach the top
Of an erected ladder.
Courtier and patriot cannot mix
Their heterogeneous politics
Without an effervescence,
Such as of salts with lemon juice
But which is rarely known to induce,
Like that, a coalescence.
Religion should extinguish strife,
And make a calm of human life;
But even those who differ
Only on topics left at large;
How fiercely will they meet and charge;
No combatants are stiffer.
To prove, alas! my main intent,
Needs no great cost of argument,
No cutting and contriving;
Seeking a real friend, we seem
To adopt the chemist's golden dream
With still less hope of thriving.
Then judge, or ere you choose your man
As circumspectly as you can,
And, having made election,
See that no disrespect of yours,
Such as a friend but ill endures,
Enfeeble his affection.
It is not timber, lead, and stone,
An architect requires alone,
To finish a great building;
The palace were but half complete,
Could he by any chance forget
The carving and the gilding.
As similarity of mind,
Or something not to be defined,
First rivets our attention;
So, manners decent and polite,
The same we practised at first sight,
Must save it from declension.
The man who hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves by thumping on your back
His sense of your great merit,
Is such a friend, that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed,
To pardon, or to bear it.
Some friends make this their prudent plan
Say little, and hear all you can;"
Safe policy, but hateful.
So barren sands imbibe the shower,
But render neither fruit nor flower,
Unpleasant and ungrateful.
They whisper trivial things, and small,
But, to communicate at all
Things serious, deem improper;
Their feculence and froth they show,
But keep their best contents below,
Just like a simmering copper.
These samples (for alas! at last
These are but samples, and a taste
Of evils yet unmentioned)
May prove the task a task indeed,
In which 'tis much if we succeed,
However well-intentioned.
Pursue the theme, and you shall find
A disciplined and furnished mind
To be at least expedient;
And after summing all the rest,
Religion ruling in the breast
A principal ingredient.
True friendship has, in short, a grace
More than terrestrial in its face,
That proves it heaven-descended:
Man's love of woman not so pure,
Nor, when sincerest, so secure
To last till life is ended.
ON THE LOSS OF THE ROYAL GEORGE° [To the March in "Scipio"]
WRITTEN WHEN THE NEWS ARRIVED
TOLL for the brave!
The brave that are no more!
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore!
Eight hundred of the brave,
Whose courage well was tried,
Had made the vessel heel,
And laid her on her side.
A land breeze shook the shrouds,
And she was overset;
Down went the Royal George,
With all her crew complete.
Toll for the brave!
Brave Kempenfelt is gone;
His last sea-fight is fought;
His work of glory done.
It was not in the battle;
No tempest gave the shock;
She sprang no fatal leak;
She ran upon no rock.
His sword was in his sheath;
His fingers held the pen,
When Kempenfelt went down
With twice four hundred men.
Weigh the vessel up,
Once dreaded by our foes! And mingle with our cup
The tear that England owes.
Her timbers yet are sound,
And she may float again
Full-charged with England's thunder,
And plough the distant main.
But Kempenfelt is gone,
His victories are o'er;
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