"Sweet Ellen gave the pot with hands
That might with thousands vie:
Her face like veal, was white and red
And sparkling was her eye.
"Her shape, the poplar's easy form
Her neck the lily's white
Soft heaving, like the summer wave
And lifting rich delight.
"And o'er this neck of globe-like mould
In ringlets waved her hair;
Ah, what sweet contrast for the eye
The jetty and the fair.
"Her lips, like cherries moist with dew
So pretty, plump, and pleasing,
And like the juicy cherry too
Did seem to ask for squeezing.
"Yet what is beauty's use alack!
To market can it go?
Say—will it buy a loin of veal,
Or round of beef? No—no.
"Will butchers say 'Choose what you please
Miss Nancy or Miss Betty?'
Or gardeners, 'Take my beans and peas
Because you are so pretty?'"
He wrote a pleasant satire on the tax upon hair-powder introduced by Pitt, and the shifts to which poor people would be put to hide their hair. He seems to have been as inimical as most people to taxation. He parodies Dryden's "Alexander's Feast:"
"Of taxes now the sweet musician sung
The court and chorus joined
And filled the wondering wind,
And taxes, taxes, through the garden rung.
"Monarch's first of taxes think
Taxes are a monarch's treasure
Sweet the pleasure
Rich the treasure
Monarchs love a guinea clink...."
He was, as we may suppose, averse to making Sunday a severe day. He wrote a poem against those who wished to introduce a more strict observance of Sunday, and called it, "The Sorrows of Sunday." He says:
"Heaven glorieth not in phizzes of dismay
Heaven takes no pleasure in perpetual sobbing,
Consenting freely that my favourite day,
May have her tea and rolls, and hob-and-nobbing;
Life with the down of cygnets may be clad
Ah! why not make her path a pleasant track—
No! cries the pulpit Terrorist (how mad)
No! let the world be one huge hedge-hog's back."
He wrote a great variety of gay little sonnets, such as "The Ode to a Pretty Barmaid:"
"Sweet nymph with teeth of pearl and dimpled chin,
And roses, that would tempt a saint to sin,
Daily to thee so constant I return,
Whose smile improves the coffee's every drop
Gives tenderness to every steak and chop
And bids our pockets at expenses spurn.
"What youth well-powdered, of pomatum smelling
Shall on that lovely bosom fix his dwelling?
Perhaps the waiter, of himself so full!
With thee he means the coffee-house to quit
Open a tavern and become a wit
And proudly keep the head of the Black Bull.
"'Twas here the wits of Anna's Attic age
Together mingled their poetic rage,
Here Prior, Pope, and Addison and Steele,
Here Parnel, Swift, and Bolingbroke and Gay
Poured their keen prose, and turned the merry lay
Gave the fair toast, and made a hearty meal.
"Nymph of the roguish smile, which thousands seek
Give me another, and another steak,
A kingdom for another steak, but given
By thy fair hands, that shame the snow of heaven...."
He seems to have some misgivings about conjugal felicity:—
"An owl fell desperately in love, poor soul,
Sighing and hooting in his lonely hole—
A parrot, the dear object of his wishes
Who in her cage enjoyed the loaves and fishes
In short had all she wanted, meat and drink
Washing and lodging full enough I think."