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Page 72. Pindaric Ode to the Tread Mill.
First printed in The New Times, October 24, 1825. The version there given differed considerably from that preserved by Lamb. It had no divisions. At the end of what is now the first strophe qame these lines:—
Now, by Saint Hilary,
(A Saint I love to swear by,
Though I should forfeit thereby
Five ill-spared shillings to your well-warm'd seat,
Worshipful Justices of Worship-street;
Or pay my crown
At great Sir Richard's still more awful mandate down:)
They raise my gorge—
Those Ministers of Ann, or the First George,
(Which was it?
For history is silent, and my closet—
Reading affords no clue;
I have the story, Pope, alone from you;)
In such a place, &c.
Lamb offered the Ode to his friend Walter Wilson, for his work on Defoe, to which Lamb contributed prose criticisms (see Vol. I.), but Wilson did not use it. The letter making this offer, together with the poem, differing very slightly in one or two places, is preserved in the Bodleian.
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Page 75. Going or Gone.
First printed in Hone's Table Book, 1827, signed Elia, under the title "Gone or Going." It was there longer, after stanza 6 coming the following:—
Had he mended in right time,
He need not in night time,
(That black hour, and fright-time,)
Till sexton interr'd him,
Have groan'd in his coffin,
While demons stood scoffing—
You'd ha' thought him a-coughing—
My own father[28] heard him!
Could gain so importune,
With occasion opportune,
That for a poor Fortune,
That should have been ours[29],
In soul he should venture
To pierce the dim center,
Where will-forgers enter Amid the dark Powers?—