(1830)
In merry England I computed once
The number of the dunces—dunce for dunce;
There were four hundred, if I don't forget,
All readers of the L———y G——-e;
But if the author to himself keep true,
In some short months they'll be reduced to two.
ON THE FAST-DAY
To name a Day for general prayer and fast
Is surely worse than of no sort of use;
For you may see with grief, from first to last
On fast-days people of all ranks are loose.
NONSENSE VERSES
Lazy-bones, lazy-bones, wake up, and peep!
The cat's in the cupboard, your mother's asleep.
There you sit snoring, forgetting her ills;
Who is to give her her Bolus and Pills?
Twenty fine Angels must come into town,
All for to help you to make your new gown:
Dainty AERIAL Spinsters, and Singers;
Aren't you ashamed to employ such white fingers?
Delicate hands, unaccustom'd to reels,
To set 'em a working a poor body's wheels?
Why they came down is to me all a riddle,
And left HALLELUJAH broke off in the middle:
Jove's Court, and the Presence angelical, cut—
To eke out the work of a lazy young slut.
Angel-duck, Angel-duck, winged, and silly,
Pouring a watering-pot over a lily,
Gardener gratuitous, careless of pelf,
Leave her to water her lily herself,
Or to neglect it to death if she chuse it:
Remember the loss is her own, if she lose it.
ON WAWD
(Of the East India House)
What Wawd knows, God knows;
But God knows what Wawd knows.
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