POPE has the talent well to speak,
But not to reach the ear;
His loudest voice is low and weak,
The Dean too deaf to hear.
Awhile they on each other look,
Then different studies choose;
The Dean sits plodding on a book;
Pope walks, and courts the Muse.
Now backs of letters, though design'd
For those who more will need 'em,
Are fill'd with hints, and interlined,
Himself can hardly read 'em.
Each atom by some other struck,
All turns and motions tries;
Till in a lump together stuck,
Behold a poem rise:
Yet to the Dean his share allot;
He claims it by a canon;
That without which a thing is not,
Is causa sine quâ non.
Thus, Pope, in vain you boast your wit;
For, had our deaf divine
Been for your conversation fit,
You had not writ a line.
Of Sherlock,[1] thus, for preaching framed
The sexton reason'd well;
And justly half the merit claim'd,
Because he rang the bell.
A LOVE POEM FROM A PHYSICIAN TO HIS MISTRESS
WRITTEN AT LONDON
By poets we are well assured
That love, alas! can ne'er be cured;
A complicated heap of ills,
Despising boluses and pills.
Ah! Chloe, this I find is true,
Since first I gave my heart to you.
Now, by your cruelty hard bound,
I strain my guts, my colon wound.
Now jealousy my grumbling tripes
Assaults with grating, grinding gripes.
When pity in those eyes I view,
My bowels wambling make me spew.
When I an amorous kiss design'd,
I belch'd a hurricane of wind.
Once you a gentle sigh let fall;
Remember how I suck'd it all;
What colic pangs from thence I felt,
Had you but known, your heart would melt,
Like ruffling winds in cavern pent,
Till Nature pointed out a vent.
How have you torn my heart to pieces
With maggots, humours, and caprices!
By which I got the hemorrhoids;
And loathsome worms my anus voids.
Whene'er I hear a rival named,
I feel my body all inflamed;
Which, breaking out in boils and blains,
With yellow filth my linen stains;
Or, parch'd with unextinguish'd thirst,
Small-beer I guzzle till I burst;
And then I drag a bloated corpus,
Swell'd with a dropsy, like a porpus;
When, if I cannot purge or stale,
I must be tapp'd to fill a pail.
[Footnote 1: The Dean of St. Paul's, father to the Bishop.—H.]
BOUTS RIMEZ[1]
ON SIGNORA DOMITILLA
Our schoolmaster may roar i' th' fit,
Of classic beauty, haec et illa;
Not all his birch inspires such wit
As th'ogling beams of Domitilla.
Let nobles toast, in bright champaign,
Nymphs higher born than Domitilla;
I'll drink her health, again, again,
In Berkeley's tar,[2] or sars'parilla.
At Goodman's Fields I've much admired
The postures strange of Monsieur Brilla;
But what are they to the soft step,
The gliding air of Domitilla?
Virgil has eternized in song
The flying footsteps of Camilla;[3]
Sure, as a prophet, he was wrong;
He might have dream'd of Domitilla.
Great Theodose condemn'd a town
For thinking ill of his Placilla:[4]
And deuce take London! if some knight
O' th' city wed not Domitilla.
Wheeler,[5] Sir George, in travels wise,
Gives us a medal of Plantilla;
But O! the empress has not eyes,
Nor lips, nor breast, like Domitilla.
Not all the wealth of plunder'd Italy,
Piled on the mules of king At-tila,
Is worth one glove (I'll not tell a bit a lie)
Or garter, snatch'd from Domitilla.
Five years a nymph at certain hamlet,
Y-cleped Harrow of the Hill, a-
—bused much my heart, and was a damn'd let
To verse—but now for Domitilla.
Dan Pope consigns Belinda's watch
To the fair sylphid Momentilla,[6]
And thus I offer up my catch
To the snow-white hands of Domitilla.
[Footnote 1: Verses to be made upon a given name or word, at the end of a
line, and to which rhymes must be found.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 2: Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, famous, inter alia, for his
enthusiasm in urging the use of tar-water for all kinds of complaints.
See his Works, edit. Fraser. Fielding mentions it favourably as a
remedy for dropsy, in the Introduction to his "Journal of a voyage to
Lisbon"; and see Austin Dobson's note to his edition of the
"Journal."—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 3: "Aeneid," xi.]
[Footnote 4: Qu. Flaccilla? see Gibbon, iii, chap, xxvii.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 5: Who lived from 1650 to 1723, and wrote and published several
books of travels in Greece and Italy, etc.—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 6: See "The Rape of the Lock.">[