A Health to Captain Findlay,
Bravo! Captain Findlay!
When we made but ill speed with the Speedwell,
Neither poets nor sheep could feed well:
Now grief rotted the Liver,
Yet Malta, dear Malta, as far off as ever!

Bravo! Captain Findlay,
Foretold a fair wind,
Of a constant mind,
For he knew which way the wind lay!

May 4, 1804.

Now first published from a Notebook. The rhymes are inserted between the following entries:—'Thursday night—Wind chopped about and about, once fairly to the west, for a minute or two—but now, 1/2 past 9, the Captain comes down and promises a fair wind for to-morrow. We shall see.' 'Well, and we have got a wind the right way at last!'

9

ON DONNE'S POEM 'TO A FLEA'

Be proud as Spaniards! Leap for pride ye Fleas!
Henceforth in Nature's mimic World grandees.
In Phœbus' archives registered are ye,
And this your patent of Nobility.
No skip-Jacks now, nor civiller skip-Johns,
Dread Anthropophagi! specks of living bronze,
[[981]] I hail you one and all, sans Pros or Cons,
Descendants from a noble race of Dons.
What tho' that great ancestral Flea be gone,
Immortal with immortalising Donne,
His earthly spots bleached off a Papist's gloze,
In purgatory fire on Bardolph's nose.

1811.

Now first published from an MS.