When Fear, and Care, and grim Despair,
Flock round me in a ghostly crowd,
One charm dispels them all in air;—
I blow my after-dinner cloud.
’Tis melancholy to devour
The gentle chop in loneliness.
I look on six—my prandial hour—
With dread not easy to express.
And yet, for every penance done,
Due compensation seems allow’d,