Tell Poets of our dayes
They doe profane the Muses,
In soothing Sin with praise,
That all the world abuses.
Tell Tradesmen waight and measure
They craftily abuse,
Thereby to heap-up treasure,
Though Heav'n thereby they lose.
Goe tell the vitious rich,
By usury to gaine
Their fingers alwaies itch,
To soules and bodies paine.
Yea tell the wretched poore
That they the wealthy hate,
And grudge to see at doore
Another in their state.
Tell all the world throughout
That all's but vanity,
Her pleasures doe but flout
With sly security.
Tell Kings and Beggars base,
Yea tell both young and old,
They all are in one case,
And must all to the mould.
And now kinde Host adieu,
Rest thou in earthly Tombe,
Till Christ shall all renew,
And then I'll thee resume.
THE BOWERY AT NIGHT.
Coming up from one of the Brooklyn ferries, after dark, on a sultry summer evening, I take my way through the close-built district of New York City still known as "The Swamp." The narrow streets of the place are deserted by this time, but they have been lively enough during the day with the busy leather-dealers and their teams; for this is the great hide and leather mart of the city, as any one might guess even now in the gloom by the pungent odors that arise on every side. The heavy iron doors and window-shutters of the buildings have been locked and barred for the night; and the thick atmosphere of the place appears to affect the gas-lights, which burn sickly and dim in the street lanterns. Nobody lives here at night. The footfalls of the solitary policeman give out a hollow sound as he paces the narrow trottoir of Ferry Street, in the heart of "The Swamp." Over two hundred years ago, when Governor Peter Stuyvesant pastured his flocks and herds hereabouts, the wayfarer would have been more likely to mark a solitary heron than a solitary policeman; for it was really a swamp then, and much earth-work must have been expended in making the solid ground whereon the buildings now stand. Neither is it probable that, even on the most sultry of summer nights, the nose of old Mynheer Stuyvesant would have been saluted with odors of morocco leather, such as fill the air of "The Swamp" to-night. The wild swamp-flowers, though, gave out some faint perfumes to the night air in those olden times; but the place could hardly have been so still of a summer night as it is now, for the booming of the bullfrog and the piping of his lesser kin must have made night resonant here, and it is reasonable to surmise that owls hooted in the cedar-trees that hung over the tawny sedges of the swamp. "Jack-o'-Lantern" was the only inhabitant who burned gas hereabouts in those times, and he manufactured his own. The nocturnal raccoon edged his way through the alders here, in the old summer nights, and the muskrat built his house among the reeds. Not a raccoon nor a muskrat is the wayfarer likely to meet with here to-night; but the gray rat of civilization is to be dimly discerned, as he lopes along the gutters in his nightly prowl.