'Passion, O me! how I run on;
There's that that would be thought upon,
I trow, beside the bride:
The business of the kitchen's great,
For it is fit that men should eat;
Nor was it there denied.
'Now hats fly off, and youths carouse;
Healths first go round, and then the house,
The bride's came thick and thick;
And when 'twas named another's health,
Perhaps he made it hers by stealth;
And who could help it, Dick?
'O' th' sudden up they rise and dance;
Then sit again and sigh and glance;
Then dance again and kiss.
Thus sev'ral ways the time did pass,
Till every woman wished her place,
And every man wished his.
'By this time all were stolen aside
To counsel and undress the bride;
But that he must not know—
But yet 'twas thought he guessed her mind,
And did not mean to stay behind
Above an hour or so.'
What can be finer than the verse commencing, 'Her feet beneath her petticoat,' or that which follows: 'Her cheeks,' etc.? That Suckling could write like this, proves that there was in him the dawning of no ordinary genius. He challenges our admiration, not so much for what he has done, as for what he might have done, had his life been spared. Or we should say, rather, what he might have done had he devoted half as much of the life that was granted him to literary labors, as he did to pleasure and dissipation.
TO JOHN BULL.
I hear a voice you can not hear,
Which says it will not pay;
I see a hand you can not see,
Which motions t'other way.
The thumb is horizontalized,
The fingers perpendic'lar,
And scorn for you seems giving there
A motion quite partic'lar.