Where the good go to worlds unknown,
To happy regions plac'd on high
Above the blue and starry sky,
Where, he was with the hope endued,
That he should go, if he were good.
But the good lady took him home
And kept him many a year to come;
When he grew up a charming youth,
In whom simplicity and truth
Did o'er his ev'ry thought preside;
While, with such an anxious guide,
Life smil'd and seem'd to promise fair,
That it would answer to the care
Which her affection had bestow'd,
To set him on his future road:
But when she died poor John was hurl'd
Into a bustling, tricking world.
He had, 'tis true, all she could leave;
She gave him all there was to give;
Of all she had she made him heir,
But left it to a lawyer's care:
No wonder then that he was cheated
And her fond anxious hopes defeated:
So that instead of his possessing
The fruits of her last, dying blessing; |
He had, as it turn'd out, to rue
What foul rascality could do;
And his own wild vagaries too. | } |
Here, gentle reader, here begins
The account of our young Hero's sins:
But all which thus far form'd his fate,
Quæ Genus will himself relate,