Many a slippery fathom down we sunk,
Beneath all plummet's sound, and reached the bottom.
When there, I asked my venerable guide
If he could tell me where my sister was;
He told me that she lay not far from thence
Within the bosom of a flinty rock,
Where Neptune kept her for his paramour
Hid from the jealous Amphitrite's sight;
And said he could conduct me to the place.
I begged he would. Through dreadful ways we past,
"Twixt rocks that frightfully lowered on either side,
Whence here and there the branching coral sprung; 20
O'er dead men's bones we walked, o'er heaps of gold
and gems,
Into a hideous kind of wilderness,
Where stood a stern and prison-looking rock,
Daubed with a mossy verdure all around,
The mockery of paint. As we drew near
Out sprung a hydra from a den below,
A speckled fury; fearfully it hissed,
And rolled its sea-green eyes so angrily
As it would kill with looking. My old guide
Against its sharp head hurled a rugged stone-
The curling monster raised a brazen shriek,
Wallowed and died in fitful agonies.
We gained the cave. Through woven adamant
I looked, and saw my sister all alone.
Employed she seemed in writing something sad,
So sad she looked: her cheek was wondrous wan,
Her mournful locks like weary sedges hung.
I called-she, turning, started when she saw me,
And threw her head aside as if ashamed;
She wept, but would not speak-I called again;
Still she was mute.-Then madly I address'd,
With all the lion-sinews of despair,
To break the flinty ribs that held me out;
And with the struggling waked.
RAISED TO ACCOUNT FOR THE LATE RETURN OF A MESSENGER.
The sun went down in wrath;
The skies foamed brass, and soon the unchained winds
Burst from the howling dungeon of the north:
And raised such high delirium on the main,
Such angry clamour; while such boiling waves
Flashed on the peevish eye of moody night,
It looked as if the seas would scald the heavens.
Still louder chid the winds, the enchafed surge
Still answered louder; and when the sickly morn
Peeped ruefully through the blotted thick-browed east
To view the ruinous havoc of the dark,
The stately towers of Athens seemed to stand
On hollow foam tide-whipt; the ships that lay
Scorning the blast within the marble arms
Of the sea-chid Portumnus,' danced like corks
Upon the enraged deep, kicking each other;
And some were dashed to fragments in this fray
Against the harbour's rocky chest. The sea
So roared, so madly raged, so proudly swelled,
As it would thunder full into the streets,
And steep the tall Cecropian battlements
In foaming brine. The airy citadel,
Perched like an eagle on a high-browed rock,
Shook the salt water from its stubborn sides
With eager quaking; the Cyclades appeared
Like ducking cormorants-Such a mutiny
1 'Portumnus:' god of harbours-the game with the Palemon of the Greeks.
Out-clamoured all tradition, and gained belief
To ranting prodigies of heretofore.
Seven days it stormed, &c.
WRITTEN AT MR THOMSON'S DESIRE, TO BE INSERTED INTO THE CASTLE OF
1 FULL many a fiend did haunt this house of rest, And made of passive wights an easy prey. Here Lethargy with deadly sleep opprest,
Stretched on his back a mighty lubbard lay, Heaving his sides; and snored night and day. To stir him from his traunce it was not eath, And his half-opened eyne he shut straightway: He led I ween the softest way to death,
And taught withouten pain or strife to yield the breath.
2 Of limbs enormous, but withal unsound,
Soft-swoln and pale, here lay the Hydropsie;
Unwieldy man, with belly monstrous round
For ever fed with watery supply;
For still he drank, and yet he still was dry.
And here a moping mystery did sit,
Mother of Spleen, in robes of various dye:
She called herself the Hypochondriac Fit,
And frantic seemed to some, to others seemed a wit.
3 A lady was she whimsical and proud,
Yet oft through fear her pride would crouchen low.
She felt or fancied in her fluttering mood
All the diseases that the spitals know, And sought all physic that the shops bestow; And still new leeches and new drugs would try.
'Twas hard to hit her humour high or low,
For sometimes she would laugh and sometimes cry, Sometimes would waxen wroth; and all she knew not why.
4 Fast by her side a listless virgin pined,
With aching head and squeamish heart-burnings: Pale, bloated, cold, she seemed to hate mankind, But loved in secret all forbidden things. And here the Tertian shook his chilling wings; And here the Gout, half tiger, half a snake, Raged with an hundred teeth, an hundred stings: These and a thousand furies more did shake Those weary realms, and kept ease-loving men awake.
AN EPISTLE TO JOHN WILKES, OF AYLESBURY, ESQ.
ESCAPED from London, now four moons and more,
I greet gay Wilkes from Fulda's wasted shore,
Where clothed with wood a hundred hills ascend,
Where Nature many a paradise has planned:
A land that, e'en amid contending arms,
Late smiled with culture, and luxuriant charms;
But now the hostile scythe has bared her soil,
And her sad peasants starve for all their toil.
What news to-day?-I ask you not what rogue,
What paltry imp of fortune's now in vogue;
What forward blundering fool was last preferr❜d.
By mere pretence distinguished from the herd;
With what new cheat the gaping town was smit;
What crazy scribbler reigns the present wit;
What stuff for winter the two Booths have mix'd; 15
What bouncing mimic grows a Roscius next.
Wave all such news: I've seen too much, my friend,
To stare at any wonders of that kind.
News, none have I: you know I never had;
I never long'd the day's dull lie to spread;
I left to gossips that sweet luxury,
More in the secrets of the great than I;
To nurses, midwives, all the slippery train,
That swallow all, and bring up all again:
Or did I e'er a brief event relate,
You found it soon at length in the gazette.
Now for the weather-This is England still, For aught I find, as good, and quite as ill. Even now the ponderous rain perpetual falls, Drowns every camp, and crowds our hospitals. This soaking deluge all unstrings my frame, Dilutes my sense, and suffocates my flame'Tis that which makes these present lines so tame. The parching east wind still pursues me too— Is there no climate where this fiend ne'er flew? By Heaven, it slays Japan, perhaps Peru! It blasts all Earth with its envenomed breath, That scatters discord, rage, diseases, death. 'Twas the first plague that burst Pandora's chest, And with a livid smile sowed all around the rest. 40
Heaven guard my friend from every plague that flies;
Still grant him health, whence all the pleasures rise. But oft diseases from slow causes creep,
And in this doctrine as (thank Heaven) I'm deep,
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