Happy the fage! like you, my friend,:

The evening of whose days

Heav'n grants in that fair vale to spend

Where Thames delighted ftrays..

To medals there and books of taste
Those moments you confign,
Which barren minds ignobly waste
On dogs, or cards, or wine.

XVIII.

Whilft I 'mid rocks and favage woods
Enjoy these golden dreams;

• Where Avon winds to mix her floods
With Bladud's healing streams.

WELCOME to mina to pa to fhift the feene.
И

7ELCOME to Baia's ftreams, ye fons of fpleen,
Who rove from spa to spa

While round the fteaming fount you idly throng,
Come, learn a wholsome fecret from my song.

Ye fair, whose roses feel th' approaching frost,

And drops fupply the place of spirits loft:

Ye 'fquires, who rack'd with gouts, at heav'n repine,
Condemn'd to water for excefs in wine:

Ye portly cits, fo corpulent and full,

Who eat and drink 'till appetite grows dull:

* Claverton near Bath, 1750.

For

For whets and bitters then unftring the purse,
Whilft nature more oppreft grows worse and worse:
Dupes to the craft of pill-prescribing leaches:
You nod or laugh at what the parfon preaches :
Hear then a rhyming quack,-who fpurns your wealth,
And gratis gives a fure receipt for health.

No more thus vainly roam o'er sea and land,
When lo! a fovereign remedy at hand :
'Tis Temperance-stale cant!-'Tis Fafting then ;
Heaven's antidote against the fins of men.
Foul luxury's the cause of all your pain:
To scour th' obftructed glands, abstain! abstain!
Faft and take rest, ye candidates for fleep,
Who from high food tormenting vigils keep:
Faft and be fat-thou ftarveling in a gown:
Ye bloated, faft'twill furely bring you down.
Ye nymphs that pine o'er chocolate and rolls,
Hence take fresh bloom, fresh vigour to your fouls.
Faft and fear not-you'll need no drop nor pill:
Hunger may ftarve, excess is fure to kill.

'N ancient times, fome hundred winters past,
When British dames, for confcience fake, were chäfte,

If fome frail nymph, by youthful paffion fway'd,
From virtue's paths unhappily had ftray'd:
When banish'd reafon re-affum'd her place,
The conscious wretch bewail'd her foul difgrace;
Fled from the world, and pafs'd her joyless-years
In decent folitude and pious tears;

Veil'd in some convent made her peace with heaven,
And almost hop'd-by Prudes to be forgiven..

Not fo of modern wh-res th' illuftrious train,
Renown'd Conftantia, P-ton and V-ne;
Grown old in fin, and dead to amorous joy,
No acts of penance their great fouls employ.
Without a blufh behold each nymph advance,
The lufcious Heroine of her own romance.
Each harlot triumphs in her lofs of fame,
And boldly prints and publishes her shame.

1751.

The

The PARTING.

By the Same.

Written fome Years after Marriage.

THE

I.

HE rifing fun thro, all the grove
Diffus'd a gladfome ray :

My Lucy fmil'd, and talk'd of love,
And every thing look'd gay.

II.

But oh! the fatal hour was come
That forc'd me from my dear:
My Lucy then thro' grief was dumb,
Or spoke but by a tear.

III.

Now far from her and blifs I roam,

All nature wears a change:
The azure sky feems wrapt in gloom,

And every place looks ftrange.
IV.

Those flow'ry fields, this verdant scene,
Yon larks that towering fing,
With fad contraft increase my spleen

And make me loath the fpring.