TO FORTUNE.[_]
More impudence, with a lick at one of the Ten Commandments.
Ah! loit'ring Fortune, thou art come too late:
Ah! wherefore give me not thy smiles before;
When all my youthful passions in a roar,
Rare hunters, fearless leap'd each five-bar gate?
Unknown by thee, how often did I meet
The loveliest forms of nature in the street,
The fair, the black, and lasting brown!
And, whilst their charms enraptur'd I survey'd,
This pretty legend on their lips I read—
‘Kisses, O gentle shepherd, for a crown.’
How oft I look'd, and sigh'd, and look'd agen,
Upon the charms of ev'ry Phillis!
How wish'd myself a cock, and her a hen,
To crop at once her roses and her lilies!
Indeed not only without paying—
But for her liberty without once staying.
‘At Otaheité,’ I have said with tears,
‘No gentleman a jail so horrid fears
For taking liberties with lasses:
Soon as they heard how love in England far'd,
The glorious Otaheitans all were scar'd,
And call'd us Englismen a pack of asses.—
‘But they, indeed, are heathens—have no souls
But such as must be fried on burning coals.
But I'm a Christian, and abhor a rape:
Yet if a lass would sell her lean and fat,
I'm not so great an enemy to that—
Though that might whelp a little kind of scrape;
Since 'tis believ'd that simple fornication,
May step between a man and his salvation.’
Damn'd Fortune! thus to make me groan!
To offer now thy shining pieces—
For now my passions are all flown,
Gone to my nephews and my nieces.
