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A Miscellany of Poems

consisting of Original Poems, Translations, Pastorals in the Cumberland Dialect, Familiar Epistles, Fables, Songs, and Epigrams, by the late Reverend Josiah Relph ... With a Preface and a Glossary

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To Captain C---y at Carlisle.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

To Captain C---y at Carlisle.

An Epistle.

Dear Sir,

These homely lines are sent
To say how much we all lament,
Since our once happy shades you left,
Of all their comforts now bereft.
Great want our Sires and Dames express,
Great want, and how should it be less?

70

No more their little lambs must play,
To bloody foxes doom'd a prey:
Their geese, 'ere Christmas comes, must fall:
Ah, now no Christmas comes at all!
And much the lads thy loss deplore;
Call'd by the gratefull change no more
They quit the dusty, joyless mows,
Forgetful of their cares—and shoes
Thro' thick and thin to scour away:
—What, now thrash every, every day?
Heartless the lasses too are seen,
And dull—and almost in the spleen.
No more at Church they steal a look
So slily from behind the book,
To view thy gay, thy lively airs;
They've nought to mind now—but their prayers.
But the poor Muse—she suffers most:
Good sense and wit and humour lost,

71

From human converse far she flies
(All now impertinence and noise)
Still in the lonely vale or grove;
—Out of her senses or in love.