Poems on Various Subjects :: :: University of Virginia Library

Oh! happy you, whom Quantock overlooks,
Blest with keen, healthful air, and crystal brooks;
Whilst wretched we, the baneful influence mourn,
Of cold Aquarius, and his weeping urn:
Eternal mists their dropping curse distil,
And drisly vapours all the marshes fill.
Here ev'ry eye with brackish rheum o'erflows,
And a fresh drop still hangs at ev'ry nose.

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Here the winds rule with uncontested right,
And wantonly at pleasure take their flight;
No shel'tring hedge, no tree, or spreading bough
Obstruct their course, but unconfin'd they blow;
With dewy wings they sweep the wat'ry meads,
And proudly trample o'er the bending reeds;
Expos'd to northern and to southern breeze,
By one we drown, and by the other freeze.
Let Venice boast, Brent is as fam'd a seat,
For here we live in seas, and sail thro' ev'ry street.
Besides, this privilege we further gain,
We're not, like them, oblig'd to pray for rain.
Sure this was nature's gaol, for rogues design'd,
Whoever lives at Brent, must live confin'd.
Moated around, the water is our fence;
None come to us, and none can go from hence.
But shou'd a sun-shine day invite abroad,
To wade thro' mire, and wallow in the mud,
Some envious rheen will always thwart the road.
And then a small round twig is all one's hopes,
We pass not bridges, but we walk on ropes.

All dogs here take the water, and you find
No creature, but of an amphibious kind.
Rabbits with ducks, and geese here sail with hens,
And all for food must paddle in the fens:

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Nay, when provision fails, the hungry mouse
Will fear no pool, to reach a neighbouring house,
The good old hen clucks boldly o'er the stream,
And chicken, newly hatch'd, essay to swim:
All have a moorish taste, cows, sheep, and swine,
Eat all like Frog,—and savour of the Rhine.
Bread is our only sauce, and barley cake,
Hard as your cheese, and as your trencher black;
Our choicest drink (and that's the greatest curse)
Is but bad water made, by brewing, worse.

To him that has, is always given more,
And a fresh stock improves the rising store:
Not only rain from bounteous heaven descends,
But us the sea with after floods befriends;
For nature this as a relief designs,
To salt the stinking savour of the Rhines.

As when of late, enraged Neptune swore,
Brent was a part of his own lawful shore,
He said,—and hurl'd his trident o'er the plain,
And soon the waves assert their antient reign;
They scorn the shore, and o'er the marshes bound,
And mud-wall cots are levell'd with the ground;
Tho' the poor building was so very low,
That when the house is fall'n, you'll scarcely know.
Bury'd we are alive—the scanty dome
Has, like the grave, but one poor narrow room,
But little larger than a six foot tomb.

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Where, as in Noah's Ark, in one close stye,
Men with their fellow brutes, in equal honor lie.

No joyous birds here stretch their tuneful throats,
And pierce the yielding air with warbling notes:
But the hoarse sea-pyes with melodious cry,
Skim o'er the marsh, and tell that storms are nigh.
The curst night-raven, and the hooping owl,
Disturb our rest, and scare the guilty soul.

Here gnats surround you with their humming drone,
Worse than e'er plagu'd the Ægyptian tyrants throne;
In vain the weary limbs expect repose,
Their din invades your ears, and sting your nose.
The sighing lovers here may toss and turn,
And under double itch and anguish burn,
While bright Celinda's beautys fire the heart,
Those Insects wound in ev'ry other part:
While Roger unmolested with his Joan,
Tir'd with their toils, still snore, and still sleep on,
Their sun-burnt skins, impenetrable found,
In vain the gnat's proboscis strives to wound;
He sooner might expect his sting to shoot
Thro' the tough fortress of a strong jack-boot.

Serpents innum'rous o'er the mountains roam,
Man's greatest foe thought this his safest home;

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Nor cou'd expect a hated place to find,
More likely to be void of human kind.
And yet if dust be doom'd the serpent's meat,
'Tis wond'rous strange, if here they ever eat:
Nor are the beasts of better kind, that fill
The breaks and caverns of the neighb'ring hill.
But all are delving moles, and prowling brocks,
The ven'mous viper, and the crafty fox.

Agues and Coughs with us as constant reign,
As th' itch in Scotland, or the flux in Spain.
Under the bending Knowle's declining brow,
Where toadstools only to perfection grow,
A cave there is, I thought by nature made,
For want of trees a necessary shade;
Hither I came, and void of fear, and thought,
Drew near the entrance of this gloomy grot;
But ah! this was the place, the dismal cell,
Where spitting colds, and shiv'ring agues dwell,
The constant home of that malicious fiend,
That with a third day's visit plagues mankind;
Here a small fire glow'd in a smoaky grate,
And hov'ring o're the coals old Febris sate;
A thick coarse mantle o'er her shoulders hung,
She gnash'd her teeth, and shew'd a furred tongue,

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Greedy she drank of the unwholsome brook,
But still the more she drank the more she shook.
When me the fury saw, she shook her head,
And anger to her paleness gave a red;
Here I had been undone, had I not brought
Of Indian Cortex an inchanted draught;
Thus arm'd with its sure force I forward pass,
And with the magic bark, besmear'd her face;
Dreadful she shriek'd, and with one mighty shake
The hag down sunk into the neighbo'ring lake.
The unhappy frogs perceiv'd the fiend was come,
And all the croaking tribe bemoan'd their home;
The dreadful, chilling cold, they scarce can bear,
And their hoarse quiv'ring lips confess an ague there.

Had mournful Ovid been to Brent condemn'd,
His Tristibus more movingly he'd penn'd.
Gladly he wou'd have chang'd this miry lough,
For wat'ry Pontus, or the Scythian snow.
The Goths were not so barbarous a race,
As the grim natives of this dismal place.
Of reason wholly void, whom instinct rules,
Yet will be knaves, tho' nature made them fools;
A strange half human, and half beastly brood,
Of speech uncouth, and in their manners rude.
When they essay to speak, the mortals roar,
As loud as waves contending with the shoar.

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Their widen'd mouth into a circle grows,
For all their vowels are but A's and O's.
The beasts have the same language, and the cow,
Seems like her owner's noisy voice to low.
The lamb to bah, taught by its keeper, trys,
And puppys learn to howl from children's crys,
It never yet cou'd be exactly stated,
What time o'th year this ball was first created,
Some plead for summer, but the wise bethought 'em,
That th' earth like other fruit was ripe in Autumn;
While gayer wits the vernal bloom prefer,
And think the finish'd world did first appear
I'th' youthful glory of the budding year.
But the black nole, and all the marshes round
(A sort of chaos, and unfinish'd ground,)
Were made in winter, one may safely swear,
For winter is the only season there.

Of four prime elements, most things below,
By various mixtures were compos'd we know,
But here at most they are reduc'd to two.
The daily want of fire our chimneys mourn,
Cow dung and turf may smoak, but never burn.
Water and earth are all that Brent can boast,
The air in mists, and foggy steams is lost.
So thick our fogs are in this moory sink,
That when we're thought to breath, we rather drink.

202

It's said the world at last in flames must dye,
And thus interr'd in its own ashes lye.
If any part shall then remain entire,
And be excepted from that common fire,
Sure 'tis this watry spot which nature meant
Shou'd be from all the force of flames exempt;
The last consumed morsel will be Brent.

Wide Ditches of Water, which separate the Fields or Moors from each other, and are called Rheens.

Badgers.