'Ah, friend! 'tis true--this truth you lovers know-- In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow, In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes Of hanging mountains, and of sloping greens:...
To thee, we wretches of the Houyhnhnm band, Condemn'd to labour in a barbarous land, Return our thanks. Accept our humble lays, And let each grateful Houyhnhnm neigh thy praise. ...
Oh be thou blest with all that Heav'n can send, Long Health, long Youth, long Pleasure, and a Friend: Not with those Toys the female world admire, Riches that vex, and Vanities that tire....
Resign'd to live, prepar'd to die, With not one sin, but poetry, This day Tom's fair account has run (Without a blot) to eighty-one. Kind Boyle, before his poet, lays A table, with a cloth of bays;...
Begone, ye Critics, and restrain your spite, Codrus writes on, and will for ever write, The heaviest Muse the swiftest course has gone, As clocks run fastest when most lead is on;...
Goddess of woods, tremendous in the chase, To mountain wolves and all the savage race, Wide o'er the aerial vault extend thy sway, And o'er the infernal regions void of day....
Two or three visits, and two or three bows, Two or three civil things, two or three vows, Two or three kisses, with two or three sighs, Two or three Jesus's, and let me dies,...
'See, sir, here's the grand approach, This way is for his Grace's coach: There lies the bridge, and here's the clock, Observe the lion and the cock, The spacious court, the colonnade,...
The fair Pomona flourish'd in his reign; Of all the virgins of the sylvan train None taught the trees a nobler race to bear, Or more improved the vegetable care. To her the shady grove, the flowery field,...
Thyrsis, the music of that murm'ring spring, Is not so mournful as the strains you sing. Nor rivers winding thro' the vales below, So sweetly warble, or so smoothly flow....