When thy fairy-fingers dress

The paths where childhood loved to stray;
When Joy with roses strewed the way,
And Pleasure, nymph of heavenly birth,
Frolicked blithe: with simple Glee,
Sport, and rose-lip'd Gaiety,
The family of Mirth!

Where playful at the cottage-door,
Or in light gambols on the floor,
Infant-groupes with daisies crowned,
Frisked in many an airy round;

Or, with instinctive aim, began

To mimic, 'midst their sports, the graver cares of Man.

Scenes of enchantment! ye are fled;

Yet Fancy oft' your flight pursues,

While evening-shadows dim

O'er earth's pale surface swim,

And eyes your transient forms, and pranks in golden hues,

But most when mortal eye-lids close
Locked in Sleep's profound repose,
The Enchantress wakes, and lo, anew,
Youth's fairy prospects start to view,
The vernal landscape glows!
HOPE relumes her sickly fires,

The Bard's ecstatic breast inspires,

Expressing subjects high, and worthy of the Muse.

And oft' has Friendship known

The kind relief that Sleep alone

Soothest of heavenly powers! with opiate touch

bestows:

Even Love beneath thy placid reign,

In sweet delirium sinks to rest,

Calms the wild tumults of his breast,

And in thy silken bonds foregoes his ruthless chain.

Say, Sleep, whence o'er the mind
Dost thou such potency derive,
To bid the hosts of Thought
That with the light of day
In chill oblivion died away,
Again on Memory's plain revive?
That with thy subtle magic fraught,
In many a glittering rank combined,
Reflect the splendours of the mental ray,
And agitate the soul, or tranquillize;
Now with sublimest objects fill,
With Pity touch, with Horror thrill,
And wake respondent sympathies.
Thy colourings, Sleep, deceive
Deliciously the throb of pain,
Bid us live o'er the day again;
With gildings soft the scene relieve,
And heighten into bliss Life's dull realities.

By necromantic groves that glance
Their umbrage dusk to the Phoebean beam,
Where hung with many a dream,

The twinkling boughs to rosy zephyrs dance;
By darksome rocks that lower

O'er the wild brook that babbles by,

O, often meet my ear

In echoes soft and clear,

Of fairy harps unseen, and solemn minstrelsy:

And o'er my soul thy mystic visions pour,
Pure, intellectual; such as fed

By happiest presage of better days

Round modest Merit's drooping head,

Beam the clear sunshine of ingenuous Praise : Such as the wounded bosom cheer,

Whene'er by cold neglect depressed,
Or held by Obloquy in thrall,
Or steeped in Envy's venomed gall;
Then, Sleep, thy healing influence bring,
Soft slumbers waft on downy wing,

And breathe the balm divine of visionary rest.

Thus, Sleep, oft' let me lie

Beneath thy grateful shadowings: Call around
Every magic sight and sound;
Shifting swift from grave to gay,
Mingling shade, or flashing day,
Glance with fairy footsteps by,
And lull each sense in extacy!
Oft' let the friend of former days
Meet me in sweet colloquial talk,

And 'midst thy moon-light scenes delighted walk,
While on each other's face we gaze,
And with congenial warmth our bosoms burn
Of sacred amity; o'erjoyed to live
The spring time of our youth again,
To taste the pleasure, or the pain,
And with remembrance bland, survive
The solitary urn!

Thus, Sleep, oft' find me, at thy soft return,
While Philomela pours her minstrelsy;

And to my sight in colours faint

Those future scenes of Beauty paint,
Which oft, with foretaste kind, await
On Virtue, in this transient state,
Exhibiting, in vision high,

A weak, but rapturous glance of Immortality!

THE PRINTERS' CAULDRON.

Scene-A dark Room: in the Middle a great Cauldron burning.

Thunder-enter three Printer's Devils.

Now

ALL.

your several schemes display. To make the paper of the day:

SECOND DEVIL.

Spy that standing on cold stone,
Names and titles one by one,
Catchest at the doors of fashion,
Haste to bring your motley trash in;
Packwood's puffs, and state of weather,
Hints of who and whois together,
(Paid to contradict to-morrow
Mistake-inserted to our sorrow)
Fluttering follies light as vapour,
you to the
top o'th' paper.

Rise

ALL.

Double, double, toil and trouble,
Touch the cash-the nation bubble.

FIRST DEVIL.

Braham-Soldier tir'd-Mad Bess-
Case of singular distress,
Speech of egotistic pleader,

String of Coaches made by Leader,
Fashionable invalids,

Morning dresses, widows' weeds,
Lobby quarrels, satisfaction,

Rout in May-fair, crim. con. action,
Patent soles that never faulter,
Doctors Brodum and Sir Walter,
Pun and vive la bagatelle

Schemes to make our paper sell.

ALL.

Double, double, toil and trouble,
Touch the cash-the nation bubble.

THIRD DEVIL.

Bonaparte, Paris fashions,
Chapels, Cyprian assignations:
Captain Sash, the sea-side shark—
Slander's arrow shot i'th' dark.
Villa of Roehampton Jew,
Horrid murder done at Kew;
Queries, critical corrections,
Galvinistic resurrections.
Treatise on the Moon's eclipse,
Paint for cheeks, and salve for lips.
Stupid pun, birth-strangled jest-
Portsmouth letter-wind north-west.
And thus our merit stands confess'd!

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