Lo! Babylon is fallen! That mystic
That sink of wickedness, is now no more!
Great Babylon is fallen! Shout, shout, ye meads!
And, oh! ye corn-fields, wave your happy heads!
Ye lovely lambkins, strain your feeble voice,
And with your dams in loudest Baas rejoice!
Calves, join your notes to swell the gladdening sound!
Cows, let your lowings from the skies rebound!
Prolific ducks, quack mid the mighty noise!
Hens, more prolific, cackle out your joys!
And ye, oh! swine, lift up your little eyes,
With rapture riot round your rotten styes!
Stretch your triumphant throats, and strive to make
The frighten'd welkin with your grantings shake!
Written in a LADY'S POCKET-Book, 1761.
WHILST hour to hour and day succeeds to day,
And weeks, and mouths, and longer years decay;
May'st thou, my favourite, and my friend, employ
Each hour in happiness, each day in joy!
May weeks, and months, and years those joys increase
With health, (best blessing) and domestic peace!
Whilst here thy actions mark'd on every page
Shall teach employment to a future age.
Here every page shall amiably declare
Thy mind, thy manners, like thy person fair.
On the Death of Lieutenant Colonel Buller, killed in Flanders in 1795.
WRITTEN BY MR. SHERIDAN, AT THE REQUEST OF HIS PRESENT LADY.
SCARCE hush'd the sigh, scarce dried the ling'ring tear,
Affection pour'd upon a brother's bier *;
Another loss bids Laura's sorrows flow,
As keen in anguish as a sister's woe.
Unknown to me the object of her grief
I dare not counsel, did she ask relief;
Yet may the wish no van intrusion prove,
To share her grief, for all who shar❜d her love.
Yes, gallant victim! in this hateful strife,
Which pride maintains 'gainst man's and freedom's life,
If quick and sensible to Laura's worth,
Thy heart's first comment was affection's birth;
If thy soul's day rose only in her sight,
And absence was thy clouded spirit's night,
If 'mid whatever busy tumults thrown
Thy silent thoughts still turn'd to her alone;
If, while ambition seem'd each art to move,
Thy secret hope was Laura, peace, and love;
If such thy feelings, and thy dying prayer,
To wish that happiness thou could'st not share;
Let me with kindred claim thy name revere,
And give thy memory a brother's tear!
* Mrs. Sheridan had just lost a brother.
But, ah! not tears alone fill Laura's eyes,
Resentment kindles with affliction's sighs;
Insulted patience borrows passion's breath,
To curse the plotters of these scenes of death!
Yet sooth'd to peace, sweet mourner, tranquil be,
And every harsh emotion leave to me!
Remembrance, sad and soft regret be thine,
The wrath of hate, the blow of vengeance mine.
And oh, by Heav'n! that hour shall surely come,
When, fell destroyers! ye shall meet your doom!
Yes, miscreant statesmen! by the proud disdain
Which honour feels at base corruption's reign,
By the loud clamours of a nation's woes,
By the still pang domestic sorrow knows,
By all that hope has lost or terror fears;
By England's injuries, and Laura's tears;
The hour shall come, when, fraud's short triumphs past,
A people's vengeance shall strike home at last!
Then, then shall fell remorse, the dastard fiend,
Who ne'er pollutes the noble soldier's end,
And dark despair around the scaffold wait,
And not one look deplore the traitor's fate!
But while remembrance shakes his coward frame,
And starts of pride contend with inward shame;
The mute reproach, or execration loud,
Of sober justice, or the scoffing crowd,
Alike shall hail the blow that seals his doom,
And gives to infamy his memory and his tomb.
Turn from the hateful scene, dear Laura, turn,
And thy lov'd friend with milder sorrow mourn!
Still dwell upon his fate; for still thou'lt find
The contrast lovely, and 'twill soothe thy mind!
Fall'n with the brave, ere number'd with the slain-
His mind unwounded calms his body's pain!
Half rais'd he leans. See Friendship bending o'er,
Her sigh suppress'd, as to his view she bore
Thy much-lov'd image, whose all-soothing smile
Could pain disarm, and death's last pang beguile!
Hopeless, but not dismay'd, with fearless eye
He reads the doom that tells him "he must die"-
Lays his brave hand upon his bleeding breast,
And feels his glory while he finds his rest!
Resigns the transient breath which nature gave,
And sure of prouder life o'erlooks the grave.
Sweet is the meed that waits his laurel'd bier,
'Tis Valour's hope, 'tis Honour's praise sincere,
"Tis Friendship's sigh, and gentle Beauty's tear!
To the Memory of a Friend written a Year after his
Cui pudor et justitiæ soror
Incorrupta fides, nudaque veritas,
Quando ullum invenient param.—UOR.
Ar midnight hour, why gleams with sullen sweep
Thy visionary form across my mind,
To scare me from the soft embrace of sleep,
And chill me, waking, with thy frown unkind?
Com'st thou severe my tardiness to chide,
With stern reproach for many a trifling song? Methinks I hear thee say, " If thou hadst dy'd, "I had not left thee thus unwept so long !"
Forgive, dear shade, if twelve long moons are fled
Since to the earth thy dear remains we gave,
(Tho' witness Heaven how much my heart has bled!)
Nor yet my pious Muse has dress'd thy grave,
While lighter sorrow prompts th' impassion'd strain,
Severer, all the powers of fancy stints;
The flower, that drown'd would die beneath the rain,
Drinks the thin dew, and spreads its brighter tints.
And how could I insult thee with a lyre,
Whose strings had not forgotten yet the lays Which love and youth united to inspire,
When health and pleasure frolick'd through our days:
By many an agonizing groan betray'd,
By many a suffocated sigh confest
(Thy rites not unremember'd, tho' unpaid,) Thy memory long was buried in my breast.
But now my breast gives up its dead to rise,
And pierce new-born through grief's surrounding
gloom,
As thy own dust when summon'd to the skies,
Awak'd, shall spring exulting from the tomb.
Pain's recent sting, beyond endurance keen,
Sheath'd in the balm of years, forgets to rage,
And grief's stern form, through time's soft amber seen,
To melancholy mellow'd, may engage.
Then, Recollection, all the scene recall,
And bid each kind endearment to return
Which link'd our hearts, for I can bear them all,
In grief ecstatic whilst I clasp thy urn.
Recall the music of the early horn,
The tale well-form'd our wanderings to deceive,
When rosy exercise awak'd the morn,
Or social converse led us out at eve.
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