blood,
  Steep Snowhill rolls the sable flood;
  Nor where the Mint’s contamined kennel runs: 
  Ill doth it now beseem,
  That thou should’st doze and dream, 20
  When Death in mortal armour came,
  And struck with ruthless dart the gentle dame. 
  Her liberal hand and sympathising breast
  The brute creation kindly bless’d;
  Where’er she trod, grimalkin purr’d around,
  The squeaking pigs her bounty own’d;
  Nor to the waddling duck or gabbling goose
  Did she glad sustenance refuse;
  The strutting cock she daily fed,
  And turkey with his snout so red; 30
  Of chickens careful as the pious hen,
  Nor did she overlook the tom-tit or the wren,
  While red-breast hopp’d before her in the hall,
  As if she common mother were of all.

   For my distracted mind,
  What comfort can I find;
  O best of grannams! thou art dead and gone,
  And I am left behind to weep and moan,
  To sing thy dirge in sad and funeral lay,
  Oh! woe is me! alack! and well a-day! 40

[Footnote 1:  Smollett, imagining himself ill-treated by Lord Lyttelton, wrote the above burlesque on that nobleman’s Monody on the death of his lady.]

* * * * *

  ODE TO MIRTH.

  Parent of joy! heart-easing Mirth! 
  Whether of Venus or Aurora born,
  Yet Goddess sure of heavenly birth,
  Visit benign a son of grief forlorn: 
  Thy glittering colours gay,
  Around him, Mirth, display,
  And o’er his raptured sense
  Diffuse thy living influence: 
  So shall each hill, in purer green array’d,
  And flower adorn’d in new-born beauty glow, 10
  The grove shall smooth the horrors of the shade,
  And streams in murmurs shall forget to flow. 
  Shine, Goddess! shine with unremitted ray,
  And gild (a second sun) with brighter beam our day. 
  Labour with thee forgets his pain,
  And aged Poverty can smile with thee;
  If thou be nigh, Grief’s hate is vain,
  And weak the uplifted arm of Tyranny. 
  The morning opes on high
  His universal eye, 20
  And on the world doth pour
  His glories in a golden shower;
  Lo!  Darkness trembling ’fore the hostile ray,
  Shrinks to the cavern deep and wood forlorn: 
  The brood obscene that own her gloomy sway
  Troop in her rear, and fly the approaching morn;
  Pale shivering ghosts that dread the all-cheering light,
  Quick as the lightning’s flash glide to sepulchral night. 
  But whence the gladdening beam
  That pours his purple stream 30

* * * * *

  ODE TO SLEEP.