“Oh!  Celia, Celia, Celia sh—!”
But Vengeance, goddess never sleeping,
Soon punish’d Strephon for his peeping: 
His foul imagination links
Each dame he sees with all her stinks;
And, if unsavoury odours fly,
Conceives a lady standing by. 
All women his description fits,
And both ideas jump like wits;
By vicious fancy coupled fast,
And still appearing in contrast. 
  I pity wretched Strephon, blind
To all the charms of woman kind. 
Should I the Queen of Love refuse,
Because she rose from stinking ooze? 
To him that looks behind the scene,
Statira’s but some pocky quean. 
  When Celia in her glory shews,
If Strephon would but stop his nose,
(Who now so impiously blasphemes
Her ointments, daubs, and paints, and creams,
Her washes, slops, and every clout,
With which he makes so foul a rout;)
He soon would learn to think like me,
And bless his ravish’d sight to see
Such order from confusion sprung,
Such gaudy tulips raised from dung.

[Footnote 1:  Var.  “The bitch bequeath’d her when she died.”—­1732.]

[Footnote 2:  Var. “marks of stinking toes.”—­1732.]

[Footnote 3:  Milton, “Paradise Lost,” ii, 890-1: 
  “Before their eyes in sudden view appear
  The secrets of the hoary deep.”—­W.  E. B.]

THE POWER OF TIME. 1730

If neither brass nor marble can withstand
The mortal force of Time’s destructive hand;
If mountains sink to vales, if cities die,
And lessening rivers mourn their fountains dry;
When my old cassock (said a Welsh divine)
Is out at elbows, why should I repine?

CASSINUS AND PETER

A TRAGICAL ELEGY

1731

Two college sophs of Cambridge growth,
Both special wits and lovers both,
Conferring, as they used to meet,
On love, and books, in rapture sweet;
(Muse, find me names to fit my metre,
Cassinus this, and t’other Peter.)
Friend Peter to Cassinus goes,
To chat a while, and warm his nose: 
But such a sight was never seen,
The lad lay swallow’d up in spleen. 
He seem’d as just crept out of bed;
One greasy stocking round his head,
The other he sat down to darn,
With threads of different colour’d yarn;
His breeches torn, exposing wide
A ragged shirt and tawny hide. 
Scorch’d were his shins, his legs were bare,
But well embrown’d with dirt and hair
A rug was o’er his shoulders thrown,
(A rug, for nightgown he had none,)
His jordan stood in manner fitting
Between his legs, to spew or spit in;
His ancient pipe, in sable dyed,
And half unsmoked, lay by his side. 
  Him thus accoutred Peter found,
With eyes in smoke and weeping drown’d;
The leavings of his last night’s pot
On embers placed, to drink it hot.