please;
His father’s give him,—­should you that explore,
The devil’s or yours:  —­I said, and sought the door. 
My tender partner not a word or sigh
Gives to my wrath, nor to my speech reply;
But takes her comforts, triumphs in my pain,
And looks undaunted for a birth again.” 
Heirs thus denied afflict the pining heart,
And thus afforded, jealous pangs impart;
Let, therefore, none avoid, and none demand
These arrows number’d for the giant’s hand. 
Then with their infants three, the parents came,
And each assign’d—­’twas all they had—­a name;
Names of no mark or price; of them not one
Shall court our view on the sepulchral stone,
Or stop the clerk, th’ engraven scrolls to spell,
Or keep the sexton from the sermon bell. 
An orphan-girl succeeds:  ere she was born
Her father died, her mother on that morn: 
The pious mistress of the school sustains
Her parents’ part, nor their affection feigns,
But pitying feels:  with due respect and joy,
I trace the matron at her loved employ;
What time the striplings, wearied e’en with play,
Part at the closing of the summer’s day,
And each by different path returns the well-known way
Then I behold her at her cottage-door,
Frugal of light;—­her Bible laid before,
When on her double duty she proceeds,
Of time as frugal—­knitting as she reads: 
Her idle neighbours, who approach to tell
Some trifling tale, her serious looks compel
To hear reluctant,—­while the lads who pass,
In pure respect, walk silent on the grass: 
Then sinks the day, but not to rest she goes,
Till solemn prayers the daily duties close. 
But I digress, and lo! an infant train
Appear, and call me to my task again. 
“Why Lonicera wilt thou name thy child?”
I ask the Gardener’s wife, in accents mild: 
“We have a right,” replied the sturdy dame; —
And Lonicera was the infant’s name. 
If next a son shall yield our Gardener joy,
Then Hyacinthus shall be that fair boy;
And if a girl, they will at length agree
That Belladonna that fair maid shall be. 
High-sounding words our worthy Gardener gets,
And at his club to wondering swains repeats;
He then of Rhus and Rhododendron speaks,
And Allium calls his onions and his leeks;
Nor weeds are now, for whence arose the weed,
Scarce plants, fair herbs, and curious flowers proceed,
Where Cuckoo-pints and Dandelions sprung
(Gross names had they our plainer sires among),
There Arums, there Leontodons we view,
And Artemisia grows where wormwood grew. 
But though no weed exists his garden round,
From Rumex strong our Gardener frees his ground,
Takes soft Senecio from the yielding land,
And grasps the arm’d Urtica in his hand. 
Not Darwin’s self had more delight to sing
Of floral courtship, in th’ awaken’d Spring,
Than Peter Pratt, who simpering loves to tell
How rise the Stamens, as the Pistils swell;