There my thoughts the matter roll, And, for I'm styled Alphonse the Wise, Before ye want a drop of rain, Hear the sentiment of Spain. You have tried famine: no more try it; Teach your pupils now with plenty, We cannot spare variety. Fits not to be overzealous ; Steads not to work on the clean jump, Your rank overgrowths reduce Till your kinds abound with juice? Earth, crowded, cries, 'Too many men!' My counsel is, kill nine in ten, And bestow the shares of all On the remnant decimal. Add their nine lives to this cat; Stuff their nine brains in one hat; Make his frame and forces square MITHRIDATES I CANNOT spare water or wine, Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose; From the earth-poles to the Line, All between that works or grows, Every thing is kin of mine. Give me agates for my meat; Give me cantharids to eat; From air and ocean bring me foods, From all zones and altitudes; From all natures, sharp and slimy, Salt and basalt, wild and tame : Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion, Bird, and reptile, be my game. Ivy for my fillet band; Too long shut in strait and few, I will use the world, and sift it, O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry ! Reputed wrongs and braggart rights, TO J. W. SET not thy foot on graves; Hear what wine and roses say; The mountain chase, the summer waves, The crowded town, thy feet may well delay. Set not thy foot on graves; Nor seek to unwind the shroud Which charitable Time And Nature have allowed To wrap the errors of a sage sublime. Set not thy foot on graves; Care not to strip the dead His myrrh, and wine, and rings, His sheet of lead, And trophies buried: Go, get them where he earned them when alive; As resolutely dig or dive. Life is too short to waste 'T will soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and DESTINY THAT you are fair or wise is vain, Well may Jove and Juno scorn. Which drives me mad with sweet desire, What boots it? What the soldier's mail, What all the goods thy pride which lift, Victim of perpetual slight: When thou lookest on his face, Thy heart saith, Brother, go thy ways! None shall ask thee what thou doest, Or care a rush for what thou knowest, |