No More Learning

On those two places clear of snow
There have sat in the night for an hour or so,
Before sunrise, and after cock-crow
(He hicking his heels, she cursing her corns,
All to the tune of the wind in their horns),
The Devil and his Grannam,
With the snow-drift to fan 'em;
Expecting and hoping the trumpet to blow;
For they are cock-sure of the fellow below!

180O.




THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS


From his brimstone bed at break of day
A walking the DEVIL is gone,
To visit his little snug farm of the earth
And see how his stock went on.

Over the hill and over the dale,
And he went over the plain,
And backward and forward he swished his long tail
As a gentleman swishes his cane.

And how then was the Devil drest?
Oh! he was in his Sunday's best:
His jacket was red and his breeches were blue,
And there was a hole where the tail came through.

He saw a LAWYER killing a Viper
On a dung heap beside his stable,
And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind
Of Cain and _his_ brother, Abel.

A POTHECARY on a white horse
Rode by on his vocations,
And the Devil thought of his old Friend
DEATH in the Revelations.

He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility!
And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.

He went into a rich bookseller's shop,
Quoth he! we are both of one college,
For I myself sate like a cormorant once
Fast by the tree of knowledge.

Down the river there plied, with wind and tide,
A pig with vast celerity;
And the Devil look'd wise as he saw how the while,
It cut its own throat. "There!
" quoth he with a smile,
"Goes 'England's commercial prosperity. '"

As he went through Cold-Bath Fields he saw
A solitary cell;
And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint
For improving his prisons in Hell.

* * * * * *

General ----------- burning face
He saw with consternation,
And back to hell his way did he take,
For the Devil thought by a slight mistake
It was general conflagration.

1799.




COLOGNE


In Kohln, a town of monks and bones,
And pavements fang'd with murderous stones,
And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches;
I counted two and seventy stenches,
All well denned, and several stinks!
Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?




SONNETS ATTEMPTED IN THE MANNER
OF CONTEMPORARY WRITERS

[SIGNED "NEHEMIAH HIGGINGBOTTOM"]

I

Pensive at eve on the hard world I mus'd,
And my poor heart was sad: so at the moon
I gaz'd-and sigh'd, and sigh'd! --for, ah! how soon
Eve darkens into night. Mine eye perus'd
With tearful vacancy the _dampy_ grass
Which wept and glitter'd in the paly ray;
And I did pause me on my lonely way,
And mused me on those wretched ones who pass
O'er the black heath of Sorrow. But, alas!
Most of Myself I thought: when it befell
That the sooth Spirit of the breezy wood
Breath'd in mine ear--"All this is very well;
But much of _one_ thing is for _no_ thing good. "
Ah! my poor heart's inexplicable swell!

II

TO SIMPLICITY

O!