Nor long shall ye remain. With visage sour
Our tyrant lord commands us from our home;
And, arm'd with cruel 'aw's coercive power,

Bids me and mine o'er barren mountains

roam.

Yet never, Chatham, have I pass'd a day
In riots' orgies, or in idle ease;

Ne'er have I squander'd hours in sport and play,
Nor wish'd a pamper'd appetite to please.

Hard was my fare, and constant was my toil;
Still with the morning's orient light I rose,
Fell'd the stout oak or raised the lofty pile,
Parch'd in the sun, in dark December froze,

Is it that Nature with a niggard hand

Withholds her gifts from these once-favour'd plains?

Has God, in vengeance to a guilty land,

Sent death and famine to her labouring swains?

Ah no, yon hill, where daily sweats my brow,
A thousand flocks, a thousand herds adorn:
Yon field, where late I drove the painful plough,

Feels all her acres crown'd with bending corn.

WILLIAM HAYWARD ROBERTS.

But what avails, that o'er the furrow'd soil
In Autumn's heat the yellow harvests rise,
If artificial want elude my toil,

Untasted plenty wound my craving eyes?

What profits that at distance, I behold

My wealthy neighbour's fragrant smoke ascend, If still the griping cormorants withhold The fruits which rain and genial seasons send?

If those fell vipers of the public weal
Yet unrelenting on our bowels prey;
If still the curse of penury we feel,

And in the midst of plenty pine away?

In every port the vessel rides secure,

Which wafts our harvest to a foreign shore ; While we the pangs of pressing want endure, The sons of strangers, riot on our store.

O generous Chatham, stop those fatal sails,

Once more with outstretch'd arm thy Britons

save;

The unheeding crew, but waits for favouring

gales,

O stop them, e'er they stem the Etrurian wave.

So may thy languid limbs with strength be braced,
And glowing health support thy active soul;
With fair renown thy public virtue graced,
Far as thou bidst Britannia's thunder roll.

Then, joy to thee, and to thy children peace
The grateful hind shall drink from plenty's

horn:

And while they share the cultured land's increase,

The Poor shall bless the day when PITT was

born.

JOHN FREE.

1791.

Dr. Free was Rector of Runcorn, in Cheshire, and Lecturer of Newington, in Surry. He published a volume of Miscellanies, in 1751.

AN ANSWER TO A POETICAL EPISTLE,

FROM MY FRIEND MR. A

[Who being just then married, advised the Author to leave such solitary Amusements, as engraving verses upon the Rock, and to employ himself better, in looking out a Wife.]

YOUR good Advice for me design'd,
Sir, I must own was very kind:
But since 'twas not a case in law,

Forgive me, if I spy a flaw.

The thing you know was Matrimony,

Which

you protest is sweet as honey: And so it may, till this moon's o'er,

But tell me, when you've proved it more.
Though I confess it were a pity,

That you should ever change your ditty;
Of fetters you appear so fond;
So happy in the marriage bond.
But I who freedom love and power,
Could never be controul'd an hour;
Beside the living thus in thrall,
The women, if you know them all;
Are not like your good chear-your wife,
No, some would lead you such a life!
And one of these without due care
May fall to any neighbour's share:
Better to reason and delay,
And study whom you could obey,
Than all one's happiness to barter,
For a month's toying with a tartar.
Then to go at it tooth and nail,
And fly from home as from a jayl.
From civil wars, good Heaven defend me,
Nor let a woman's humour end me;

Not but there is a gentler kind,

And one of these 1 hope to find