A TALE,

FOUNDED ON A FACT, WHICH HAPPENED IN JANUARY, 1779.

stream,

WHERE Humber pours his rich commercial
[pheme.
There dwelt a wretch, who breathed but to blas-
In subterraneous caves his life he led,

Black as the mine, in which he wrought for bread.
When on a day, emerging from the deep,
A sabbath-day (such sabbaths thousands keep!)
The wages of his weekly toil he bore

To buy a cock-whose blood might win him more;
As if the noblest of the feather'd kind
Were but for battle and for death design'd;
As if the consecrated hours were meant
For sport, to minds on cruelty intent;

It chanced (such chances Providence obey),
He met a fellow-labourer on the way,

Whose heart the same desires had once inflamed;
But now the savage temper was reclaim'd.'
Persuasion on his lips had taken place;

For all plead well who plead the cause of grace.
His iron-heart with Scripture he assail'd,
Woo'd him to hear a sermon, and prevail'd.
His faithful bow the mighty preacher drew,
Swift, as the lightning-glimpse, the arrow flew.
He wept; he trembled; cast his eyes around,
To find a worse than he; but none he found.
He felt his sins, and wonder'd he should feel.
Grace made the wound, and grace alone could heal.

Now farewell oaths, and blasphemies, and lies!
He quits the sinner's for the martyr's prize.
That holy day was wash'd with many a tear,
Gilded with hope, yet shaded too by fear.
The next his swarthy brethren of the mine
Learn'd, by his alter'd speech-the change divine!
Laugh'd when they should have wept, and swore
the day

Was nigh, when he would swear as fast as they.
'No (said the penitent): such words shall share
This breath no more; devoted now to prayer.
O! if thou seest (thine eye the future sees),
That I shall yet again blaspheme, like these;
Now strike me to the ground, on which I kneel,
Ere yet this heart relapses into steel;

Now take me to that heaven I once defied,
Thy presence, thy embrace!'-He spoke and
died!

ON A

PLANT OF VIRGIN'S-BOWER

DESIGNED TO COVER A GARDEN-SEAT.
1793.

THRIVE, gentle plant! and weave a bower
For Mary and for me,

And deck with many a splendid flower
Thy foliage large and free.

Thou camest from Eartham, and wilt shade

(If truly I divine)

Some future day the' illustrious head

Of Him who made thee mine.

284

A PLANT OF VIRGIN'S-BOWER.
Should Daphne show a jealous frown
And Envy seize the bay,
Affirming none so fit to crown
Such honour'd brows as they.

Thy cause with zeal we shall defend,
And with convincing power;
For why should not the Virgin's Friend
Be crown'd with Virgin's-bower?

EPIGRAM.

To purify their wine some people bleed
A lamb into the barrel, and succeed;
No nostrum, planters say, is half so good
To make fine sugar, as a negro's blood.
Now lambs and negroes both are harmless things,
And thence perhaps this wondrous virtue springs,
'Tis in the blood of innocence alone-
Good cause why planters never try their own.

EPITAPH

ON MR. CHESTER, OF CHICHELEY.

[lies,

TEARS flow, and cease not, where the good man
Till all who knew him follow to the skies.
Tears therefore fall where Chester's ashes sleep;
Him wife, friends, brothers, children, servants

weep

And justly few shall ever him transcend
As husband, parent, brother, master, friend.

END OF VOL. I.

C. Whittingham, College House, Chiswick.

= 1751

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