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224 ANNUAL REGISTER
She fish'd the brook,--she div'd the main,
Search'd hill, and dale, and wood in vain;
Not one poor grain the world affords,
To feed her helpless, hungry birds.
What should she do? Ah! see, they faint;
With unavailing, weak complaint,
These, dearer than her vital breath,
Resign to famine's lingering death.
The though was frenzy.--No; she press'd
Her sharp beak on her own kind breast,
With cruel piety, and fed
Her wondering infants as she bled.
"Accept, she cry'd, dear, pretty crew!
"This sacrifice to love and you."
 "Mad fool, forbear," exclaim'd a spider,
That indolently loung'd beside her;
"This horrid act of thine evinces
"You ignorance of Courts and Princes.
"Lord, what a creature!--Tear thy neck shaft,
"To give thy peevish brats a breakfast!
"Hadst thou among the Great resided,
"And mark'd their manners well, as I did,--
"The mother's milk, much less her blood,
"Is ne'er the well-born infant's food.
"Why there's my Lady Ostrich now,
"Who visits in the vale below,
"Knows all the fashion on this head;
"Soon as her La'yship's brought to-bed,
"She-else the birth would prove her curse--
"Gives it the elements to nurse.
"'Tis true, some accident may hurt it,
"Its limbs be broken and distorted;
"Admit there's chance it does not live--
"Pleasure is our prerogative.
"And brooms and brushes be my ruin,
"Ere in a nest I'd fit a stewing:--
"Or, for my duty's sake, forsooth,
"To nursing sacrifice my youth;---
"Ere let my brats my flesh devour,
"I'd eat them up a score an hour."
Foul friend,- the lovely martyr cry'd,
Avaunt! thy horrid person hide;
Folly and vice thy foul disgrace;
'Twas these, not Pallas, spoil'd thy face,
And sunk thee to the reptile race.
  Yes, thy own bowels hung thee there
A felon, out of natures's care;---
5             'Twixt 

For the YEAR 1772.             225
'Twixt heaven and earth, abhorr'd of both;
Emblem of selfishness and sloth.
  Ye Coterieans! who possess
No business, but to dance and dress;
Panthiests! who no God adore;
Housewives, that stay at home no more;
Wives without husbands, mothers too,
Whom your own children never knew;
Who less the blessed fun esteem
Than lamps and tapers greasy gleam;
Ye morning gamesters, walkers, riders,
Say are you Pelicans or Spiders?

The Progress of Poetry.

Ye sacred nine, your mighty aid impart;
Assist my numbers, and inlarge my heart!
Direct my lyre, and tune each trembling string,
While POETRY'S exalted charms I sing.
How, free as air, her strains spontaneous move,
Kindle to rage, or melt the foul to love.
How the first emanations dawn'd disclose,
And where, great source of verse, bright Phoebus first arose;
Where nature, warmth and genius has deny'd,
In vain are art's stiff turgid powers apply'd.
Unforc'd the muses smile, above controul,
No art can tune the unharmonious soul.
Some rules, 'tis true, unerring you may cull,
And void of life, be regularly dull:
Correctly flat may flow each studied rhime,
And each low period indolently chime.
A common ear, perhaps, a vulgar heart
Such lays may please, the labour'd work of art!
Far other strains delight the polish'd mind,
The ear well-judging, and the taste refin'd.
To blend in heav'nly numbers ease and sire,
Would ask an Addishon, a Pope require:
Genius alone can force like theirs bestow,
As stars unconscious of their brightness glow.
    Hail GREECE! from whence the spark etherial came,
That wide o'er earth diffus'd its sacred flame:
There the first laurel form'd a deathless shade,
And sprung immortal from thy HOMER'S head.
There the great bard the rising wonder wrought,
And plann'd the Iliad in his boundless thought.
By no means steps to full perfection grew,
But burst at once refulgent to the view.
Vol. XV.               Q              Who