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hear

       At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep

       The song and oar of Adria's gondolier,

       By distance mellow'd, o'er the waters sweep;

       'T is sweet to see the evening star appear;

       'T is sweet to listen as the night-winds creep

       From leaf to leaf; 't is sweet to view on high

       The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.

       'T is sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark

       Bay deep-mouth'd welcome as we draw near home;

       'T is sweet to know there is an eye will mark

       Our coming, and look brighter when we come;

       'T is sweet to be awaken'd by the lark,

       Or lull'd by falling waters; sweet the hum

       Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds,

       The lisp of children, and their earliest words.

       Sweet is the vintage, when the showering grapes

       In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth,

       Purple and gushing: sweet are our escapes

       From civic revelry to rural mirth;

       Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps,

       Sweet to the father is his first-born's birth,

       Sweet is revenge—especially to women,

       Pillage to soldiers, prize-money to seamen.

       Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet

       The unexpected death of some old lady

       Or gentleman of seventy years complete,

       Who 've made 'us youth' wait too—too long already

       For an estate, or cash, or country seat,

       Still breaking, but with stamina so steady

       That all the Israelites are fit to mob its

       Next owner for their double-damn'd post-obits.

       'T is sweet to win, no matter how, one's laurels,

       By blood or ink; 't is sweet to put an end

       To strife; 't is sometimes sweet to have our quarrels,

       Particularly with a tiresome friend:

       Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels;

       Dear is the helpless creature we defend

       Against the world; and dear the schoolboy spot

       We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot.

       But sweeter still than this, than these, than all,

       Is first and passionate love—it stands alone,

       Like Adam's recollection of his fall;

       The tree of knowledge has been pluck'd—all 's known—

       And life yields nothing further to recall

       Worthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown,

       No doubt in fable, as the unforgiven

       Fire which Prometheus filch'd for us from heaven.

       Man 's a strange animal, and makes strange use

       Of his own nature, and the various arts,

       And likes particularly to produce

       Some new experiment to show his parts;

       This is the age of oddities let loose,

       Where different talents find their different marts;

       You 'd best begin with truth, and when you 've lost your

       Labour, there 's a sure market for imposture.

       What opposite discoveries we have seen!

       (Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.)

       One makes new noses, one a guillotine,

       One breaks your bones, one sets them in their sockets;

       But vaccination certainly has been

       A kind antithesis to Congreve's rockets,

       With which the Doctor paid off an old pox,

       By borrowing a new one from an ox.

       Bread has been made (indifferent) from potatoes;

       And galvanism has set some corpses grinning,

       But has not answer'd like the apparatus

       Of the Humane Society's beginning

       By which men are unsuffocated gratis:

       What wondrous new machines have late been spinning!

       I said the small-pox has gone out of late;

       Perhaps it may be follow'd by the great.

       'T is said the great came from America;

       Perhaps it may set out on its return—

       The population there so spreads, they say

       'T is grown high time to thin it in its turn,

       With war, or plague, or famine, any way,

       So that civilisation they may learn;

       And which in ravage the more loathsome evil is—

       Their real lues, or our pseudo-syphilis?

       This is the patent-age of new inventions

       For killing bodies, and for saving souls,

       All propagated with the best intentions;

       Sir Humphry Davy's lantern, by which coals

       Are safely mined for in the mode he mentions,

       Tombuctoo travels, voyages to the Poles,

       Are ways to benefit mankind, as true,

       Perhaps, as shooting them at Waterloo.

       Man 's a phenomenon, one knows not what,

       And wonderful beyond all wondrous measure;

       'T is pity though, in this sublime world, that

       Pleasure 's a sin, and sometimes sin 's a pleasure;

       Few mortals know what end they would be at,

       But whether glory, power, or love, or treasure,

       The path is through perplexing ways, and when

       The goal is gain'd, we die, you know—and then—

       What then?—I do not know, no more do you—

       And so good night.—Return we to our story:

       'T was in November, when fine days are few,

       And the far mountains wax a little hoary,

       And clap a white cape on their mantles blue;

       And the sea dashes round the promontory,

       And the loud breaker boils against the rock,

       And sober suns must set at five o'clock.

       'T was, as the watchmen say, a cloudy night;

       No moon, no stars, the wind was low or loud

       By gusts, and many a sparkling hearth was bright

       With the piled wood, round which the family crowd;

       There 's something cheerful in that sort of light,

       Even as a summer sky 's without a cloud:

       I 'm fond of fire, and crickets, and all that,

       A lobster salad, and champagne, and chat.

       'T was midnight—Donna Julia was in bed,

       Sleeping, most probably—when at her door

       Arose a clatter might awake the dead,

      

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