A Selection of 18th Century Verse

I’ve recently been dipping into The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse, edited by Roger Lonsdale, and I’ve been struck by the number of wonderful poems – sometimes funny, sometimes sad – therein. Since I’ve been enjoying it so much, I thought I would today bring you a few short poems from the eighteenth-century.

In Praise of Laudanum – William Harrison (1714)

I feel, O Laudanum, thy power divine

And fall with pleasure at thy slumb’ring shrine:

Lulled by thy charms I ‘scape each anxious thought,

And everything but Mira is forgot.

A Dutch Proverb – Matthew Prior (1709)

Fire, water, woman, are man’s ruin

Says wise Professor Vander Brüin.

By flames a house I hired was lost

Last year, and I must pay the cost.

This spring the rains o’erflowed my ground,

And my best Flanders mare was drowned.

A slave I am to Clara’s eyes:

The gypsy knows her pow’r, and flies.

Fire, water, woman, are my ruin:

And great thy wisdom, Vander Brüin.

The Poetess’s Bouts-Rimé – Anonymous (1747)

Dear Phoebus, hear my only vow;

If e’er you loved me, here me now.

That charming youth – but idle fame

Is ever so inclined to blame–

These men will turn it to a jest;

I’ll tell the rhymes and drop the rest:

— — — desire,

— — — fire,

— — — lie,

— — — thigh,

— — — wide,

— — — ride,

— — — night,

— — — delight.

Epitaph on Two Piping-Bullfinches of Lady Ossory’s, Buried under a Rose-Bush in her Garden – Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford (1783, pub. 1798)

All flesh is grass, and so are feathers too:

Finches must die, as well as I and you.

Beneath a damask rose, in good old age,

Here lies the tenant of a noble cage.

For forty moons he charmed his lady’s ear,

And piped obedient oft as she drew near,

Though now stretched out upon a clay-cold bier.

But when the last shrill flagelot shall sound,

And raise all dickybirds from holy ground,

His little corpse again its wings shall plume,

And sing eternally the self-same tune,

From everlasting night to everlasting noon.

On the Other Bullfinch, Buried in the Same Place

Beneath the same bush rests his brother–

What serves for one, will serve for t’other.

On the Setting up Mr. Butler’s Monument in Westminster Abbey – Samuel Wesley (1726)

While Butler, needy wretch! was yet alive,

No gen’rous patron would a dinner give:

See him, when starved to death and turned to dust,

Presented him with a monumental bust!

The poet’s fate is here in emblem shown:

He asked for bread, and he received a stone.