Wild wanton Luxury lays waste the land
With difficulty tilled by Thrift’s
hard hand!
Then dies the State!—and, in
its carcass found,
The millionaires, all maggot-like, abound.
Alas! was it for this that Warren died,
And Arnold sold himself to t’ other
side,
Stark piled at Bennington his British
dead,
And Gates at Camden, Lee at Monmouth,
fled?—
For this that Perry did the foeman fleece,
And Hull surrender to preserve the peace?
Degenerate countrymen, renounce, I pray,
The slothful ease, the luxury, the gay
And gallant trappings of this idle life,
And be more fit for one another’s
wife.
A CHALLENGE.
A bull imprisoned in a stall
Broke boldly the confining wall,
And found himself, when out of bounds,
Within a washerwoman’s grounds.
Where, hanging on a line to dry,
A crimson skirt inflamed his eye.
With bellowings that woke the dead,
He bent his formidable head,
With pointed horns and gnarly forehead;
Then, planting firm his shoulders horrid,
Began, with rage made half insane,
To paw the arid earth amain,
Flinging the dust upon his flanks
In desolating clouds and banks,
The while his eyes’ uneasy white
Betrayed his doubt what foe the bright
Red tent concealed, perchance, from sight.
The garment, which, all undismayed,
Had never paled a single shade,
Now found a tongue—a dangling
sock,
Left carelessly inside the smock:
“I must insist, my gracious liege,
That you’ll be pleased to raise
the siege:
My colors I will never strike.
I know your sex—you’re
all alike.
Some small experience I’ve had—
You’re not the first I’ve
driven mad.”
