To The Rev. William Bull.

June 22, 1782.     My dear Friend,     If reading verse be your delight,     Tis mine as much, or more, to write;     But what we would, so weak is man,     Lies oft remote from what we can.     For instance, at this very time     I feel a wish by cheerful rhyme     To soothe my friend, and, had I power,     To cheat him of an anxious hour;     Not meaning (for I must confess,     It were but folly to suppress)     His pleasure, or his good alone,     But squinting partly at my own.     But though the sun is flaming high     In the centre of yon arch, the sky,     And he had once (and who but he?)     The name for setting genius free,     Yet whether poets of past days     Yielded him undeserved praise.     And he by no uncommon lot     Was famed for virtues he had not;     Or whether, which is like enough,     His Highness may have taken huff,     So seldom sought with invocation,     Since it has been the reigning fashion     To disregard his inspiration,     I seem no brighter in my wits,     For all the radiance he emits,     Than if I saw through midnight vapour,     The glimmering of a farthing taper.     Oh for a succedaneum, then,     To accelerate a creeping pen!     Oh for a ready succedaneum,     Quod caput, cerebrum, et cranium     Pondere liberet exoso,     Et morbo jam caliginoso!     Tis here; this oval box well filld     With best tobacco, finely milld,     Beats all Anticyras pretences     To disengage the encumberd senses.     Oh Nymph of transatlantic fame,     Whereer thine haunt, whateer thy name,     Whether reposing on the side     Of Oroonoquos spacious tide,     Or listening with delight not small     To Niagaras distant fall,     Tis thine to cherish and to feed     The pungent nose-refreshing weed     Which, whether pulverized it gain     A speedy passage to the brain,     Or whether, touchd with fire, it rise     In circling eddies to the skies,     Does thought more quicken and refine     Than all the breath of all the Nine     Forgive the bard, if bard he be,     Who once too wantonly made free,     To touch with a satiric wipe     That symbol of thy power, the pipe;     So may no blight infest thy plains     And no unseasonable rains;     And so may smiling peace once more     Visit Americas sad shore;     And thou, secure from all alarms,     Of thundering drums and glittering arms,     Rove unconfined beneath the shade     Thy wide expanded leaves have made;     So may thy votaries increase,     And fumigation never cease.     May Newton with renewd delights     Perform thine odoriferous rites,     While clouds of incense half divine     Involve thy disappearing shrine;     And so may smoke-inhaling Bull     Be always filling, never full.