OF TEMPER.
81
Amidst the foremost of this haggard band.
Unwearied poster of the sea and land,
Wrapt in dark mists, malignant Scandal flies,
While Envy's poison'd breath the buoyant gale supplies.
Tho' Sheridan, with shafts of comic wit,
Pierc'd, and expos'd her to the laughing pit,
Th' immortal hag still wears her paper crown,
The dreaded empress of the idle town:
O'erleaping her prerogative of old,
To sink the noble, to defame the bold;—
In chase of worth to slip the dogs of strife,
Thro' all the ample range of public life;—
The tyrant now, the sanctuary burst
Where happiness by privacy is nurst,
Her fury rising as her powers increase,
O'erturns the altars of domestic peace.
Pleas'd in her dark and gall-distilling cloud,
The sportive form of innocence to shroud,
Beauty's young train her baleful eyes survey,
To mark the fairest, as her favourite prey.
Unwearied poster of the sea and land,
Wrapt in dark mists, malignant Scandal flies,
While Envy's poison'd breath the buoyant gale supplies.
Tho' Sheridan, with shafts of comic wit,
Pierc'd, and expos'd her to the laughing pit,
Th' immortal hag still wears her paper crown,
The dreaded empress of the idle town:
O'erleaping her prerogative of old,
To sink the noble, to defame the bold;—
In chase of worth to slip the dogs of strife,
Thro' all the ample range of public life;—
The tyrant now, the sanctuary burst
Where happiness by privacy is nurst,
Her fury rising as her powers increase,
O'erturns the altars of domestic peace.
Pleas'd in her dark and gall-distilling cloud,
The sportive form of innocence to shroud,
Beauty's young train her baleful eyes survey,
To mark the fairest, as her favourite prey.
