The goats, while pendent from the mountain top
The wither’d herb improvident they crop,
Wash'd down the precipice with sudden sweep,
Leave their sweet lives beneath th' unfathom'd deep.
The frighted fisher, with desponding eyes,
Though safe, yet trembling in the harbour lies,
Nor hoping to behold the skies serene,
Wearies with vows the monarch of the main.
I ASK'D a whig the other night,
How came this wicked plot to light?
He answer'd, that a dog of late
Inform'd a minister of state.
Said I, from thence I nothing know;
For are not all informers so?
A villain who his friend betrays,
We style him by no other phrase;
And so a perjur'd dog denotes
Porter, and Pendergast, and Oates,
And forty others I could name.
Whig. But you must know, this dog was lame.
Tory. A weighty argument indeed!
Your evidence was lame: — proceed:
- ↑ See Bp. Atterbury's Epistolary Correspondence, 1799, vol. IV, p. 406.
