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Return to Adige, or to Thames.

T. I therefore weep Columbo dead,
My hopes bereaved, my pleasures fled;
'I therefore must for ever moan
My dear Columbo dead and gone.'

S. Columbo never sees your tears,
Your cries Columbo never hears;
A wall of brass, and one of lead,
Divide the living from the dead,
Repelled by this, the gathered rain
Of tears beats back to earth again;
In the other the collected sound

Of

groans, when once received, is drowned. "Tis therefore vain one hour to grieve,

What time itself can ne'er retrieve.

By nature soft, I know a dove

Can never live without her love;

Then quit this flame, and light another;
Dame, I advise you like a
a brother.

T. What, I to make a second choice!
In other nuptials to rejoice!

S. Why not, my bird?

T.

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-No, sparrow, no!
Let me indulge my pleasing woe:
Thus sighing, cooing, ease my pain,
But never wish, nor love, again:
Distressed for ever, let me moan
'My dear Columbo, dead and gone.'

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S. Our wingèd friends through all the grove Contemn thy mad excess of love;

I tell thee, dame, the other day

I met a parrot and a jay,

Who mocked thee in their mimic tone,

And wept Columbo, dead and gone.'

T. Whate'er the jay or parrot said,
My hopes are lost, my joys are fled;
And I for ever must deplore
'Columbo dead and gone.'-S. Encore?
For shame! forsake this Bion-style,
We'll talk an hour, and walk a mile.
Does it with sense or health agree,
To sit thus moping on a tree!
To throw away a widow's life,
When you again may be a wife!
Come on! I'll tell you my amours;

Who knows but they may influence yours;
'Example draws where precept fails,
And sermons are less read than tales.'

T. Sparrow, I take thee for my friend,
As such will hear thee; I descend;
Hop on, and talk; but, honest bird,
Take care that no immodest word
May venture to offend my ear.

S. Too saint-like turtle, never fear;
By method things are best discoursed,
Begin we then with wife the first.

A handsome, senseless, awkward fool,
Who would not yield, and could not rule;
Her actions did her charms disgrace,

And still her tongue talked of her face:
Count me the leaves on yonder tree,
So many different wills had she,

And, like the leaves, as chance inclined,

Those wills were changed with every wind:
She courted the beau-monde to-night,
The assembly, her supreme delight;
The next she sat immured, unseen,
And in full health enjoyed the spleen;

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She now could chide, now laugh, now cry,
Now sing, now pout, all God knows why;
Short was her reign, she coughed, and died.
Proceed we to my second bride;
Well born she was, genteelly bred,
And buxom both at board and bed;
Glad to oblige, and pleased to please,
And, as Tom Southern wisely says,
'No other fault had she in life,
But only that she was my wife."
O widow turtle! every she

(So Nature's pleasure does decree)
Appears a goddess till enjoyed;

But birds, and men, and gods, are cloyed.
Was Hercules one woman's man?

Or Jove for ever Leda's swan?

Ah! madam, cease to be mistaken,
Few married fowl peck Dunmow-bacon.
Variety alone gives joy,

The sweetest meats the soonest cloy.
What sparrow-dame, what dove alive,
Though Venus should the chariot drive,
But would accuse the harness weight,
If always coupled to one mate;
And often wish the fetter broke?
"Tis freedom but to change the yoke.

T. Impious! to wish to wed again,
Ere death dissolved the former chain!

S. Spare your remark, and hear the rest; She brought me sons; but (Jove be blessed!) She died in childbed on the nest.

1 See The Wife's Excuse,' a comedy.

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Well, rest her bones! quoth I, she's gone; 247

But must I therefore lie alone.

What am I to her memory tied;

Must I not live, because she died!
And thus I logically said

('Tis good to have a reasoning head!)
Is this my wife? Probatur, not;
For death dissolved the marriage-knot;
She was, concedo, during life;
But, is a piece of clay a wife?
Again; if not a wife d'ye see,
Why then no kin at all to me;
And he, who general tears can shed
For folks that happen to be dead,
May even with equal justice mourn
For those who never yet were born.

T. Those points indeed you quaintly prove: But logic is no friend to love.

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S. My children then were just pen-feathered: Some little corn for them I gathered,

And sent them to my spouse's mother;
So left that brood, to get another;
And, as old Harry whilom said,
Reflecting on Anne Boleyn dead,
Cocksbones! I now again do stand
The jollyest bachelor in the land.

T. Ah me! my joys, my hopes are fled;
My first, my only love, is dead.

With endless grief let me bemoan
Columbo's loss!-

S.

-Let me go on.

As yet my fortune was but narrow,
I wooed my cousin Philly Sparrow,
Of the elder house of Chirping End,

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From whence the younger branch descend. 281 Well seated in a field of pease

She lived, extremely at her ease:

But, when the honey-moon was passed,
The following nights were soon o'ercast;
She kept her own, could plead the law,
And quarrel for a barley-straw;
Both, you may judge, became less kind,
As more we knew each other's mind;
She soon grew sullen; I hard-hearted;
We scolded, hated, fought, and parted.
To London, blessed town! I went;
She boarded at a farm in Kent.
A magpie from the country fled,
And kindly told me she was dead.
I pruned my feathers, cocked my tail,
And set my heart again to sale.

My fourth, a mere coquette, or such
I thought her; nor avails it much,
If true or false; our troubles spring
More from the fancy than the thing.
Two staring horns, I often said,
But ill became a sparrow's head;
But then, to set that balance even,
Your cuckold sparrow goes to Heaven.
The thing you fear, suppose it done,

If

you inquire, you make it known. Whilst at the root your horns are sore,

The more you scratch, they ache the more.

But turn the tables, and reflect,

All may not be, that you suspect.

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By the mind's eye, the horns we mean

Are only in ideas seen;

"Tis from the inside of the head

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