Our plenteous streams a various race supply, The bright-eyed perch with fins of Tyrian dye, The silver eel, in shining volumes roll'd, The yellow carp, in scales bedropp'd with gold, Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains, And pikes, the tyrants of the wat'ry plains.
Lo! the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way.
Horses (thou say'st) and asses men may try,
And ring suspected vessels ere they buy;
But wives, a random choice, untried they take;
They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake;
Then, nor till then, the veil's removed away,
And all the woman glares in open day.
Chiefs who no more in bloody fights engage, But wise through time, and narrative with age, In summer-days like grasshoppers rejoice - A bloodless race, that send a feeble voice.
The Physician, by the study and inspection of urine and ordure, approves himself in the science; and in like sort should our author accustom and exercise his imagination upon the dregs of nature.