| |
| CAREFUL observers may foretell the hour, | |
| (By sure prognostics,) when to dread a shower. | |
| While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o’er | |
| Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more. | |
| Returning home at night, you’ll find the sink | 5 |
| Strike your offended sense with double stink. | |
| If you be wise, then, go not far to dine: | |
| You’ll spend in coach-hire more than save in wine. | |
| A coming shower your shooting corns presage, | |
| Old aches will throb, your hollow tooth will rage; | 10 |
| Sauntering in coffee-house in Dulman seen; | |
| He damns the climate, and complains of spleen. | |
| Meanwhile the South, rising with dabbled wings, | |
| A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings, | |
| That swill’d more liquor than it could contain, | 15 |
| And, like a drunkard, gives it up again. | |
| Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope, | |
| While the first drizzling shower is borne aslope; | |
| Such is that sprinkling which some careless quean | |
| Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean: | 20 |
| You fly, invoke the gods; then, turning, stop | |
| To rail; she singing, still whirls on her mop. | |
| Not yet the dust had shunned the equal strife, | |
| But, aided by the wind, fought still for life, | |
| And wafted with its foe by violent gust, | 25 |
| ’Twas doubtful which was rain, and which was dust. | |
| Ah! where must needy poet seek for aid, | |
| When dust and rain at once his coat invade? | |
| Sole coat! where dust, cemented by the rain, | |
| Erects the nap, and leaves a cloudy stain! | 30 |
| Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down, | |
| Threatening with deluge this devoted town. | |
| To shops in crowds the daggled females fly, | |
| Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy. | |
| The Templar spruce, while every spout’s abroach, | 35 |
| Stays till ’tis fair, yet seems to call a coach. | |
| The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, | |
| While streams run down her oiled umbrella’s sides. | |
| Here various kinds, by various fortunes led, | |
| Commence acquaintance underneath a shed. | 40 |
| Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, | |
| Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs. | |
| Box’d in a chair the beau impatient sits, | |
| While spouts run clattering o’er the roof by fits, | |
| And ever and anon with frightful din | 45 |
| The leather sounds; he trembles from within. | |
| So when the Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed, | |
| Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed, | |
| (Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do, | |
| Instead of paying chairmen, ran them through,) | 50 |
| Laocoon struck the outside with his spear, | |
| And each imprisoned hero quaked for fear. | |
| Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow, | |
| And bear their trophies with them as they go: | |
| Filth of all hues and odour, seem to tell | 55 |
| What street they sail’d from, by their sight and smell. | |
| They, as each torrent drives with rapid force, | |
| From Smithfield to St. Pulchre’s shape their course, | |
| And in huge confluence join’d at Snowhill ridge, | |
| Fall from the conduit prone to Holborn bridge. | 60 |
| Sweeping from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts, and blood, | |
| Drown’d puppies, stinking sprats, all drench’d in mud, | |
| Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood. | |
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