16
Whose deep drawn sighs (unlike thy beard) have grown
To echo Werter’s sorrows, with thine own—
What though you tire the nobblerising throng
With fragments dragging their slow length along,
For lack of eloquence, shall worth atone,
Your mein is manly and your mind your own.—
Bear with me Rufus, I would tribute pay
Ere yet I terminate my transient lay,
To noble candour, honesty of heart,
One framed to exercise a beiter part—
Oh know thyself—timidly eschew,
What virtue prompts dont hesitate to do
Avoid cabals, the cliques of vicious clime
Await the advent of a better time,
With genius bonnd, and manhood gone to grass
If vice don’t prosper, write me down an ass.—
Come generous Bland the good, the kind, the friend,
In whom a host of genuine virtues blend
How loud erst while thy voice in stern debate
Controlled the Council or opposed tho State,
Why hast thou slumbered? to when Australia’s prow
Moored to the shore confronts thy frosty pow
While tim’rous pilot dreads to launch the boat
Which craven crimped crew could not set afloat—
What crotchet now inflames your vivid brain?
Steam o’er the calm and face the breeze again
Heed not the chilliness of nobs grown cold
Time may destroy, but cannot make you old.
Up puppet vender, play the marionette
Your mighty passions, puff in constant fret
At silly trifles, Gabo and its oil
May they in turgid indignation boil———
Oi polloi crawlers claim their hideous God
A grateful “Empire” breathes but at his nod,
Vulgarity of person, action, soul,
Proves him not ablest, that may reach the goal—
