Page:Trivia (John Gay) to which is added London (Samuel Johnson) (1809).djvu/36

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Does not his service earn your daily bread?—235
Your wives, your children, by his labours fed!
If, as the Samian taught, the soul revives,
And, shifting seats, in other bodies lives,
Severe shall be the brutal coachman's change,239
Doom'd in a hackney horse the town to range;
Carmen, transform'd, the groaning load shall draw,
Whom other tyrants with the lash shall awe.
Who would of Watling-street the dangers share,
When the broad pavement of Cheapside is near?
Or who that rugged street would traverse o'er,245
That stretches, O Fleet-ditch! from thy black shore
To the Tow'r's moated walls? Here steams ascend
That, in mix'd fumes, the wrinkled nose offend.
Where chandlers' caldrons boil; where fishy prey
Hide the wet stall, long absent from the sea;250
And where the cleaver chops the heifer's spoil;
And where huge hogsheads sweat with trainy oil;
Thy breathing nostril hold: but how shall I
Pass where, in piles, Cornavion cheeses lie?—
Cheese, that the table's closing rite denies,255
And bids me with th' unwilling chaplain rise.