Lazy-bones, lazy-bones, wake up, and peep! 
The cat’s in the cupboard, your mother’s asleep. 
There you sit snoring, forgetting her ills;
Who is to give her her Bolus and Pills? 
Twenty fine Angels must come into town,
All for to help you to make your new gown: 
Dainty AERIAL Spinsters, and Singers;
Aren’t you ashamed to employ such white fingers? 
Delicate hands, unaccustom’d to reels,
To set ’em a working a poor body’s wheels? 
Why they came down is to me all a riddle,
And left HALLELUJAH broke off in the middle: 
Jove’s Court, and the Presence angelical, cut—­
To eke out the work of a lazy young slut. 
Angel-duck, Angel-duck, winged, and silly,
Pouring a watering-pot over a lily,
Gardener gratuitous, careless of pelf,
Leave her to water her lily herself,
Or to neglect it to death if she chuse it: 
Remember the loss is her own, if she lose it.

ON WAWD

(Of the East India House)

What Wawd knows, God knows;
But God knows what Wawd knows.

* * * * *

SIX EPITAPHS ON ENSIGN PEACOCK

(1799)

MARMOR LOQUITUR

He lies a Volunteer so fine,
Who died of a decline,
As you or I, may do one day;
Reader, think of this, I pray;
And I humbly hope you’ll drop a tear
For my poor Royal Volunteer. 
He was as brave as brave could be,
Nobody was so brave as he;
He would have died in Honor’s bed,
Only he died at home instead. 
Well may the Royal Regiment swear,
They never had such a Volunteer. 
But whatsoever they may say,
Death is a man that will have his way: 
Tho’ he was but an ensign in this world of pain;
In the next we hope he’ll be a captain. 
And without meaning to make any reflection on his mentals,
He begg’d to be buried in regimentals.

ON TIMOTHY WAGSTAFF

Here lies the body of Timothy Wagstaff,
Who was once as tall and as straight as a flagstaff;
But now that he’s gone to another world,
His staff is broken and his flag is furled.

ON CAPTAIN STURMS

Here lieth the body of Captain Sturms,
Once “food for powder,” now for worms,
At the battle of Meida he lost his legs,
And stumped about on wooden pegs. 
Naught cares he now for such worthless things,
He was borne to Heaven on angels’ wings.

ON MARGARET DIX

(Born on February 29)

Ci git the remains of Margaret Dix,
Who was young in old age I ween,
Though Envy with Malice cried “seventy-six,”
The Graces declared her “nineteen.”

ON ONESIMUS DRAKE

To the memory of Dr. Onesimus Drake,
Who forced good people his drugs to take—­
No wonder his patients were oft on the rack
For this “duck of a man” was a terrible quack.