18.

  Loud rings in air, the chapel bell,
    ’Tis hush’d,—­what sounds are these I hear,
  The organ’s soft celestial swell,
    Rolls deeply on the listening ear.

19.

  To this is join’d the sacred song,
    The royal minstrel’s hallowed strain,
  But he who hears the music long,
    Will never wish to hear again.

20.

  Our choir would scarcely be excus’d,
    Even as a band of raw beginners,
  But mercy now must be refus’d,
    To such a set of croaking sinners.

21.

  If David when his toils were ended,
    Had heard these blockheads sing before him,
  To us his psalms had ne’er descended,
    In furious mood he would have tore ’em.

22.

  The luckless Israelites when taken,
    By some inhuman tyrant’s order,
  Were ask’d to sing, by joy forsaken,
    On Babylonian river’s border.

23.

  But had they sung in notes like these,
    Inspir’d by stratagem, or fear,
  They might have set their hearts at ease,
    The devil a soul had stay’d to hear.

24.

  But if I write much longer now,
    The deuce a soul will stay to read,
  My pen is blunt, the ink is low,
    ’Tis almost time to stop, indeed.

25.

  Therefore farewell, old GRANTA’s spires,
    No more like Cleofas I fly,
  No more thy theme my muse inspires,
    The reader’s tired, and so am I.

October 28, 1806.

[Footnote 8:  The Diable Boiteux of LE SAGE, where Asmodeus the Demon, places Don Cleofas on an elevated situation, and unroofs the houses for his inspection.]

[Footnote 9:  Sele’s publication on Greek metres is not remarkable for its accuracy.]

[Footnote 10:  Every Cambridge man will assent to this,—­the Latin of the Schools is almost unintelligible.]

[Footnote 11:  The discovery of Pythagoras, that the square of the Hypothenuse, is equal to the squares of the other two sides of a right angled triangle.]

[Footnote 12:  On a Saint Day, the Students wear Surplices in Chapel.]

* * * * *

TO THE SIGHING STREPHON.

    Your pardon my friend,
    If my rhymes did offend,
  Your pardon a thousand times o’er,
    From friendship I strove,
    Your pangs to remove,
  But I swear I will do so no more.

2.

    Since your beautiful maid
    Your flame has repaid,
  No more I your folly regret;
    She’s now most divine,
    And I bow at the shrine,
  Of this quickly reformed coquette.

3.

    But still I must own,
    I should never have known,
  From your verses what else she deserv’d,
    Your pain seem’d so great,
    I pitied your fate,
  As your fair was so dev’lish reserv’d.