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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
Strike your offended sense with double
stink.
If you be wise, then go not for to dine;
You'll spend in coach hire more than save in wine.
A
coming shower your shooting corns presage,
Old aches
throb, your hollow tooth will rage.
Sauntering in
coffeehouse is 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 swilled more liquor than it could
contain,
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 that
sprinkling which some careless quean
Flirts on you
from her mop, but not so clean:
You fly, invoke the
gods; then turning stop
To rail; she singing, still
whirls on her mop.
Not yet the dust had shunned the
unequal strife,
But, aided by the wind, fought still
for life,
And wafted with its foe by violent gust,
'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
mingled stain.
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,
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.
Triumphant Tories and
desponding Whigs
Forget their feuds, and join to save
their wigs.
Boxed in a chair the beau impatient sits,
While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits,
And ever and anon with frightful din
The leather
sounds; he trembles from within.
So when 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, doth run
them through),
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:
Fillth of
all hues and odors seem to tell
What street they
sailed from, by their sight and smell.
They, as each
torrent drives with rapid force,
From Smithfield or
St. Pulchre's shape their course,
And in huge
confluence joined at Snow Hill ridge,
Fall from the
conduit prone to Holborn Bridge.
Sweeping from
butchers' stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drowned
puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud,
Dead
cats, and turnip tops, come tumbling down the flood.
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