*152] ANNUAL REGISTER, 1795. 
’Tis not for me to shrink with mean despair, 
Favour’s proud ship should whirlwinds toss; 
Nor venal idols sooth with bart’ring prayer, 
To shield from wreck opprobrious dross, 
*Midst all the tumults of the warring sphere, 
My light-charged bark may haply glide ; 
Some gale may waft, some conscious thought shall cheer, 
And the small freight unanxious glide. 
WriuiraMm Pir, 1750. 
PROLOGUE ?¢o the WHEEL OF FORTUNE. 
i FARMER late (so Country Records say) 
From the next market homeward took his way ;. 
When as the bleak unshelter’d heath he crost, 
Fast bound by winter in obdurate frost, 
The driving snow-storm smote him in his course, 
High blow’d the North, and rag’d in all its force : 
Slow pac’d and full of years, th’ unequal strife 
Long time he held, and struggled hard for life; 
Vanquish’d at length, benumbed in every part, 
The very life-blood curdling at his heart, 
Torpid he stood, in frozen fetters bound, 
Doz’d, reel’d, and dropt, expiring to the ground. 
Haply his dog, by wond’rous instinct fraught, 
With all the reas’ning attributes of thought, 
Saw his sad state, andiito his dying breast 
Close cow’ring his devoted body press’d : 
Then howl’d amain for help, till passing near 
Some charitable rustic lent an ear ; 
Rais’d him from earth, recall’d his flitting breath, . 
And snatch’d him from the icy arms of death. 
So when the chilling blast of secret woe 
Checks the soul’s genial current inits flow; - 
When death-like lethargy arrests the mind, 
Till man forgets all feeling for his kind ; 
To his cold heart the friendly Muse can give 
Warmth and a pulse that forces him to live; 
By the sweet magic of her scene beguile, 
And bend his rigid muscles with a smile ; 
Shake his stern breast with sympathetic fears, 
And make his frozen eye-lids melt in tears ; | 
Pursuing still her Jife-restoring plan, 
Till he perceives and owns himself a Man : 
Warm’d 
