Yet loth the fum intire should be destroy'd, "Give me a penny, and thy contract's "void." The ftartled bard with eye indignant frown'd: "Shall I, ye Gods, (he cries) my debts compound !" So faying, from his rug the skew'r he takes, And on the stick ten equal notches makes; With just resentment flings it on the ground; “There, take my * tally of ten thousand "pound." The SOUTH-SEA. YE wife philofophers! explain 1721. What magick makes our money rife, Put in your money fairly told; * Charles II, having borrowed a confiderable fum, gave tallies as a fecurity for the repayment; but foon after, fhut ting up the Exchequer, these tallies were as much reduced from their original value, as the South-Sea had exceeded it. Thus Thus in a bafon drop a fhilling, Then fill the veffel to the brim; It rises both in bulk and height; In ftock three hundred thousand pound; Thus the deluded bankrupt raves, So, by a calenture misled, The mariner with rapture fees With eager hafte he longs to rove In that fantaftick scene, and thinks It must be some enchanted grove; And in he leaps, and down he finks. Two M Two hundred chariots, just bespoke, Like Pharaoh, by directors led, They with their spoils went fafe before; His chariots, tumbling out the dead, Lay shatter'd on the Red-fea fhore. Rais'd up on hope's afpiring plumes, On paper wings he takes his flight; His wings are his paternal rent; Inform us, you that beft can tell, Why in your dang'rous gulph profound, Where hundreds and where thousands fell, Fools chiefly float, the wife are drown'd? So have I seen from Severn's brink One fool may from another win, He throws at all, and sweeps the board. As fishes on each other prey, The great ones fwall'wing up the fmall; So fares it in the Southern fea; The whale directors eat up all. When Stock is high, they come between, Making by fecond-hand their offers; Then cunningly retire unseen, With each a million in his coffers. So, when upon a moon-fhine night The day of judgment will be foon, Each Each poor fubfcriber to the sea Sinks down at once, and there he lies: Directors fall as well as they ;: Their fall is but a trick to rife. So fishes rifing from the main Can foar with moiften'd wings on high; The moisture dry'd, they fink again, And dip their fins again to fly. Undone at play, the female troops Thus Venus to the fea defcends, As poets feign; but where's the moral ? It fhews the queen of love intends To fearch the deep for pearl and coral. A fhilling in the Bath you fling, But, as a guinea will not pass At market for a farthing more, Shewn through a multiplying glafs, Than what it always did before; So |