"Paint, patches, jewels, laid aside,
At night astronomers agree,
The evening has the day belied,
And Phyllis is some forty-three."
"Helen was just slipt from bed,
Her eyebrows on the toilet lay,
Away the kitten with them fled,
As fees belonging to her prey."
"For this misfortune, careless Jane,
Assure yourself, was soundly rated:
And Madam getting up again,
With her own hand the mouse-trap baited.
"On little things as sages write,
Depends our human joy or sorrow;
If we don't catch a mouse to-night,
Alas! no eyebrows for to-morrow."
He wrote the following impromptu epitaph on himself--
"Nobles and heralds by your leave,
Here lies what once was Matthew Prior,
The son of Adam and of Eve,
Can Bourbon or Nassau go higher."
But he does not often descend to so much levity as this, his wing is
generally in a higher atmosphere. Sir Walter Scott observes that in the
powers of approaching and touching the finer feelings of the heart, he
has never been excelled, if indeed he has ever been equalled.
Prior wrote a parody called "Erle Robert's Mice," but Pope is more
prolific than any other poet in such productions. His earlier taste
seems to have been for imitation, and he wrote good parodies on Waller
and Cowley, and a bad travesty on Spencer. "January and May" and "The
Wife of Bath" are founded upon Chaucer's Tales.
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