Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/90

 74 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Now ten pints a day suffice ; Even this, you lovely droll, Who enslave me with your eyes, Is to drink your health, my soul ! " But our poet was not always either tender or jolly ; with him, also, at times, indignation made verses, as witness this horrible " Imprecation " : — '* If to Evreux I e'er go, May I burn with fever slow ! May I turn into a dog ! May I turn into a frog ! Let me be cut off from wine, Nor get trust when I would dine ; May for ever civil brawls Trouble those accursed walls ; May the sweet sun, glad and bright, Never bless it with its light ; May it rain there swords and spears ; May all ills which in old years Bards have prophesied, all those Horrors, outrages, and woes, Poison, murder, streams of blood, Pest and famine, fire and flood. Be right soon accomplished there, Filling it with black despair. This is what just anger heated Him to cry, at table seated. Furiously excited thus 'Gainst that city infamous, Him of all men most benign, Who in these days drink good wine. O good tipplers ! Dear Faret I With just cause you scorn that lair More than thirty churches there. And not one poor cabaret."