"There die neglected, and return no more: "Ah! rest in peace, poor, injur'd, parted shade, "By cruel hands in death's dark weeds array'd, "But happier climes, where suns unclouded shine, "Light undisturb'd, and endless peace are thine."-- From Brookland groves a Hessian doctor came, Not great his skill, nor greater much his fame; Fair Science never call'd the wretch her son, And Art disdain'd the stupid man to own;-- Can you admire that Science was so coy, Or Art refus'd his genius to employ!-- Do men with brutes an equal dullness share, Or cuts yon' grovelling mole the midway air? In polar worlds can Eden's blossoms blow? Do trees of God in barren desarts grow? Are loaded vines to Etna's summit known, Or swells the peach beneath the torrid zone?-- Yet still he doom'd his genius to the rack, And, as you may suppose, was own'd a quack. He on his charge the healing work begun With antimonial mixtures, by the tun, Ten minutes was the time he deign'd to stay, The time of grace allotted once a day-- He drencht us well with bitter draughts, 'tis true, Nostrums from hell, and cortex from Peru-- Some with his pills he sent to Pluto's reign, And some he blister'd with his flies of Spain; His cream of Tartar walk'd its deadly round, Till the lean patient at the potion frown'd, And swore that hemlock, death, or what you will, Were nonsense to the drugs that stuff'd his bill.-- On those refusing he bestow'd a kick, Or menac'd vengeance with his walking stick; Here uncontroul'd he exercis'd his trade, And grew experienced by the deaths he made; By frequent blows we from his cane endur'd He kill'd at least as many as he cur'd; On our lost comrades built his future fame, And scatter'd fate, where'er his footsteps came. Some did not seem obedient to his will, And swore he mingled poison with his pill, But I acquit him by a fair confession, He was no Englishman--he was a Hessian,[32]-- Although a dunce, he had some sense of sin, Or else the Lord knows where we now had been; Perhaps in that far country sent to range Where never prisoner meets with an exchange-- Then had we all been banish'd out of time Nor I return'd to plague the world with rhyme. Fool though he was, yet candour must confess Not chief Physician was this dog of Hesse-- One master o'er the murdering tribe was plac'd, By him the rest were honour'd or disgrac'd;-- Once, and but once, by some strange fortune led He came to see the dying and the dead-- He came--but anger so deform'd his eye, And such a faulchion glitter'd on his thigh, And such a gloom his visage darken'd o'er, And two such pistols in his hands he bore! That, by the gods!--with such a load of steel He came, we thought, to murder, not to heal-- Hell in his heart, and mischief in his head, He gloom'd destruction, and had smote us dead, Had he so dar'd--but fate with-held his hand--