'My dear good Madam, You can't think how very sad I'm. I sent you, or I mistake myself foully, A very excellent imitation of the poet Cowley, Containing three very fair stanzas, Which number Longinus, a very critical man, says, And Aristotle, who was a critic ten times more caustic, To a nicety fits a valentine or an acrostic. And yet for all my pains to this moving epistle, I have got no answer, so I suppose I may go whistle. Perhaps you'd have preferred that like an old monk I had pattered on In the style and after the manner of the unfortunate Chatterton; Or that, unlike my reverend daddy's son, I had attempted the classicalities of the dull, though immortal Addison. I can't endure this silence another week; What shall I do in order to make you speak? Shall I give you a trope In the manner of Pope, Or hammer my brains like an old smith To get out something like Goldsmith? Or shall I aspire on To tune my poetic lyre on The same key touched by Byron, And laying my hand its wire on, With its music your soul set fire on By themes you ne'er could tire on? Or say, I pray, Would a lay Like Gay Be more in your way? I leave it to you, Which am I to do? It plain on the surface is That any metamorphosis, To affect your study You may work on my soul or body. Your frown or your smile makes me Savage or Gay In action, as well as in song; And if 'tis decreed I at length become Gray, Express but the word and I'm Young; And if in the Church I should ever aspire With friars and abbots to cope, By a nod, if you please, you can make me a Prior-- By a word you render me Pope. If you'd eat, I'm a Crab; if you'd cut, I'm your Steel, As sharp as you'd get from the cutler; I'm your Cotton whene'er you're in want of a reel, And your livery carry, as Butler. I'll ever rest your debtor If you'll answer my first letter; Or must, alas, eternity Witness your taciturnity? Speak--and oh! speak quickly Or else I shall grow sickly, And pine, And whine, And grow yellow and brown As e'er was mahogany, And lie me down And die in agony. P.S.--You'll allow I have the gift To write like the immortal Swift.'