[Page 281]

NATURE and FORTUNE.

To the Earl of CHESTERFIELD.

1 NATURE and fortune blith and gay,
2 To pass an hour or two,
3 In frolick mood agreed to play
4 At "What shall this man do?"
5 Come, I'll be judge then, FORTUNE cries,
6 And therefore must be blind;
7 Then whipt a napkin round her eyes,
8 And ty'd it fast behind.
9 NATURE had now prepar'd her list
10 Of names on scraps of leather,
11 Which roll'd, she gave them each a twist,
12 And husled them together.
13 Thus mixt, which ever came to hand
14 She very surely drew;
15 Then bade her sister give command,
16 For what that man should do.
[Page 282]
17 'Twould almost burst one's sides to hear
18 What strange commands she gave;
19 That C—R should the laurel wear,
20 And C—E an army have.
21 At length when STANHOPE'S name was come,
22 Dame NATURE smil'd and cry'd,
23 Now tell me, sister, this man's doom,
24 And what shall him betide?
25 That man, said FORTUNE, shall be one
26 Blest both by you and me:
27 Nay, then, quoth NATURE, let's have done;
28 Sister, I'm sure you see.

Text

  • TEI/XML [chunk] (XML - 53K / ZIP - 6.2K) / ECPA schema (RNC - 357K / ZIP - 73K)
  • Plain text [excluding paratexts] (TXT - 962 / ZIP - 744 )

Facsimile (Source Edition)

(Page images digitized by the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive from a copy in the archive's library.)

Images

PDF

All Images (PDF - 1.4M)

About this text

Title (in Source Edition): NATURE and FORTUNE. To the Earl of CHESTERFIELD.
Themes: politics; fate; fortune; providence; high society; court, the
Genres: ballad metre; Chevy Chase stanza; address
References: DMI 19487

Text view / Document view

Source edition

Dodsley, Robert, 1703-1764. A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. III. London: printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763 [1st ed. 1758], pp. 281-282. 6v.: music; 8⁰. (ESTC T131163; OTA K104099.003) (Page images digitized by the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive from a copy in the archive's library.)

Editorial principles

The text has been typographically modernized, but without any silent modernization of spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. The source of the text is given and all editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. Based on the electronic text originally produced by the TCP project, this ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.