[Page [206]]

TO A LADY WHO SENT THE AUTHOR SOME PAPER WITH A READING OF SILLAR'S POEMS.

1 DEAR madam, with joy I read over your letter;
2 Your kindness still tends to confirm me your debtor;
3 But can't think of payment, the sum is so large,
4 Tho' farthings for guineas could buy my discharge.
5 But, madam, the Muses are fled far away,
6 They deem it disgrace with a milkmaid to stay.
[Page 207]
7 Let them go if they will, I would scorn to pursue,
8 And can, without sighing, subscribe an adieu.
9 Their trifling mock visits, to many so dear,
10 Is the only disaster on earth I now fear.
11 Sure Sillar much better had banish'd them thence,
12 Than wrote in despite of good manners and sense:
13 With two or three more, whose pretentions to fame
14 Are slight as the bubble that bursts on the stream.
15 And lest with such dunces as these I be number'd,
16 The task I will drop, nor with verse be incumber'd;
17 Tho' pen, ink and paper, are by me in store,
18 O madam excuse, for I ne'er shall write more.

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Title (in Source Edition): TO A LADY WHO SENT THE AUTHOR SOME PAPER WITH A READING OF SILLAR'S POEMS.
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Little, Janet, 1759-1813. The Poetical Works of Janet Little, the Scotch Milkmaid. Air: Printed by John & Peter Wilson, 1792, pp. [206]-207.  (ESTC T126549) (Page images digitized from a copy in the Library of the University of California, Los Angeles.)

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Other works by Janet Little (later Richmond)