TO A YOUNG LADY, Who requested the Writer to draw her Character. Sept. 1774. A FABLE. IN vain, fair Maid, you ask in vain, The flowing wit, the keen reply— To paint these beauties as they shine, Might ask a nobler pen than mine. Yet what sure strokes can draw the Fair, Who vary, like the fleeting air, Like willows bending to the force, Where'er the gales direct their course, A FABLE. Opposed to no misfortune's power, And changing with the changing hour. They charm the grove with pleasing strain; The sad tear trembles in their eye: One morn, in Æsop's noisy time, When all things talk'd, and talk'd in rhyme, Rose curling o'er the glassy streams. For clouds could raise the vaunting strain, Yet well it knew, howe'er array'd, That beauty, e'en in clouds, might fade, And so, like them, in early dawn Hard by, a painter raised his stage, To him, high floating in the sky ; * A celebrated American painter, who excelled in portraits. He afterwards visited London, where he gained a very high reputation by his picture of the death of Lord Chatham. |