The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

Parnassian Spring.

Description of SCANDAL.

A WRAPT in dark mists malignant
Scandal flies,
While envy's poison'd breath the buoyant gale supplies.
Tho' Sheridan, with shafts of comic wit,
Pierc'd, and expos'd her to the laughing pit,
Th' immortal hag still wears her paper crown;
The dreaded empress of the idle town:
O'erleaping her prerogative of old,
To sink the noble, to defame the bold;
In chase of worth to slip the dogs of strife,
Thro' all the ample range of public life;
The tyrant now, that sanctuary burst,
Where Happiness by Privacy is nurst,
Her fury rising as her powers increase,
O'erturns the altars of domestic peace.
Pleas'd in her dark and gall-distilling cloud
The sportive form of Innocence to shroud;
Beauty's young train her baleful eyes survey,
To mark the fairest, as her favourite prey.
Hence, sweet Serena, while thy spirit stray'd
Round the deep realms of subterrane-an shade,
This keenest agent of th' infernal powers
On earth was busied in those tranquil hours,
To blast thy peace, and poison'd dart to aim,
Against the honor of thy spotless name:
For Scandal restless fiend, never knows
The balmy blessing of an hour's repose,
Worn, yet unsated with her daily toil,
In her base work consumes the midnight oil.
O'er fiercer fiends when heavy slumbers creep,
When wearied Avarice and Ambition sleep,
Scandal is vigilant and keen to spread
The pains that spring from her prolific head.
On Truth's fair basis she her falsehood builds.
With tinsel sentiment her surface gilds;
To nightly labour from their dark abodes
The demons of the groaning press she goads,
And miles to see their rapid art supply
Ten thousand wings: to every infant lye.