.

As fishes on each other prey,
The great ones swallowing up the small,
So fares it in the Southern Sea;
The whale directors eat up all.

When stock is high, they come between,
Making by second-hand their offers;
Then cunningly retire unseen,
With each a million in his coffers.

So, when upon a moonshine night,
An ass was drinking at a stream,
A cloud arose, and stopt the light,
By intercepting every beam:

The day of judgment will be soon,
Cries out a sage among the crowd;
An ass has swallow'd up the moon!
The moon lay safe behind the cloud.

Each poor subscriber to the sea
Sinks down at once, and there he lies;
Directors fall as well as they,
Their fall is but a trick to rise.

So fishes, rising from the main,
Can soar with moisten'd wings on high;
The moisture dried, they sink again,
And dip their fins again to fly.

Undone at play, the female troops
Come here their losses to retrieve;
Ride o'er the waves in spacious hoops,
Like Lapland witches in a sieve.

Thus Venus to the sea descends,
As poets feign; but where's the moral?
It shows the Queen of Love intends
To search the deep for pearl and coral.

The sea is richer than the land,
I heard it from my grannam's mouth,
Which now I clearly understand;
For by the sea she meant the South.

Thus, by directors we are told,
"Pray, gentlemen, believe your eyes;
Our ocean's cover'd o'er with gold,
Look round, and see how thick it lies:

"We, gentlemen, are your assisters,
We'll come, and hold you by the chin."--
Alas! all is not gold that glisters,
Ten thousand sink by leaping in.

O! would those patriots be so kind,
Here in the deep to wash their hands,
Then, like Pactolus,[2] we should find
The sea indeed had golden sands.

A shilling in the bath you fling,
The silver takes a nobler hue,
By magic virtue in the spring,
And seems a guinea to your view.

But, as a guinea will not pass
At market for a farthing more,
Shown through a multiplying glass,
Than what it always did before:

So cast it in the Southern seas,
Or view it through a jobber's bill;
Put on what spectacles you please,
Your guinea's but a guinea still.

One night a fool into a brook
Thus from a hillock looking down,
The golden stars for guineas took,
And silver Cynthia for a crown.

The point he could no longer doubt;
He ran, he leapt into the flood;
There sprawl'd a while, and scarce got out,
Al