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William Cowper - To The Reverend William Bull
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My dear friend,
If reading verse be your delight,
`Tis mine as much, or more, to write;
But what we would, so weak is man, 
Lies oft remote from what we can.
For instance, at this very time,
I feel a wish, by cheerful rhyme,
To soothe my friend, and had I power,
To cheat him of an anxious hour;
Not meaning (for I must confess,
It were but folly to suppress)
His pleasure or his good alone,
But squinting partly at my own.
But though the sun is flaming high
I` th` centre of yon arch, the sky,
And he had once (and who but he?)
The name for setting genius free;
Yet whether poets of past days
Yielded him undeserved praise,
And he by no uncommon lot 
Was famed for virtues he had not;
Or whether, which is like enough,
His Highness may have taken huff,
So seldom sought with invocation,
Since it has been the reigning fashion
To disregard his inspiration,
I seem no brighter in my wits,
For all the radiance he emits,
Than if I saw through midnight vapor
The glimm`ring of a farthing taper.
O for a succedaneum, then,
T` accelerate a creeping pen,
Quod caput, cerebrum, et cranium
Pondere liberet exoso,
Et morbo jam caliginoso!
`Tis here; this oval box well fill`d
With best tobacco, finely mill`d,
Beats all Anticyra`s pretences
To disengage the encumber`d senses.

O Nymph of Transatlantic fame,
Where`er thine haunt, whate`er thy name,
Whether reposing on the side
Of Oroonoquo`s spacious tide,
Or list`ning with delight not small
To Niagara`s distant fall,
`Tis thine to cherish and to feed
The pungent nose-refreshing weed,
Which, whether, pulverized it gain
A speedy passage to the brain,
Or, whether touch`d with fire, it rise
In circling eddies to the skies,
Does thought more quicken and refine
Than all the breath of the Nine--
Forgive the Bard, if Bard be he,
Who once too wantonly made free
To touch with a satiric wipe
That symbol of thy power, the pipe;
So may no blight infest thy plains,
And no unseasonable rains,
And so may smiling Peace once more
Visit America`s sad shore;
And thou, secure from all alarms
Of thund`ring drums and glitt`ring arms,
Rove unconfined beneath the shade
Thy wide-expanded leaves have made;
So may thy votaries increase,
And fumigation never cease.
May Newton, with renew`d delights
Perform thine odorif`rous rites,
While clouds of incense half divine
Involve thy disappearing shrine;
And so may smoke-inhaling Bull
Be always filling, never full.
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