Classic Poem

 D EAR Gout! how little once I thought
Such pleasure could from thee be caught!
An Agent rack'd upon his bed,
His Daughter, as an Agent bred,
Came to the Rector at an Inn,
Though muffled upwards to the chin,
With skill dissected the account,
And shifted this to that amount.
She of all Agents was the pearl—
And something else—a handsome girl.
Her teeth were exquisitely white,
Her bosom was a Monarch's right:
Her eyes intelligent and sweet:
I felt her pulse “ a hundred ” beat:
Experienc'd as a cunning hawk,
Pretending not a line to baulk;
Pounc'd on her if she lost her pen;
And kiss'd her, till she wrote again .
The figures to their station flew,
The debt increas'd—the interest grew:
Love's reckoning settled every doubt—
“ Sweet are the uses ”—of the Gout!