'
Cf. also that close observer Crabbe ('The Borough', Letter xxii,
ll. 197-8):--
And the loud bittern, from the bull-rush home,
Gave from the salt-ditch side the bellowing boom.
l. 53. -----
"Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made".
Mitford compares 'Confessio Amantis', fol. 152:--
A kynge may make a lorde a knave,
And of a knave a lord also;
and Professor Hales recalls Burns's later line in the 'Cotter's
Saturday Night', 1785:--
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings.
But Prior finds the exact equivalent of the second line in the
verses of an old French poet, De. Caux, upon an hour-glass:--
C'est un verre qui luit,
Qu'un souffle peut detruire, et qu'un souffle a produit.
l. 57. -----
"A time there was, ere England's griefs began". Here
wherever the locality of Auburn, the author had clearly England
in mind.
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