- In silence lock it, sudden, and constrain’d,
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(Death to Xantippe,)1 with distorting pain.
- NOR is it not effectual: But wouldst thou [360]
- Have rival brokers for thy cades2 contend;
- Superior arts remain.—Small casks provide,
- Replete with lime-stone thoroughly calcin’d,3
- And from the air secur’d: This Bristol sends,
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Bristol, Britannia’s second mart and eye!4 [365]
- NOR “to thy waters only trust for fame,”5
- Bristol; nor to thy beamy diamonds trust:
- Tho’ these oft deck Britannia’s lovely fair;
- And those oft save the guardians of her realm.
- Thy marble-quarries claim the voice of praise, [370]
- Which rich incrusts thy Avon’s banks,6 sweet banks!
- Tho’ not to you young Shakespear, Fancy’s child,
- All-rudely warbled his first woodland notes;
- Tho’ not your caves, while terror stalk’d around,
- Saw him essay to clutch the ideal sword, [375]
- With drops of blood distain’d: yet, lovely banks,
- On you reclin’d, another tun’d his pipe;
- Whom all the Muses emulously love,
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Also Xanthippe. Wife of Socrates (5th–4th c. BCE), often described as bad tempered. ↩︎
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Casks or barrels. ↩︎
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Limestone is a rock that yields lime when calcined or burnt. Lime was used in Grainger’s time to refine sugar: when boiled with sugar, lime precipitated impurities. ↩︎
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Bristol became a center for sugar refining in part because it had ample supplies of limestone. ↩︎
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A line from William Whitehead’s poem, “An Hymn to the Nymph of Bristol Spring” (1751). ↩︎
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Avon refers to the Bristol Avon, a river in southwest England. It is different from Shakespeare’s Avon. Sugar houses or refineries lined the Avon in the eighteenth century, as access to water was crucial during the refining process. ↩︎