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While the queer Ragged-Lady, who pass'd for a poet,
Sat darning her hose, and wish'd no one to know it;
And Fox-Glove, who sometimes had furnished a sonnet,
Was tying new bows on a fanciful bonnet.
The green-house exotics, in chariots, went by,
For their delicate nerves feared each frown of the sky,
While from her low cottage of moss on the plain,
The Violet look'd up and admired the bright train,
Not thinking to join in a circle so gay,
Or dreaming that she had a charm to display;
Beside a sick bud she preferred to attend,
Which down to the dust its pule forehead would bend.
But judge how this splendid conventicle stared,
When Minerva the prize to the Violet declar'd!
Remarking, though beauties and graces were there,
That "Modesty ever to her was most fair."
And distinctly pronounced, in the hearing of all,
That "the humble must rise, and the arrogant fall."