Has life no sourness, drawn so near its end?
Can'st thou endure a foe, forgive a friend?
Has age but melted the rough parts away,
As winter-fruits grow mild ere they decay?
Or will you think, my friend, your business done,
When, of a hundred thorns, you pull out one?
h Learn to live well, or fairly make your will; You've play'd, and lov'd, and eat, and drank your fill : Walk sober off; before a sprightlier age
Comes titt'ring on, and shoves you from the stage:
Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease,
Whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please.
Natales grate numeras ? ignoscis amicis?
Lenior et melior fis accedente senecta?
Quid te exemta levat spinis de pluribus una ?
h Vivere fi recte nefcis, decede peritis.
Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti:
Tempus abire tibi est: ne potum largius aequo
Rideat, et pulset lasciva decentius aetas.
Quid vetat et nosmet Lucili scripta legentes Quaerere, num illius, num rerum dura negarit Versiculos natura magis factos, et euntes Mollius?
ES; thank my stars! as early as I knew
This Town, I had the sense to hate it too:
Yet here, as ev'n in Hell, there must be still
One Giant-Vice, fo excellently ill,
That all befide, one pities, not abhors;
As who knows Sappho, smiles at other whores.
I grant that Poetry's a crying fin;
It brought (no doubt) th' Excise and Army in: Catch'd like the Plague, or Love, the Lord knows how,
But that the cure is starving, all allow.
Yet like the Papist's, is the Poet's state,
Poor and difarm'd, and hardly worth your hate!
Here a lean Bard, whose wit could never give
Himself a dinner, makes an Actor live:
SIR, though (I thank God for it) I do hate
Perfectly all this town: yet there's one state
In all ill things, so excellently best,
That hate towards them, breeds pity towards the rest.
Though Poetry, indeed, be fuch a fin,
As, I think, that brings dearth and Spaniards in:
Though like the pestilence and old-fashion'd-love,
Ridlingly it catch men, and doth remove
Never, till it be starv'd out; yet their state
Is poor, disarm'd, like Papists, not worth hate.
One (like a wretch, which at barre judg'd as dead, Yet prompts him which stands next, and cannot read,
The Thief condemn'd, in law already dead,
So prompts, and saves a rogue who cannot read.
Thus as the pipes of some carv'd Organ move,
The gilded puppets dance and mount above.
Heav'd by the breath th' inspiring bellows blow:
Th' inspiring bellows lie and pant below.
One fings the Fair: but songs no longer move; No rat is rhym'd to death, nor maid to love: In love's, in nature's spite, the fiege they hold, And scorn the flesh, the dev'l, and all but gold. The'e write to Lords, some mean reward to get, 25 As needy beggars fing at doors for meat. Those write because all write, and so have still Excuse for writing, and for writing ill.
Wretched indeed! but far more wretched yet
Is he who makes his meal on others wit:
'Tis chang'd, no doubt, from what it was before;
His rank digestion makes it wit no more:
And saves his life) gives Idiot Actors means
(Starving himself) to live by's labour'd scenes.
As in fome Organs, Puppits dance above,
And bellows pant below, which them do move.
One would move love by rhymes; but witchcraft's
Bring not now their old fears, nor their old harms; Rams and flings now are filly battery,
Pistolets are the best artillery.
And they who write to Lords, rewards to get,
Are they not like fingers at doors for meat?
And they who write, because all write, have still
That 'scuse for writing, and for writing ill.
But he is worst, who beggarly doth chaw
Others wits fruits, and in his ravenous maw
|