'Tis true, when beauty dawns with early fire,
And hears the flattering tongues of soft defire,
If not from virtue, from its gravest ways.
The foul with pleafing avocation ftrays..
But beauty gone, 'tis easier to be wise;
As harpers better, by the lofs of eyes..
Henceforth retire, reduce your roving airs,
Haunt lefs the plays, and more the public pray'rs,
Reject the Mechlin head, and gold brocade,
Go pray, in fober Norwich crape array'd..
Thy pendent diamonds let thy Fanny take,
(Their trembling luftre shows how much
you shake)
Or bid her wear thy necklace row'd with pearl,
You'll find your Fanny an obedient girl.
So for the reft, with lefs incumbrance hung,
You walk thro' life, unmingled with the young;
And view the fhade and fubftance as you pafs
With joint endeavour trifling at the glafs,
Or Folly dreft, and rambling all her days,
To meet her counterpart, and grow by praise :
Yet
Yet ftill fedate yourself, and gravely plain,
You neither fret, nor envy at the Vain.
'Twas thus, if man with woman we compare,
The wife Athenian croft a glittering fair,
Unmov'd by tongues and fights, he walk'd the place,
Thro' tape, toys, tinfel, gimp, perfume and lace;
Then bends from Mars's hill his awful eyes,
And What a world I never want? he cries:
But cries unheard: for folly will be free.
So parts the buzzing gaudy crowd, and he:
As careless he for them, as they for him;
He wrapt in wisdom, and they whirl'd by whim.
COM
OME hither, boy, we'll hunt to-day
The Book-Worm, ravening beast of prey,
Produc'd by parent earth, at odds,
As fame reports it, with the Gods.
Him frantic hunger wildly drives
Against a thousand Authors lives:
Thro' all the fields of wit he flies;
Dreadful his head with cluft'ring eyes,
With horns without, and tufks within,
And scales to ferve him for a skin.
Obferve him nearly, left he climb
To wound the bards of ancient time,
Or down the vale of fancy go
To tear fome modern wretch below.
On ev'ry corner fix thine eye,
Or ten to one he flips thee by.
See where his teeth a paffage eat:
We'll rouse him from the deep retreat.
But who the shelter's forc'd to give?
'Tis facred Virgil, as I live!
From leaf to leaf, from fong to fong,
He draws the tadpole form along,
He mounts the gilded edge before,
He's
up, he fcuds the cover o'er,
He turns, he doubles, there he past,
And here we have him, caught at last.
Infatiate brute, whofe teeth abuse The sweetest fervants of the Muse. (Nay never offer to deny,
I took thee in the fact to fly.)
His roses nipt in ev'ry page,
My poor Anacreon mourns thy rage.
By thee my Ovid wounded lies;
By thee my Lesbia's fparrow dies:
Thy rabid teeth have half destroy'd
The work of love in Biddy Floyd,
They rent Belinda's locks away,'
And spoil'd the Blouzelind of Gay.
For all, for ev'ry fingle deed,
Relentless justice bids thee bleed.
Then fall a victim to the Nine,
My felf the priest, my defk the fhrine..
Bring Homer, Virgil, Taffo near,
To pile a facred altar here;
Hold, boy, thy band out-runs thy wit,
You reach'd the plays that Dennis writ ;
You reach'd me Philips rustic strain ;
Pray take your mortal Bards again.
Come bind the victim, there he lies,
And here between his num'rous eyes.
This venerable duft I lay,
From manuscripts juft swept away.
The goblet in my hand I take, (For the libation's yet to make) A health to Poets! all their days
May they have bread, as well as praise;
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