GROWN old in rhyme, ’t were barb’rous to discard | |
| Your persevering, unexhausted Bard: | |
| Damnation follows death in other men, | |
| But your damn’d poet lives and writes again. | |
| The adventurous lover is successful still, | 5 |
| Who strives to please the Fair against her will. | |
| Be kind, and make him in his wishes easy, | |
| Who in your own despite has strove to please ye. | |
| He scorn’d to borrow from the Wits of yore, | |
| But ever writ, as none e’er writ before. | 10 |
| You modern Wits, should each man bring his claim, | |
| Have desperate debentures on your fame; | |
| And little would be left you, I ’m afraid, | |
| If all your debts to Greece and Rome were paid. | |
| From this deep fund our author largely draws, | 15 |
| Nor sinks his credit lower than it was. | |
| Tho’ plays for honour in old time he made, | |
| ’T is now for better reasons – to be paid. | |
| Believe him, he has known the world too long, | |
| And seen the death of much immortal song. | 20 |
| He says, poor poets lost, while players won, | |
| As pimps grow rich while gallants are undone. | |
| Though Tom the poet writ with ease and pleasure, | |
| The comic Tom abounds in other treasure. | |
| Fame is at best an unperforming cheat; | 25 |
| But ’t is substantial happiness to eat. | |
| Let ease, his last request, be of your giving, | |
| Nor force him to be damn’d to get his living. | |
| |
