Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/214

That does in all its slow resolves advance,
With graver steps than benchers when they dance.'
Most true; yet is not this, I dare maintain,
Less used by any, than the fool, called man.
The wiser emmet, quoted just before,
In summer time ranges the fallows o'er,
With pains and labour, to lay in his store;
But when the blustering north with ruffling blasts
Saddens the year, and nature overcasts,
The prudent insect, hid in privacy,
Enjoys the fruits of his past industry.
No ant of sense was e'er so awkward seen,
To drudge in winter, loiter in the spring.
But sillier man, in his mistaken way,
By reason, his false guide, is led astray;
Tossed by a thousand gusts of wavering doubt,
His restless mind still rolls from thought to thought;
In each resolve unsteady and unfixed,
And what he one day loathes, desires the next.
’Shall I, so famed for many a truant jest
’On wiving, now go take a jilt at last?
Shall I turn husband, and my station choose
Amongst the reverend martyrs of the noose?
No, there are fools enough besides in town,
To furnish work for satire and lampoon!'
Few months before, cried the unthinking sot,
Who quickly after, hampered in the knot,
Was quoted for an instance by the rest,
And bore his fate as tamely as the best,
And thought that Heaven from some miraculous side,
For him alone had drawn a faithful bride.
This is our image just: such is that vain,
That foolish, fickle, motley creature, man:
More changing than a weathercock, his head
Ne'er wakes with the same thoughts he went to bed;
Irksome to all beside, and ill at ease,
He neither others, nor himself, can please;