Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/222

But not to lose the time in trifling thus
Beside the point, come now more home and close.
That man has reason is beyond debate,
Nor will yourself, I think, deny me that;
And was not this fair pilot given to steer
His tottering bark through life's rough ocean here?’
All this I grant; but if in spite of it
The wretch on every rock he sees will split,
To what great purpose does his reason serve,
But to misguide his course, and make him swerve?
What boots it Howard, when it says, "Give o'er
Thy scribbling itch, and play the fool no more,’
If her vain counsels, purposed to reclaim,
Only avail to harden him in shame?
Lampooned and hissed, and damned the thousandth time,
Still he writes on, is obstinate in rhyme;
His verse, which he does everywhere recite,
Put all his neighbours and his friends to flight;
Scared by the rhyming fiend, they haste away,
Nor will his very groom be hired to stay.
The ass, whom nature reason has denied,
Content with instinct for his surer guide,
Still follows that, and wiselier does proceed:
He ne'er aspires with his harsh braying note
The songsters of the wood to challenge out;
Nor, like this awkward smatterer in arts,
Sets up himself for a vain ass of parts;
Of reason void, he sees, and gains his end,
While man, who does to that false light pretend,
Wildly gropes on, and in broad day is blind.
By whimsey led he does all things by chance,
And acts in each against all common sense.
Pleased and displeased with everything at once,
He knows not what he seeks, nor what he shuns;
Unable to distinguish good or bad,
For nothing he is gay, for nothing sad;