Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/239

If so, lay on thy hands, ordain me fit
For the high cure and ministry of wit;
Let me, I beg, thy great instructions claim,
Teach me to tread the glorious paths of fame;
Teach me, for none does better know than thou,
How, like thyself, I may immortal grow.'
Thus did I speak, and spoke it in a strain
Above my common rate and usual vein,
As if inspired by presence of the bard,
Who, with a frown, thus to reply was heard
In style of satire, such wherein of old
He the famed tale of Mother Hubbard told.
'I come, fond idiot, ere it be too late.
Kindly to warn thee of thy wretched fate;
Take heed betimes, repent, and learn of me
To shun the dangerous rocks of poetry;
Had I the choice of flesh and blood again,
To act once more in life's tumultuous scene,
I’d be a porter, or a scavenger,
A groom, or anything, but poet here.
Hast thou observed some hawker of the town,
Who through the streets with dismal scream and tone,
Cries matches, small-coal, brooms, old shoes and boots,
Socks, sermons, ballads, lies, gazettes, and votes?
So unrecorded to the grave I'd go,
And nothing but the register tell who;
Rather that poor unheard-of wretch I'd be,
Than the most glorious name in poetry,
With all its boasted immortality;
Rather than he, who sung on Phrygia's shore,
The Grecian bullies fighting for a whore;
Or he of Thebes, whom fame so much extols
For praising jockeys and Newmarket fools.
'So many now, and bad, the scribblers be,
'Tis scandal to be of the company;
The foul disease is so prevailing grown,
So much the fashion of the court and town,