O'errun with filthy poetry and rhyme,
The present reigning evil of the time,
I lacked, and (well I did myself assure)
From your kind hand I should receive a cure:
When, lo! instead of healing remedies,
You cherish, and encourage the disease:
Inhuman, you help the distemper on,
Which was before but too inveterate grown:
As a kind looker on, who interest shares,
Though not in's stake, yet in his hopes and fears,
Would to his friend a pushing gamester do,
Recall his elbow when he hastes to throw;
Such a wise course you should have took with me,
A rash and venturing fool in poetry.
Poets are cullies, whom rook fame draws in,[1]
And wheedles with deluding hopes to win:
But, when they hit, and most successful are,
They scarce come off with a bare saving share.
Oft, I remember, did wise friends dissuade,
And bid me quit the trifling barren trade;
Oft have I tried, Heaven knows! to mortify
This vile and wicked lust of poetry;
But still unconquered it remains within,
Fixed as a habit, or some darling sin.
In vain I better studies there would sow,
Often I've tried, but none will thrive or grow:
All my best thoughts, when I'd most serious be,
Are never from its foul infection free:
Nay, God forgive me! when I say my prayers,
I scarce can help polluting them with verse:
That fabulous wretch of old reversed I seem,
Who turn whate'er I touch to dross and rhyme.
{(rule|15em}}
- ↑ The verb to cully—to caddie or wheedle— is still in use in some of the provincial dialects. Rook, to designate a cheat or sharper, is frequently employed by Wycherley and the comedy writers of the seventeenth century.
