Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/86

Straightways relapsed, I feel the raving fit
Return, and straight I all my oaths forget:
The spirit, which I thought cast out before,
Enters again with stronger force and power,
Worse than at first, and tyrannizes more.
No sober good advice will then prevail,
Nor from the raging frenzy me recall:
Cool reason's dictates me no more can move
Than men in drink, in Bedlam, or in love:
Deaf to all means which might most proper seem
Towards my cure, I run stark mad in rhyme:
A sad poor haunted wretch, whom nothing less
Than prayers of the Church can dispossess.
Sometimes, after a tedious day half spent,
When fancy long has hunted on cold scent,
Tired in the dull and fruitless chase of thought,
Despairing I grow weary, and give out:
As a dry lecher pumped of all my store,
I loathe the thing, 'cause I can do't no more:
But, when I once begin to find again
Recruits of matter in my pregnant brain,
Again, more eager, I the hunt pursue,
And with fresh vigour the loved sport renew:
Tickled with some strange pleasure, which I find,
And think a secrecy to all mankind,
I please myself with the vain, false delight,
And count none happy, but the fops that write.
'Tis endless, sir, to tell the many ways
Wherein my poor deluded self I please:
How, when the fancy labouring for a birth,
With unfelt throes brings its rude issue forth:
How after, when imperfect shapeless thought
Is by the judgment into fashion wrought;
When at first search I traverse o'er my mind,
Nought but a dark and empty void I find:
Some little hints at length, like sparks, break thence,
And glimmering thoughts just dawning into sense: