If you unus'd have scarcely strength
To gain this walk's untoward length;
If, frighten'd at a scene so rude,
Through long disuse of solitude;
If, long confin'd to fires and screens,
You dread the waving of these greens;
If you, who long have breath'd the fumes
Of city fogs and crowded rooms,
Do now solicitously shun
The cooler air and dazzling sun;
If his majestick eye you flee,
Learn hence t' excuse and pity me.
Consider what it is to bear
The powder'd courtier's witty sneer;
To see th' important man of dress
Scoffing my college awkwardness;
To be the strutting cornet's sport,
To run the gauntlet of the court,
Winning my way by slow approaches,
Through crowds of coxcombs and of coaches,
From the first fierce cockaded sentry,
Quite through the tribe of waiting gentry;
To pass so many crowded stages,
And stand the staring of your pages;
And, after all, to crown my spleen,
Be told — 'You are not to be seen:'
Or, if you are, be forc'd to bear
The awe of your majestick air.
And can I then be faulty found,
In dreading this vexatious round?
Can it be strange, if I eschew
A scene so glorious and so new?
Or is he criminal that flies
The living lustre of your eyes?"
THE
