Woodcocks to fhun your fnares have skill,
You fhew fo plain, you strive to kill.
In love the artlefs catch the game,
And they scarce mifs who never aim.
The world's great Author did create
The fex to fit the nuptial ftate,
And meant a bleffing in a wife
To folace the fatigues of life;
And old inspired times display,
How wives could love, and yet obey.
Then truth, and patience of controul,
And houfe-wife arts adorn'd the foul;
And charms, the gift of nature, fhone;
And jealousy, a thing unknown :
Veils were the only mafks they wore;
Novels (receipts to make a whore)
Nor ombre, nor quadrille they knew,
Nor Pam's puiffance felt at loo.
Wife men did not, to be thought gay,
Then compliment their pow'r away :
But left, by frail defires misled,
The girls forbidden paths fhould tread,
Of ign'rance rais'd the fafe high wall;
We fink haw-haws, that fhew them all.
Thus we at once folicit fenfe,
And charge them not to break the fence. Now, if untir'd, confider friend, What I avoid to gain my end.
I never am at Meeting feen, Meeting, that region of the Spleen; The broken heart, the bufy fiend, The inward call, on Spleen depend.
Law, licens'd breaking of the peace, To which vacation is disease; A gypfy diction scarce known well By th' magi, who law-fortunes tell, I fhun; nor let it breed within Anxiety, and that the Spleen; Law, grown a foreft, where perplex The mazes, and the brambles vex; Where its twelve verd'rers every day Are changing still the public way; Yet if we miss our path and err, We grievous penalties incur;
And wand'rers tire, and tear their skin,
And then get out where they went in,
I never game, and rarely bet,
Am loth to lend, or run in debt.
No compter-writs me agitate;
Who moralizing pass the gate,
And there mine eyes on spendthrifts turn,
Who vainly o'er their bondage mourn.
Wisdom, before beneath their care,
Pays her upbraiding vifits there,
And forces folly through the grate
Her panegyric to repeat.
This view, profufely when inclin'd,
Enters a caveat in the mind:
Experience join'd with common sense,
To mortals is a providence.
Paffion, as frequently is feen,
Subfiding fettles into Spleen.
Hence, as the plague of happy life,
I run away from party-ftrife.
A prince's cause, a church's claim,
I've known to raise a mighty flame,
And priest, as ftoker, very free
To throw in peace and charity.
That tribe, whose practicals decree
Small-beer the deadliest herefy;
Who, fond of pedigree, derive
From the most noted whore alive;
Who own wine's old prophetic aid,
And love the mitre Bacchus made,
Forbid the faithful to depend
On half-pint drinkers for a friend,
And in whofe gay red-letter'd face
We read good-living more than grace:
Nor they fo pure, and fo precife,
Immac❜late as their white of eyes,
Who for the spirit hug the Spleen,
Phylacter'd throughout all their mien,
Who their ill-tafted home-brew'd pray'r
To the state's mellow forms prefer;
Who doctrines, as infectious, fear,
Which are not steep'd in vinegar,
And samples of heart-chested grace
Expofe in fhew-glafs of the face,
Did never me as yet provoke,
Either to honour band and cloak,
Or deck my hat with leaves of oak.
I rail not with mock-patriot grace
At folks, because they are in place;
Nor, hir'd to praise with stallion pen,
Serve the ear-lechery of men;
But to avoid religious jars
The laws are my expofitors,
Which in my doubting mind create
Conformity to church and state.
I go, pursuant to my plan,
To Mecca with the caravan,
And think it right in common fenfe
Both for diverfion and defence.
Reforming schemes are none of mine;
To mend the world's a vaft defign:
Like theirs, who tug in little boat,
To pull to them the ship afloat,
While to defeat their labour'd end,
At once both wind and stream contend:
Succefs herein is seldom seen,.
And zeal, when baffled, turns to Spleen.
Happy the man, who, innocent,
Grieves not at ills he can't prevent;
His fkiff does with the current glide,
Not puffing pull'd against the tide.
He, paddling by the fcuffling crowd,
Sees unconcern'd life's wager row'd,
And when he can't prevent foul play,
Enjoys the folly of the fray.
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