"Boyle shines in council, Mordaunt in the fight,
Pelham's magnificent; but I can write,
And what to my great soul like glory dear?"
Till some god whispers in his tingling ear,
That fame's unwholesome taken without meat.
And life is best sustain'd by what is eat:
Grown lean, and wise, he curses what he writ,
And wishes all his wants were in his wit.
Ay! what avails it, when his dinner's lost,
That his triumphant name adorns a post?
Or that his shining page (provoking fate!)
Defends sirloins, which sons of dulness eat?
What foe to verse without compassion hears,
What cruel prose-man can refrain from tears,
When the poor muse, for less than half a crown,
A prostitute on every bulk in town,
With other whores undone, tho' not in print,
Clubs credit for Geneva in the mint?
Ye bards! why will you sing, tho' uninspir'd?
Ye bards! why will you starve, to be admir'd?
Defunct by Phoebus' laws, beyond redress,
Why will your spectres haunt the frighted press?
Bad metre, that excrescence of the head,
Like hair, will sprout, altho' the poet's dead.
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