Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/239

If so, lay on thy hands, ordain me fit
For the high cure and ministry of wit;
Let me, I beg, thy great instructions claim,
Teach me to tread the glorious paths of fame;
Teach me, for none does better know than thou,
How, like thyself, I may immortal grow.'
⁠Thus did I speak, and spoke it in a strain
Above my common rate and usual vein,
As if inspired by presence of the bard,
Who, with a frown, thus to reply was heard
In style of satire, such wherein of old
He the famed tale of Mother Hubbard told.
⁠'I come, fond idiot, ere it be too late.
Kindly to warn thee of thy wretched fate;
Take heed betimes, repent, and learn of me
To shun the dangerous rocks of poetry;
Had I the choice of flesh and blood again,
To act once more in life's tumultuous scene,
I’d be a porter, or a scavenger,
A groom, or anything, but poet here.
Hast thou observed some hawker of the town,
Who through the streets with dismal scream and tone,
Cries matches, small-coal, brooms, old shoes and boots,
Socks, sermons, ballads, lies, gazettes, and votes?
So unrecorded to the grave I'd go,
And nothing but the register tell who;
Rather that poor unheard-of wretch I'd be,
Than the most glorious name in poetry,
With all its boasted immortality;
Rather than he, who sung on Phrygia's shore,
The Grecian bullies fighting for a whore;
Or he of Thebes, whom fame so much extols
For praising jockeys and Newmarket fools.
⁠'So many now, and bad, the scribblers be,
'Tis scandal to be of the company;
The foul disease is so prevailing grown,
So much the fashion of the court and town,