When credit sunk, and commerce gasping lay,
Thou stood'st: no bill was sent unpaid away.
When not a guinea chink'd on Martin's[1] boards,
And Atwill's[1] self was drain'd of all his hoards,
Thou stood'st; an Indian king in size and hue!
Thy unexhausted shop was our Peru.
Why did 'Change alley waste thy precious hours
Among the fools who gap'd for golden show'rs?
No wonder, if we find some poets there,
Who live on fancy, and can feed on air;
No wonder, they were caught by South Sea schemes,
Who ne'er enjoy'd a guinea, but in dreams;
No wonder, they their third subscriptions sold
For millions of imaginary gold;
| No wonder that their fancies wild can frame | 
|
| Strange reasons, that a thing is still the same, | 
|
| Tho' chang'd throughout in substance and in name. | 
|
But you (whose judgment scorns poetick flights)
With contracts furnish boys for paper kites.
Let vulture Hopkins stretch his rusty throat,
Who ruins thousands for a single groat:
I know thou scorn'st his mean, his sordid mind;
Nor with ideal debts wouldst plague mankind.
Madmen alone their empty dreams pursue,
And still believe the fleeting vision true;
They sell the treasures which their slumbers get,
Then wake, and fancy all the world in debt.
If to instruct thee all my reasons fail,
Yet be diverted by this moral tale.
Through fam'd Moorfields extends a spacious seat,
Where mortals of exalted wit retreat;
Where, wrapt in contemplation and in straw,
The wiser few from the mad world withdraw.
