To the great pleasure of our friends, mankind,
Who like to mix some slight alloy with fame;
For I was rather famous in my time,
Until I fairly knock'd it up with rhyme.

X.

I have brought this world about my ears, and eke

The other that's to say, the clergy-who Upon my head have bid their thunders break, In pious libels, by no means a few. And yet I can't help scribbling once a week,

Tiring old readers, nor discovering new. In youth I wrote because my mind was full, And now because I feel it growing dull.

XI.

But "why then publish?" There are no rewards Of fame or profit, when the world grows

weary.

I ask, in turn, Why do you play at cards? Why drink? Why read?-To make some hour less dreary.

It occupies me to turn back regards

On what I've seen or ponder'd, sad or cheery; And what I write, I cast upon the stream, To swim or sink-I've had at least my dream. XII.

I think that, were I certain of success,

I hardly could compose another line; So long I've battled either more or less,

That no defeat can drive me from the Nine. This feeling 'tis not easy to express, And yet 'tis not affected, I opine.

In play, there are two pleasures for your choosing;

The one is winning, and the other losing.

XXII.

And therefore what I throw off is idealLower'd, leaven'd, like a history of free

masons;

Which bears the same relation to the real,

As Captain Parry's voyage may do to Jason's. The grand arcanum's not for men to see all ; My music has some mystic diapasons: And there is much which could not be appreciated

In any manner by the uninitiated.

XXIII.

Alas! worlds fall-and woman, since she fell'd The world (as, since that history, less polite Than true, hath been a creed so strictly held), Has not yet given up the practice quite. Poor thing of usages! coerced, compelled, Victim when wrong, and martyr oft when right,

Condemned to child-bed, as men, for their sins, Have shaving too entailed upon their chins,i XXIV.

A daily plague, which, in the aggregate,

May average, on the whole, the parturition; But as to women, who can penetrate

The real sufferings of their she condition? Man's very sympathy with their estate

Has much of selfishness and more suspicion. Their love, their virtue, beauty, education, But form good housekeepers, to breed a nation.

XXIX.

We left our heroes and our heroines

In that fair clime which don't depend on climate,

Quite independent of the Zodiac's signs, Though certainly more difficult to rhyme at, Because the sun, and stars, and aught that shines,

Mountains, and all we can be most sublime at, Are there oft dull and dreary as a dunWhether a sky's or tradesman's is all one.

XXX.

An in-door life is less poetical;

And out-of-door hath showers, and mists, and sleet,

With which I could not brew a pastoral:
But, be it as it may, a bard must meet
All difficulties, whether great or small,

To spoil his undertaking or complete ;
And work away, like spirit upon matter,
Embarrass'd somewhat both with fire and water.
XXXI.

Juan-in this respect at least like saints-
Was all things unto people of all sorts,
And lived contentedly, without complaints,
In camps, in ships, in cottages, or courts;
Born with that happy soul which seldom faints,
And mingling modestly in toils or sports.
He likewise could be most things to all women,
Without the coxcombry of certain she men.

Marvell'd at merit of another nation :

The boors cried, "Dang it, who'd have thought it?"-Sires,

The Nestors of the sporting generation,
Swore praises, and recall'd their former fires:
The huntsman's self relented to a grin,
And rated him almost a whipper-in.

XXXV.

Such were his trophies--not of spear and shield, But leaps, and bursts, and sometimes foxes' brushes;

Yet I must own-although in this I yield
To patriot sympathy a Briton's blushes--
He thought at heart, like courtly Chesterfield,
Who, after a long chase o'er hills, dales, bushes,

Besides, there might be falsehood in what's stated:

Her late performance had been a dead set
At Lord Augustus Fitz-Plantagenet.

XLIII.

This noble personage began to look

A little black upon this new flirtation:
But such small licences must lovers brook,
Mere freedoms of the female corporation.
Woe to the man who ventures a rebuke!
'Twill but precipitate a situation
Extremely disagreeable, but common
To calculators, when they count on woman.
XLIV.

The circle smiled, then whisper'd, and then sneer'd;

The misses bridled, and the matrons frown'd: Some hoped things might not turn cut as they fear'd;

Some would not deem such women could be found;

Some ne'er believed one-half of what they heard: Some look'd perplex'd, and others look'd

profound;

And several pitied, with sincere regret, Poor Lord Augustus Fitz-Plantagenet.