e grandeur, there:
There pleasing objects useful thought suggest;
The sense is ravish'd, and the soul is blest;
On every thorn delightful wisdom grows;
In every rill a sweet instruction flows.
But some, untaught, o'erhear the whisp'ring rill,
In spite of sacred leisure, blockheads still;
Nor shoots up folly to a nobler bloom
In her own native soil, the drawing-room.
The squire is proud to see his coursers strain,
Or well-breath'd beagles sweep along the plain.
Say, dear Hippolitus, (whose drink is ale,
Whose erudition is a Christmas tale,
Whose mistress is saluted with a smack,
And friend receiv'd with thumps upon the back,)
When thy sleek gelding nimbly leaps the mound,
And Ringwood opens on the tainted ground,
Is that thy praise? Let Ringwood's fame alone;
Just Ringwood leaves each animal his own;
Nor envies, when a gipsy you commit,
And shake the clumsy bench with country wit;
When you the dullest of dull things have said,
And then ask pardon for the jest you made.
Here breathe, my muse! and then thy task renew:
Ten thousand fools unsung are still in view.
Fewer lay-atheists made by church debates;
Fewer great beggars fam'd for large estates;
Ladies, whose love is constant as the wind;
Cits, who prefer a guinea to mankind;
Fewer grave lords to Scrope discreetly bend;
And fewer shocks a statesman gives his friend.
Is there a man of an eternal vein,
Who lulls the town in winter with his strain,
At Bath, in summer, chants the reigning lass,
And sweetly whistles, as the waters pass?
Is there a tongue, like Delia's o'er her cup,
That runs for ages without winding up?
Is there, whom his tenth epic mounts to fame?
Such, and such only, might exhaust my theme:
Nor would these heroes of the task be glad;
For who can write so fast as men run mad?
Satire II
My muse, proceed, and reach thy destin'd end;
Though toils and danger the bold task attend.
Heroes and gods make other poems fine;
Plain satire calls for sense in every line:
Then, to what swarms thy faults I dare expose!
All friends to vice and folly are thy foes.
When such the foe, a war eternal wage;
'Tis most ill-nature to repress thy rage:
And if these strains some nobler muse excite,
I'll glory in the verse I did not write.
So weak are human kind by nature made,
Or to such weakness by their vice betra
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