Can sleep without a poem in my head; Nor know, if Dennis be alive or dead. Why am I asked what next shall see the light? Heavens! was I born for nothing but to write? Has life no joys for me! or (to be grave) Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save? "I found him close with Swift."--'Indeed? no doubt,' (Cries prating Balbus) 'something will come out.' 'Tis all in vain, deny it as I will. 'No, such a genius never can lie still;' And then for mine obligingly mistakes The first lampoon Sir Will. or Bubo makes. Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile When every coxcomb knows me by my style? Cursed be the verse, how well soe'er it flow That tends to make one worthy man my foe, Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear, Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear! But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace, Insults fallen worth, or beauty in distress, Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about, Who writes a libel, or who copies out: That fop, whose pride affects a patron's name, Yet absent, wounds an author's honest fame: Who can your merit selfishly approve, And show the sense of it without the love; Who has the vanity to call you friend, Yet wants the honour, injured, to defend; Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say, And, if he lie not, must at least betray: Who to the Dean, and silver bell can swear, And sees at Canons what was never there; Who reads, but with a lust to misapply, Make satire a lampoon, and fiction, lie. A lash like mine no honest man shall dread, But all such babbling blockheads in his stead. Let Sporus tremble-- A. What? that thing of silk, Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk, Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings; Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys, Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys: So well-bred spaniels civilly delight In mumbling of the game they dare not bite: Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. Whether in florid impotence he speaks And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks; Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad, Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad, In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies, Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. His wit all see-saw, between that and this, } Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, } And he himself one vile antithesis. } Amphibious thing! that acting either part, The trifling head or the corrupted heart, Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board, Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord. Eve's tempter thus the rabbins have expressed, A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest; Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust; Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust. Not fortunes worshipper, nor fashion's fool, Not lucre's madman, nor ambition's tool, Not proud, nor servile;--be one poet's praise,