Your debts mount high--ye plunge in deeper waste, The tradesman calls--no warning voice ye hear; The plaintiff sues--to public shows ye haste; The bailiff threats--ye feel no idle fear. Who can arrest your prodigal career? Who can keep down the levity of youth? What sound can startle age's stubborn ear? Who can redeem from wretchedness and ruth Men true to falshood's voice, false to the voice of truth? VII. To thee, blest saint! who doff'd thy skin to make The Smithfield rabble leap from theirs with joy, We dedicate the pile--arise! awake!-- Knock down the Muses, wit and sense destroy, Clear our new stage from reason's dull alloy, Charm hobbling age, and tickle capering youth With cleaver, marrow-bone, and Tunbridge toy; While, vibrating in unbelieving tooth, Harps twang in Drury's walls, and make her boards a booth. VIII. For what is Hamlet, but a hare in March? And what is Brutus, but a croaking owl? And what is Rolla? Cupid steep'd in starch, Orlando's helmet in Augustine's cowl. Shakespeare, how true thine adage, "fair is foul;" To him whose soul is with fruition fraught The song of Braham is an Irish howl, Thinking is but an idle waste of thought, And nought is everything, and everything is nought. IX. Sons of Parnassus? whom I view above, Not laurel-crown'd but clad in rusty black, Not spurring Pegasus through Tempé's grove, But pacing Grub Street on a jaded hack, What reams of foolscap, while your brains ye rack, Ye mar to make again! for sure, ere long, Condemn'd to tread the bard's time-sanctioned track, Ye all shall join the bailiff-haunted throng, And reproduce in rags the rags ye blot in song. X. So fares the follower in the Muses' train, He toils to starve, and only lives in death; We slight him till our patronage is vain, Then round his skeleton a garland wreathe, And o'er his bones an empty requiem breathe-- Oh! with what tragic horror would he start (Could he be conjured from the grave beneath), To find the stage again a Thespian cart, And elephants and colts down trampling Shakespeare's art. XI. Hence, pedant Nature! with thy Grecian rules! Centaurs (not fabulous) those rules efface; Back, sister Muses, to your native schools; Here booted grooms usurp Apollo's place, Hoofs shame the boards that Garrick used to grace, The play of limbs succeeds the play of wit; Man yields the drama to the Houynim race, His prompter spurs, his licencer the bit, The stage a stable-yard, a jockey-club the pit. XII.