Then strike their tents, like Tartars! and away! The place grows bare where they too long remain, But grass will rise ere they return again. Children of Thespes, welcome; knights and queens! Counts! barons! beauties! when before your scenes, And mighty monarchs thund'ring from your throne; Then step behind, and all your glory's gone: Of crown and palace, throne and guards bereft, The pomp is vanish'd and the care is left. Yet strong and lively is the joy they feel, When the full house secures the plenteous meal; Flatt'ring and flatter'd, each attempts to raise A brother's merits for a brother's praise: For never hero shows a prouder heart, Than he who proudly acts a hero's part; Nor without cause; the boards, we know, can yield Place for fierce contest, like the tented field. Graceful to tread the stage, to be in turn The prince we honour, and the knave we spurn; Bravely to bear the tumult of the crowd, The hiss tremendous, and the censure loud: These are their parts,--and he who these sustains, Deserves some praise and profit for his pains. Heroes at least of gentler kind are they, Against whose swords no weeping widows pray, No blood their fury sheds, nor havoc marks their way. Sad happy race! soon raised and soon depress'd, Your days all pass'd in jeopardy and jest; Poor without prudence, with afflictions vain, Not warn'd by misery, not enrich'd by gain; Whom Justice, pitying, chides from place to place, A wandering, careless, wretched, merry race, Whose cheerful looks assume, and play the parts Of happy rovers with repining hearts; Then cast off care, and in the mimic pain Of tragic woe feel spirits light and vain, Distress and hope--the mind's the body's wear, The man's affliction, and the actor's tear: Alternate times of fasting and excess Are yours, ye smiling children of distress. Slaves though ye be, your wandering freedom seems, And with your varying views and restless schemes, Your griefs are transient, as your joys are dreams. Yet keen those griefs--ah! what avail thy charms, Fair Juliet! what that infant in thine arms; What those heroic lines thy patience learns, What all the aid thy present Romeo earns, Whilst thou art crowded in that lumbering wain With all thy plaintive sisters to complain? Nor is there lack of labour--To rehearse, Day after day, poor scraps of prose and verse; To bear each other's spirit, pride, and spite; To hide in rant the heart ache of the night; To dress in gaudy patchwork, and to force The mind to think on the appointed course; - This is laborious, and may be defined The bootless labour of the thriftless mind. There is a veteran Dame: I see her stand Intent and pensive with her book in hand; Awhile her thoughts she forces on her part, Then dwells on objects nearer to the heart; Across the room she paces, gets her tone, And fits her features for the Danish throne; To-night a queen--I mark her motion slow, I hear her speech, and Hamlet's mother know.