May some choice patron bless each gray-goose quill! May every Bavius have his Bufo still! 250 So when a statesman wants a day's defence, Or envy holds a whole week's war with sense, Or simple pride for flattery makes demands, May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands! Bless'd be the great! for those they take away, And those they left me; for they left me Gay; Left me to see neglected genius bloom, Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb: Of all thy blameless life, the sole return My verse, and Queensberry weeping o'er thy urn! 260 Oh let me live my own, and die so too! (To live and die is all I have to do:) Maintain a poet's dignity and ease, And see what friends, and read what books I please: Above a patron, though I condescend Sometimes to call a minister my friend. I was not born for courts or great affairs; I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers; Can sleep without a poem in my head, Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead. 270 Why am I ask'd 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[104] or Bubo[105] makes. 280 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: 290 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[106] can swear, And sees at Canons what was never there; 300 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[107] 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?