| |
| WHEN money and my blood ran high, | |
| My muse was reckon’d wondrous pretty; | |
| The sports and smiles did round her fly, | |
| Enamoured with her smart concetti. | |
| |
| Now (who ’d have thought it once?) with pain | 5 |
| She strings her harp, whilst freezing age | |
| But feebly runs through every vein, | |
| And chill’d my brisk poetic rage. | |
| |
| I properly have ceased to live, | |
| To wine and women, dead in law; | 10 |
| And soon from fate I shall receive | |
| A summons to the shades to go. | |
| |
| The warrior ghosts will round me come | |
| To hear of famed Ramillia’s fight, | |
| Whilst the vext Bourbons through the gloom | 15 |
| Retire to the utmost realms of night. | |
| |
| Then I, my lord, will tell how you | |
| With pensions every muse inspire; | |
| Who Marlborough’s conquests did pursue, | |
| And to his trumpets tuned the lyre. | 20 |
| |
| But should some drolling sprite demand, | |
| Well, Sir, what place had you, I pray? | |
| How like a coxcomb should I stand! | |
| What would your Lordship have me say? | |
| |
