| |
| STILL anxious to secure your partial favour, | |
| And not less anxious, sure, this night, than ever, | |
| A Prologue, Epilogue, or some such matter, | |
| ’Twould vamp my bill, said I, if nothing better; | |
| So sought a poet, roosted near the skies, | 5 |
| Told him I came to feast my curious eyes; | |
| Said, nothing like his works was ever printed; | |
| And last, my prologue-business slily hinted. | |
| “Ma’am, let me tell you,” quoth my man of rhymes, | |
| “I know your bent—these are no laughing times: | 10 |
| Can you—but, Miss, I own I have my fears— | |
| Dissolve in pause, and sentimental tears; | |
| With laden sighs, and solemn-rounded sentence, | |
| Rouse from his sluggish slumbers, fell Repentance; | |
| Paint Vengeance as he takes his horrid stand, | 15 |
| Waving on high the desolating brand, | |
| Calling the storms to bear him o’er a guilty land?” | |
| |
| I could no more—askance the creature eyeing, | |
| “D’ye think,” said I, “this face was made for crying? | |
| I’ll laugh, that’s poz—nay more, the world shall know it; | 20 |
| And so, your servant! gloomy Master Poet!” | |
| |
| Firm as my creed, Sirs, ’tis my fix’d belief, | |
| That Misery’s another word for Grief: | |
| I also think—so may I be a bride! | |
| That so much laughter, so much life enjoy’d. | 25 |
| |
| Thou man of crazy care and ceaseless sigh, | |
| Still under bleak Misfortune’s blasting eye; | |
| Doom’d to that sorest task of man alive— | |
| To make three guineas do the work of five: | |
| Laugh in Misfortune’s face—the beldam witch! | 30 |
| Say, you’ll be merry, tho’ you can’t be rich. | |
| |
| Thou other man of care, the wretch in love, | |
| Who long with jiltish airs and arts hast strove; | |
| Who, as the boughs all temptingly project, | |
| Measur’st in desperate thought—a rope—thy neck— | 35 |
| Or, where the beetling cliff o’erhangs the deep, | |
| Peerest to meditate the healing leap: | |
| Would’st thou be cur’d, thou silly, moping elf? | |
| Laugh at her follies—laugh e’en at thyself: | |
| Learn to despise those frowns now so terrific, | 40 |
| And love a kinder—that’s your grand specific. | |
| |
| To sum up all, be merry, I advise; | |
| And as we’re merry, may we still be wise. | |
| |
