COME, leave the loathèd stage, | |
| And the more loathsome age; | |
| Where pride and impudence, in faction knit, | |
| Usurp the chair of wit! | |
| Indicting and arraigning every day | 5 |
| Something they call a play. | |
| Let their fastidious, vain | |
| Commission of the brain | |
| Run on and rage, sweat, censure, and condemn; | |
| They were not made for thee, less thou for them. | 10 |
| |
| Say that thou pour’st them wheat, | |
| And they will acorns eat; | |
| ’Twere simple fury still thyself to waste | |
| On such as have no taste! | |
| To offer them a surfeit of pure bread | 15 |
| Whose appetites are dead! | |
| No, give them grains their fill, | |
| Husks, draff to drink or swill: | |
| If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine, | |
| Envy them not, their palate’s with the swine. | 20 |
| |
| No doubt some mouldy tale, | |
| Like Pericles, and stale | |
| As the shrieve’s crusts, and nasty as his fish— | |
| Scraps out of every dish | |
| Thrown forth, and raked into the common tub, | 25 |
| May keep up the Play-club: | |
| There, sweepings do as well | |
| As the best-ordered meal; | |
| For who the relish of these guests will fit, | |
| Needs set them but the alms-basket of wit. | 30 |
| |
| And much good do ’t you then: | |
| Brave plush-and-velvet-men | |
| Can feed on orts; and, safe in your stage-clothes, | |
| Dare quit, upon your oaths, | |
| The stagers and the stage-wrights too, your peers, | 35 |
| Of larding your large ears | |
| With their foul comic socks, | |
| Wrought upon twenty blocks; | |
| Which if they are torn, and turned, and patched enough, | |
| The gamesters share your gilt, and you their stuff. | 40 |
| |
| Leave things so prostitute, | |
| And take the Alcaic lute; | |
| Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon’s lyre; | |
| Warm thee by Pindar’s fire: | |
| And though thy nerves be shrunk, and blood be cold, | 45 |
| Ere years have made thee old, | |
| Strike that disdainful heat | |
| Throughout, to their defeat, | |
| As curious fools, and envious of thy strain, | |
| May, blushing, swear no palsy ’s in thy brain. | 50 |
| |
| But when they hear thee sing | |
| The glories of thy king, | |
| His zeal to God, and his just awe o’er men: | |
| They may, blood-shaken then, | |
| Feel such a flesh-quake to possess their powers, | 55 |
| As they shall cry: ‘Like ours | |
| In sound of peace or wars, | |
| No harp e’er hit the stars, | |
| In tuning forth the acts of his sweet reign, | |
| And raising Charles his chariot ’bove his Wain. | 60 |
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