Читать книгу Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems онлайн

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To tell a lamentable story.

What makes my sorry case the sadder,

I once stood high on Fortune’s ladder;ssss1

From whence contrive the fickle jilt did,

That your petitioner should be tilted.

And soon th’ unconscionable flirt,

Will tread me fairly in the dirt,

Unless, perchance, these pithy lays

Procure me pence as well as praise.

Already doom’d to hard quill-driving,

’Gainst spectred poverty still striving,

When e’er I doze, from vigils pale,

Dame Fancy locks me fast in jail.

Necessity, though I am no wit,

Compels me now to turn a poet;

Not born, but made, by transmutation,

And chymick process, call’d—starvation!

Though poet’s trade, of all that I know,

Requires the least of ready rhino,

I find a deficit of cash is

An obstacle to cutting dashes.

For gods and godesses, who traffic

In cantos, odes, and lays seraphic,

Who erst Arcadian whistle blew sharp,

Or now attune Apollo’s jews-harp,

Have sworn they will not loan me, gratis,

Their jingling sing-song apparatus,

Nor teach me how, nor where to chime in