Classic Poem

From a fine lady to her maid,
A Gown descended of brocade.
French! — Yes, from Paris — that's enough,
That wou'd give dignity to stuff.
By accident or by design,
Or from some cause, I can't divine;
A Linen Rag, (sad source of wrangling!)
On a contiguous peg was dangling,
Vilely besmear'd — for late his master,
It serv'd in quality of plaister.
The Gown, contemptuous beholder,
Gave a French shrug from either shoulder,
And rustling with emotions furious,
Bespoke the Rag in terms injurious
" Unfit for tinder, lint or fodder ,
Thou thing of filth, (and what is odder)
Discarded from thy owner's back,
Dar'st thou proceed, and gold attack?
Instant away — or in this place,
Begar me give you coup de grace . "
To this reply'd the honest Rag,
Who lik'd a jest, and was a wag;
" Tho' thy glib tongue without a halt run,
Thou shabby second-hand subaltern,
At once so antient and so easy,
At once so gorgeous and so greasy;
I value not thy gasconading
Nor all thy alamode parading.
But to abstain from words imperious,
And to be sober, grave, and serious,
(Tho' says friend Horace, 'tis no treason,
At once to giggle and to reason):
When me you lesson, friend, you dream,
For know I am not what I seem;
Soon by the mill's refining motion,
The sweetest daughter of the ocean,
Fair Medway, shall with snowy hue,
My virgin purity renew,
And give me reinform'd existence,
A good retention and subsistence.
Then shall the sons of genius join,
To make my second life divine.
O Murray , let me then dispense,
Some portion of thy eloquence;
For Greek and Roman rhetoric shine,
United and improved in thine.
The spirit stirring sage alarms,
And Ciceronian sweetness charms.
Th' Athenian A KENSIDE may deign
To stamp me deathless with his pen
While flows approv'd by all the Nine
Th' immortal soul of every line.
C OLLINS , perhaps, his aid may lend,
Melpomene's selected friend.
Perhaps our great Augustan G RAY
May grace me with a Doric lay;
With sweet, with manly words of woe,
That nervously pathetic flow.
What, M ASON , may I owe to you?
Learning's first pride, and nature's too;
On thee she cast her sweetest smile,
And gave thee Art's correcting file;
That file, which with assiduous pain,
The viper Envy bites in vain —
Such glories my mean lot betide,
Hear, tawdry fool, and check thy pride. —
Thou, after scouring, dying, turning,
(If haply thou escape a burning)
From gown to petticoat descending,
And in a beggar's mantle ending,
Shalt in a dunghill or a stye,
'Midst filth and vermin rot and die. "