Classic Poem

If nature prompts you, or if friends persuade,
Why, write; but ne'er pursue it as a trade.
And seldom publish: manuscripts disarm
The censor's frown, and boast an added charm,
Enhance their worth by seeming to retire,
For what but few can prate of, all admire.
Who trade in verse, alas, as rarely find
The public grateful, as the Muses kind.
From constant feasts like stated guests we steal,
And tired of tickling lose all power to feel.
'Tis novelty we want; with that in view
We praise stale matter, so the bard be new;
Or from known bards with ecstasy receive
Each pert new whim they almost blush to give.
A life of writing, unless wond'rous short,
No wit can brave, no genius can support.
Some soberer province for your business choose,
Be that your helmet, and your plume the muse.
Through fame's long rubric, down from Chaucer's time,
Few fortunes have been raised by lofty rhyme.
And, when our toils success no longer crowns,
What shelter find we from a world in frowns?
O'er each distress, which vice or folly brings,
Though charity extend her healing wings,
No Maudlin hospitals are yet assigned
For slipshod muses of the vagrant kind;
Where anthems might succeed to satires keen,
And hymns of penitence to songs obscene.
What refuge then remains?--with gracious grin
Some practised bookseller invites you in,
Where luckless luckless bards, condemned to court the tov
(Not for their parents' vices, but their own!)
Write gay conundrums with an aching head,
Or earn by defamation daily bread,
Or friendless, shirtless, penniless complain,
Not of the world's, but 'Caelia's cold disdain'.
Lords of their workhouse, see the tyrants sit
Brokers in books, and stockjobbers in wit,
Beneath whose lash, obliged to write or fast,
Our confessors and martyrs breathe their last!
And can ye bear such insolence?--away,
For shame; plough, dig, turn pedlars, drive the dray;
With minds indignant each employment suits,
Our fleets want sailors, and our troops recruits;
And many a dirty street, on Thames's side,
Is yet by stool and brush unoccupied.