Classic Poem

" Our public hives of puerile resort"

Would you your son should be a sot or dunce,
Lascivious, headstrong; or all these at once;
That, in good time, the stripling's finished taste
For loose expense and fashionable waste
Should prove your ruin and his own at last,
Train him in public with a mob of boys,
Childish in mischief only and in noise,
Else of a mannish growth, and five in ten
In infidelity and lewdness men.
There shall he learn, ere sixteen winters old,
That authors are most useful pawned or sold;
That pedantry is all that schools impart,
But taverns teach the knowledge of the heart;
There waiter Dick, with Bacchanalian lays,
Shall win his heart, and have his drunken praise,
His counsellor and bosom friend shall prove,
And some street-pacing harlot his first love.