Classic Poem

Say , Baker, if experience hoar
Has yet unbolted wisdom's door,
What is this phantom of the mind,
This love, when sifted and refined?
When the poor lover, fancy-frighted,
Is with [his] shadowy joys delighted,
A frown shall throw him in despair;
A smile shall brighten up his air.
Jealous without a seeming cause,
From flatt'ring smiles he misery draws;
Again, without his reason's aid,
His bosom's still, the devil's laid.
If this is love, my callous heart
Has never felt the rankling dart.
Oft have I seen the wounded swain
Upon the rack of pleasing pain,
Full of his flame, upon his tongue
The quivering declaration hung,
When lost to courage, sense, and reason,
He talked of weather and the season.
Such tremors never cowered me,
I'm flattering, impudent, and free,
Unmoved by frowns and lowering eyes,
'Tis smiles I only ask and prize;
And when the smile is freely given,
You're in the highway-road to heaven.
These coward lovers seldom find
That whining makes the ladies kind.
They laugh at silly silent swains
Who're fit for nothing but their chains.
'Tis an effrontery and tongue
On very oily hinges hung
Must win the blooming, melting fair,
And shew the joys of heaven here.
A rake, I take it, is a creature
Who winds through all the folds of nature;
Who sees the passions, and can tell
How the soft beating heart shall swell;
Who, when he ravishes the joy,
Defies the torments of the boy.
Who with the soul the body gains,
And shares love's pleasures, not his pains.
Who holds his charmer's reputation
Above a tavern veneration;
And when a love-repast he makes,
Not even prying fame partakes.
Who looks above a prostitute, he
Thinks love the only price of beauty,
And she that can be basely sold
Is much beneath or love or gold.
Who thinks the almost dearest part
In all the body is the heart:
Without it, rapture cannot rise,
Nor pleasures wanton in the eyes;
The sacred joy of love is dead,
Witness the sleeping marriage bed.
This is the picture of a rake,
Shew it the ladies — won't it take?
A buck's a beast of th' other side,
And rial but in hoofs and hide:
To nature and the passions dead,
A brothel is his house and bed;
To fan the flame of warm desire,
And after wanton in the fire,
He thinks a labour; and his parts
Were not designed to conquer hearts.
The girls of virtue when he views,
Dead to all converse but the stews,
Silent as death, he's nought to say,
But sheepish steals himself away.
This is a buck to life display'd,
A character to charm each maid.
Now, prithee, friend, a choice to make,
Wouldst choose the buck before the rake?
The buck, as brutal as the name,
Invenoms every charmer's fame,
And though he never touched her hand,
Protests he had her at command.
The rake, in gratitude for pleasure,
Keeps reputation dear as treasure.

*****

But Hudibrastics may be found
To tire ye with repeated sound;
So, changing for a Shandeyan style,
I ask your favour and your smile.

ODE .

Recitative.

In his wooden palace jumping,
Tearing, sweating, bawling, thumping,
" Repent, repent, repent, "
The mighty Whitefield cries,
Oblique light'ning in his eyes,
" Or die and be damn'd! " all around
The long-eared rabble grunt in dismal sound,
" Repent, repent, repent, "
Each concave mouth replies.
The comet of gospel, the lanthorn of light,
Is rising and shining
Like candles at night.
He shakes his ears,
He jumps, he stares;
Hark, he's whining!
The short-hand saints prepare to write,
And high they mount their ears.

Air.

" Now the devil take ye all,
Saints or no saints, all in a lump;
Here must I labour and bawl,
And thump, and thump, and thump;
And never a souse to be got.
Unless — I swear by jingo,
A greater profit's made,
I'll forswear my trade,
My gown and market-lingo,
And leave ye all to pot. "

Recitative.

Now he raves like brindled cat,
Now 'tis thunder,
Rowling
Growling,
Rumbling,
Grumbling,
Noise and nonsense, jest and blunder.
Now he chats of this and that,
No more the soul-jobber,
No more the sly robber,
He's now an old woman who talks to her cat.
Again he starts, he beats his breast,
He rolls his eyes, erects his crest;
Hark! hark! the sound begins,
'Tis a bargain and sale for remission of sins.

Air.

" Say, beloved congregation,
In the hour of tribulation,
Did the power of man affray me?
Say, ye wives, and say, ye daughters,
Ha'n't I staunched your running waters?
I have laboured — pay me — pay me!

I have given absolution,
Don't withhold your contribution;
Men and angels should obey me —
Give but freely, you've remission
For all sins without condition;
You're my debtors, pay me, pay me! "

Recitative

Again he's lost, again he chatters
Of lace and bobbin and such matters.
A thickening vapour swells —
Of Adam's fall he tells;
Dark as twice ten thousand hells
Is the gibberish which he spatters.
Now a most dismal elegy he sings,
Groans, doleful groans are heard about;
The Issacharian rout
Swell the sharp howl, and loud the sorrow rings.

He sung a modern buck, whose end
Was blinded prejudice and zeal;
In life, to every vice a friend,
Unfixed as fortune on her wheel.
He lived a buck, he died a fool,
So let him to oblivion fall,
Who thought a wretched body all,
Untaught in nature's or the passion's school.
Now he takes another theme,
Thus he tells his waking dream.

Air.

" After fasting and praying and grunting and weeping,
My guardian angel beheld me fast sleeping;
And instantly capering into my brain,
Relieved me from prison of bodily chain.
The soul can be every thing as you all know,
And mine was transformed to the shape of a crow. "
(The preacher or metre has surely mistook,
For all must confess that a parson's a rook.)

" Having wings, as I think I informed ye before,
I shot through a cavern and knocked at hell's door.
Out comes Mr. Porter Devil,
And, I'll assure ye, very civil.
" Dear sir, " quoth he, " pray step within,
The company is drinking tea;
We have a stranger just come in,
A brother from the triple tree. "

Well, in I walked, and what d'ye think?
Instead of sulphur, fire, and stink,
'Twas like a masquerade,
All grandeur, all parade.
Here stood an amphitheatre,
There stood the small Haymarket-house,
With devil-actors very clever,
Who without blacking did Othello.
And truly, a huge horned fellow
Told me, he hoped I would endeavour
To learn a part, and get a souse;
For pleasure was the business there.
A lawyer asked me for a fee,
To plead my right to drinking tea:
I begged his pardon; to my thinking,
I'd rather have a cheering cup,
For tea was but insipid drinking,
And brandy raised the spirits up.
So having seen each place in hell,
I straight awoke, and found all well. "

Recitative.

Now again his cornet's sounding,
Sense and harmony confounding,
Reason tortured, scripture twisted,
Into every form of fancy;
Forms which never yet existed,
And but his oblique optics can see.
He swears,
He tears,
With sputtered nonsense now he breaks the ears;
At last the sermon and the paper ends;
He whines, and hopes his well-beloved friends
Will contribute their sous
To pay the arrears for building a house;
With spiritual doctors, and doctors for poxes,
Who all must be satisfied out of the boxes.
Hark! hark! — his cry resounds,
" Fire and thunder, blood and wounds,
Contribute, contribute,
And pay me my tribute,
Or the devil, I swear,
hall hunt ye as sportsmen would hunt a poor hare.
Whoever gives, unto the Lord he lends. "
The saint is melted, pays his fee, and wends;
And here the tedious length'ning Journal ends.