Classic Poem

'Twere well your judgments but in plays did range,
But ev'n your follies and debauches change
With such a whirl, the poets of your age
Are tired, and cannot score 'em on the stage,
Unless each vice in shorthand they indite,
Ev'n as notched prentices whole sermons write.
The heavy Hollanders no vices know
But what they used a hundred years ago:
Like honest plants, where they were stuck, they grow;
They cheat, but still from cheating sires they come;
They drink, but they were christ'ned first in mum.
Their patrimonial sloth the Spaniards keep,
And Philip first taught Philip how to sleep.
The French and we still change, but here's the curse,
They change for better, and we change for worse;
They take up our old trade of conquering,
And we are taking theirs, to dance and sing:
Our fathers did for change to France repair,
And they for change will try our English air.
As children, when they throw one toy away,
Straight a more foolish gugaw comes in play:
So we, grown penitent, on serious thinking,
Leave whoring, and devoutly fall to drinking.