TO MY PSEUDO-MUSE.
Hence, thou tormenting wayward Being!
For ever courting, trifling, spreeing.
Thou Erysipelas of thrall:
For ever, with thine addled hatch,
I’ll shun thee as an arrant Scratch,
Unworthy to be scratched at all.
Thy Sonnets, staves, and stanzas rhyming
To every key, to every chiming,
St. Vitus’ Dance is ease to Thee:
Thou shalt no more provoke my Quill
To deeds of labour, or of skill,
Thou cacoëthes mise-re.
Promethean fire—Parnassus smiling,
Helicon’s spirituous drops beguiling,—
Where’er thou com’st—whate’er thou be:
The Vagrant Act may take thee in;
I’ll drive thee out as Satan’s sin
Thou worse than fire of Anthony.
Hence Jade! tormentress of the feelings;—
Thou Witch of End-or like revealings:—
Go—haunt the brains, not frenzy past:
I’ll haste to Monmouth Street and buy
A suit of Prose—then joyful cry
Ecce Stultus! grown wise at last.
If thou shou’d’st to my brain-door, knocking,
Come with thy wheedling-pamby, mocking;
I’ll catch thee vi et armis:—then
By Habeas Corpus to the Pleas—
—Sure I will rob thee of degrees,
And scare thee from my Smithfield Pen.
If I’m asleep—then thou art waiting,
Angler-like, with thy couplets baiting,
To drag my crazy thought to light:
Awake! thy float, with stanza-hook,
Is ever dipping in Mal-Brook—
I’ll brook no more—if sense is right.
*, *, P.