Shall I once pen for vulgar sorts applause,
To please each hound, each dungy scavenger;
To fit some oyster-wench’s yawning jaws
With tricksey tales of speaking Cornish daws?[483]
First let my brain (bright-hair’d Latona’s son)
Be clean distract with all confusion.
What though some John-à-Stile will basely toil,
Only incited with the hope of gain: 20
Though roguey thoughts do force some jade-like moil;
Yet no such filth my true-born muse will soil.
O Epictetus, I do honour thee,
To think how rich thou wert in poverty!
[482] Motto.
[483] “Cornish daws”—jackdaws.
Ad rhythmum.
Come, pretty pleasing symphony of words,
Ye well-match’d twins (whose like-tuned tongues affords
Such musical delight), come willingly
And dance lavoltas in my poesy.
Come all as easy as spruce Curio will,
In some court-hall, to show his cap’ring skill;
As willingly come, meet and jump together
As new-join’d loves, when they do clip each other;
As willingly as wenches trip around
About a May-pole after bagpipe’s sound; 10
Come, rhyming numbers, come and grace conceit,
Adding a pleasing close, with your deceit
Enticing ears. Let not my ruder hand
Seem once to force you in my lines to stand;
Be not so fearful (pretty souls) to meet
As Flaccus is the sergeant’s face to greet;
Be not so backward, loth to grace my sense,
As Drusus is to have intelligence
His dad’s alive; but come into my head
As jocundly as (when his wife was dead) 20
Young Lælius to his home. Come, like-faced rhyme,
In tuneful numbers keeping music’s time;
But if you hang an arse, like Tubered,
When Chremes dragg’d him from his brothel bed,
Then hence, base ballad-stuff, my poetry
Disclaims you quite; for know my liberty
Scorns rhyming laws. Alas, poor idle sound!
Since I first Phœbus knew I never found
Thy interest in sacred poesy;
Thou to invention add’st but surquedry, 30
A gaudy ornature, but hast no part
In that soul-pleasing high infusèd art.
Then if thou wilt clip kindly in my lines,
Welcome, thou friendly aid of my designs:
If not, no title of my senseless change
To wrest some forcèd rhyme, but freely range.
Ye scrupulous observers, go and learn
Of Æsop’s dog; meat from a shade discern.
SATIRE V.
Totum in toto.
Hang thyself, Drusus: hast nor arms nor brain?
So Sophi say, “The gods sell all for pain.”
Not so.
Had not that toiling Theban’s[484] steelèd back
Dread poisoned shafts, lived he now, he should lack