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| NOW, 1 Luck for us, and a kind hearty Pit, | |
| For he who pleases, never failes of Wit. | |
| Honour is yours: | |
| And you, like Kings at City Treats, 2 bestow it; | |
| The Writer kneels, and is bid rise a Poet. | 5 |
| But you are fickle Sovereigns, to our Sorrow; | |
| You dubb to day, and hang a man tomorrow: | |
| You cry the same Sense up, and down again, | |
| Just like brass Money once a year in Spain: | |
| Take you i’ th’ mood, what e’er base metal come, | 10 |
| You coin as fast as Groats at Bromingam; 3 | |
| Though ’tis no more like Sense in ancient Plays | |
| Than Rome’s religion like St. Peter’s days. 4 | |
| In short, so swift your Judgments turn and wind, | |
| You cast our fleetest Wits a mile behind. | 15 |
| ’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 tyr’d, and cannot score ’em on the Stage, | |
| Unless each Vice in short-hand they indite, | 20 |
| Ev’n as notcht Prentices whole Sermons write. | |
| The heavy Hollanders no Vices know, | |
| But what they us’d a hundred years ago; | |
| Like honest Plants, where they were stuck, they grow; | |
| They cheat, but still from cheating Sires they come; | 25 |
| They drink, but they were christen’d 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; | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| Straight a more foolish Gugaw comes in play; | |
| So we, grown penitent, on serious thinking, | |
| Leave Whoring, and devoutly fall to Drinking. | |
| Scowring the Watch grows out of fashion wit; | |
| Now we set up for Tilting in the Pit, | 40 |
| Where ’tis agreed by Bullies, chicken-hearted, | |
| To fright the Ladies first, and then be parted. | |
| A fair attempt has twice or thrice been made, | |
| To hire Night-murth’rers, and make Death a Trade. | |
| When Murther’s out, what Vice can we advance? | 45 |
| Unless the new-found Pois’ning Trick of France: | |
| And when their art of Rats-bane we have got, | |
| By way of thanks, we’ll send ’em o’er our Plot. | |
