[Tea-Table Miscellany Contents]
A Sour reformation
Crawls out-thro’ the nation,
While dunder-head sages,
Who hope for good wages,
Direct us the way.
Ye sons of the muses,
Then cloak your abuses;
And, least you shou’d trample
On pious example,
Observe and obey.
Time-frenzy curers,
And stubborn nonjurors,
For want of diversion,
Now scourge the leud times:
They’ve hinted, they’ve printed,
Our vein it profane is,
And worst of all crimes;
The clod-pated railers,
Smiths, coblers and colliers,
Have damn’d all our rhimes.
–
Under the notion
Of zeal for devotion,
The humour has sir’d ‘em,
And malice inspir’d ‘em,
To tutor the age:
But if in season,
You’d know the true reason;
The hopes of perferment,
Is what makes the vermin
Now rail at the stage.
Cuckolds and canters,
With scruples and banters,
Old Oliver’s peal,
Against poetry ring:
But let state revolvers,
And treason absolvers,
Excuse if I sing,
The rebel that chuses
To cry down the muses,
Wou’d cry down the king.
–
FINIS.
