Classic Poem

Though prologues now, as blackberries, are plenty,
And like them mawkish too, nineteen in twenty,
Yet you will have them when their date is o'er,
And " Prologue! Prologue! " still your honours roar,
Till some such dismal phiz as mine comes on:
" Ladies and gentlemen, indeed there's none;
The prologue, author, speaker, all are dead and gone. "
These reasons have some weight and stop the rout;
You clap, I smirk — and thus go cringing out.
While living call me, for your pleasure use me;
Should I tip off, I hope you'll then excuse me.

So much for prologues — and now enter farce!
Shall I a scene I lately heard rehearse?
The place, the park; the dramatis personae.
Two female wits, with each a macaroni.
" Prithee, Lord Flimsey, what's this thing at Drury,
This Spleen ? " — " 'Tis low, damned low, Ma'am, I assure ye. "
" C'est vrat , my Lor', we now feel no such evil,
Never are haunted with a vapourish devil.
In pleasure's round we whirl it from the brain —
You rattle it away with Seven's the main!
In upper life we have no spleen or gall;
And as for other life, it is no life at all. "

What can I say in our poor bard's behalf?
He hopes that lower life may make you laugh.
May not a trader who shall business drop,
Quitting at once his old accustomed shop,
In fancy through a course of pleasure run,
Retiring to his seat at Islington?
And of false dreams of happiness brimful,
Be at his villa miserably dull?
Would not he Islington's fine air forego,
Could he again be choked in Butcher Row,
In showing cloth renew his former pleasure,
Surpassed by none but that of clipping measure?
The master of this shop, too, seeks repose,
Sells off his stock in trade, his verse and prose,
His daggers, buskins, thunder, lightning and old clothes.
Will he in rural shades find ease and quiet?
Oh no, he'll sigh for Drury and seek peace in riot!

Nature of yore prevailed through human kind;
To low and middle life she's now confined.
'Twas there the choicest dramatists have sought her;
'Twas there Moliere, there Jonson, Shakespeare caught her.
Then let our gleaning bard with safety come,
To pick up straws dropped from their harvest home.