Classic Poem

The many various objects that amuse
These busy, curious times by way of news,
Are plays, elections, murders, lotteries, Jews.
All these compounded fly throughout the nation,
And set the whole in one great fermentation.
True British hearts the same high spirit show
Be they to damn a farce or fight a foe.
One day for liberty the Briton fires,
The next he flames for Canning or for Squires.
In like extremes your laughing humour flows:
Have ye not roared from pit to upper rows,
And all the rest was — what? — a fiddler's nose.
Pursue your mirth; each night the joke grows stronger,
For, as you fret the man, his nose looks longer.
Among the trifles which occasion prate
Even I sometimes am matter for debate.
Whene'er my faults or follies are the question
Each draws his wit out and begins dissection.
Sir Peter Primrose, smirking o'er his tea,
Sinks from himself and politics to me.
Papers, boy! — Here, sir! — Tam, what news today?
Foote, sir, is advertised. — What, run away?
No, sir, he acts this week at Drury Lane.
How's that (cries Feeble Grub) Foote come again?
I thought that fool had done his devil's dance.
Was not he hanged some months ago in France?
Up starts Macnone and thus the room harangued:
'Tis true his friends gave out that he was hanged,
But, to be sure, 'twas all a hum, becase
I have seen him since and after such disgrace
No gentleman would dare to show his face.
To him replied a sneering bonny Scot:
You rasin reet my friend, haunged he was not,
But neither you nor I can tell how soon he'll gang to pot.
Thus each as fancy drives his wit displays.
Such is the tax each son of folly pays.
On this my scheme they many names bestow:
'Tis fame, 'tis pride, nay worse, the pocket's low.
I own I've pride, ambition, vanity,
And, what's more strange, perhaps you'll see,
Though not so great a portion of it, modesty.
For you I'll curb each self-sufficient thought,
And kiss the rod whene'er you point the fault.
Many my passions are though one my view:
They all concentre in the pleasing you.