Classic Poem

Now , luck for us, and a kind hearty pit;
For he, who pleases, never fails of wit:
Honor is yours;
And you, like kings, at city-treats bestow it;
The writer kneels, and is bid rise a poet;
But you are fickle sovereigns, to our sorrow;
You dub to-day, and hang a man to-morrow:
You cry the same sense up, and down again,
Just like brass money once a year in Spain:
Take you i' th' mood, whate'er base metal come,
You coin as fast as groats at Bromingam:
Tho' 't is no more like sense, in ancient plays,
Than Rome's religion like St. Peter's days.
In short, so swift your judgments turn and wind,
You cast our fleetest wits a mile behind.
'T were 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 tir'd, and cannot score 'em on the stage;
Unless each vice in shorthand they indict,
Ev'n as notch'd 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;
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;
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,
Straight a more foolish gewgaw comes in play:
So we, grown penitent, on serious thinking,
Leave whoring, and devoutly fall to drinking.
Scouring the watch grows out-of-fashion wit:
Now we set up for tilting in the pit,
Where 't is 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,
Unless the new-found pois'ning trick of France?
And, when their art of ratsbane we have got.
By way of thanks, we 'll send 'em o'er our Plot.