Classic Poem

Quid placet ergo?

The sturdy ploughman doth the soldier see,
All scarfed with pied colours to the knee,
Whom Indian pillage hath made fortunate,
And now he gins to loathe his former state;
Now doth he inly scorn his Kendal green,
And his patched cockers now despised been.
Nor list he now go whistling to the car,
But sells his team and fettleth to the war.
O war to them that never tried thee sweet!
When his dead mate falls grovelling at his feet,
And angry bullets whistlen at his ear,
And his dim eyes see nought but death and drear;
O happy ploughman were thy weal well known;
O happy all estates except his own!
Some drunken rhymer thinks his time well spent,
If he can live to see his name in print;
Who when he is once fleshed to the press,
And see his handsel have such fair success,
Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the pail,
He sends forth thraves of ballads to the sale.
Nor then can rest; but volumes up bodged rhymes,
To have his name talked of in future times.
The brainsick youth that feeds his tickled ear
With sweet-sauced lies of some false traveller,
Which hath the Spanish Decades read awhile,
Or whetstone leasings of old Mandevile,
Now with discourses breaks his midnight sleep
Of his adventures through the Indian deep,
Of all their massy heaps of golden mine,
Or of the antique tombs of Palestine,
Or of Damascus' magic wall of glass,
Of Solomon his sweating piles of brass,
Of the bird Roc that bears an elephant;
Of mermaids that the southern seas do haunt;
Of headless men; of savage cannibals;
The fashion of their lives and governals;
What monstrous cities there erected be,
Cairo, or the City of the Trinity.
Now are they dunghill cocks that have not seen
The bordering Alps, or else the neighbour Rhene,
And now he plies the newsful Grasshopper,
Of voyages and ventures to enquire.
His land mortgaged, he sea-beat in the way
Wishes for home a thousand sithes a day;
And now he deems his home-bred fare as lief
As his parched biscuit, or his barrelled beef.
'Mongst all these stirs of discontented strife,
O let me lead an academic life,
To know much, and to think we nothing know;
Nothing to have, yet think we have enough,
In skill to want, and wanting seek for more,
In weal nor want, nor wish for greater store;
Envy, ye monarchs with your proud excess,
At our low sail, and our high happiness.