FullReads

Prest by the load of life, the weary mind
Surveys the gen’ral toil of human kind;
With cool submission joins the lab’ring train,
And social sorrow loses half its pain:
Our anxious bard, without complaint, may share
This bustling season’s epidemick care;
Like Caesar’s pilot, dignify’d by fate,
Tost in one common storm with all the great;
Distrest alike the statesman and the wit,
When one a borough courts, and one the pit.
The busy candidates for pow’r and fame
Have hopes, and fears, and wishes, just the same;
Disabled both to combat or to fly,
Must hear all taunts, and hear without reply.
Uncheck’d on both loud rabbles vent their rage,
As mongrels bay the lion in a cage.
Th’ offended burgess hoards his angry tale,
For that blest year, when all that vote may rail;
Their schemes of spite the poet’s foes dismiss,
Till that glad night, when all that hate may hiss.
“This day the powder’d curls and golden coat,”
Says swelling Crispin, “begg’d a cobbler’s vote.”
“This night our wit,” the pert apprentice cries,
“Lies at my feet; I hiss him, and he dies.”
The great, ’tis true, can charm th’ electing tribe;
The bard may supplicate, but cannot bribe.
Yet, judg’d by those whose voices ne’er were sold,
He feels no want of ill persuading gold;
But, confident of praise, if praise be due,
Trusts, without fear, to merit and to you.