By turns controls in every charge. 
  Does commerce suffer in her rights? 
  ’Tis he directs the naval flights. 
  What sailor dares dispute his skill? 
  He’ll be an admiral when he will.
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     Now meddling in the soldier’s trade,
  Troops must be hired, and levies made. 
  He gives ambassadors their cue,
  His cobbled treaties to renew;
  And annual taxes must suffice
  The current blunders to disguise
  When his crude schemes in air are lost,
  And millions scarce defray the cost,
  His arrogance (nought undismayed)
  Trusting in self-sufficient aid,
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  On other rocks misguides the realm,
  And thinks a pilot at the helm. 
  He ne’er suspects his want of skill,
  But blunders on from ill to ill;
  And, when he fails of all intent,
  Blames only unforeseen event. 
  Lest you mistake the application,
  The fable calls me to relation. 
     A bear of shag and manners rough,
  At climbing trees expert enough;
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  For dextrously, and safe from harm,
  Year after year he robbed the swarm. 
  Thus thriving on industrious toil,
  He gloried in his pilfered spoil. 
     This trick so swelled him with conceit,
  He thought no enterprise too great. 
  Alike in sciences and arts,
  He boasted universal parts;
  Pragmatic, busy, bustling, bold,
  His arrogance was uncontrolled: 
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  And thus he made his party good,
  And grew dictator of the wood. 
     The beasts with admiration stare,
  And think him a prodigious bear. 
  Were any common booty got,
  ’Twas his each portion to allot: 
  For why, he found there might be picking,
  Even in the carving of a chicken. 
  Intruding thus, he by degrees
  Claimed too the butcher’s larger fees.
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  And now his over-weening pride
  In every province will preside. 
  No talk too difficult was found: 
  His blundering nose misleads the hound. 
  In stratagem and subtle arts,
  He overrules the fox’s parts. 
     It chanced, as, on a certain day,
  Along the bank he took his way,
  A boat, with rudder, sail, and oar,
  At anchor floated near the shore.
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  He stopp’d, and turning to his train,
  Thus pertly vents his vaunting strain: 
     ’What blundering puppies are mankind,
  In every science always blind! 
  I mock the pedantry of schools. 
  What are their compasses and rules? 
  From me that helm shall conduct learn. 
  And man his ignorance discern.’ 
     So saying, with audacious pride,
  He gains the boat, and climbs the side.
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  The beasts astonished, lined the strand,
  The anchor’s weighed, he drives from land: 
  The slack sail shifts from side to side;
  The boat untrimmed admits the tide,
  Borne down, adrift, at random toss’d,
  His oar breaks short, the rudder’s