Would you, when thieves were known abroad,
  Bring forth your treasures in the road?
20
     Would not the fool abet the stealth,
  Who rashly thus exposed his wealth? 
     Yet this you do, whene’er you play
  Among the gentlemen of prey. 
  Could fools to keep their own contrive,
  On what, on whom could gamesters thrive? 
  Is it in charity you game,
  To save your worthy gang from shame? 
  Unless you furnished daily bread,
  Which way could idleness be fed?
30
     Could these professors of deceit
  Within the law no longer cheat,
  They must run bolder risks for prey,
  And strip the traveller on the way. 
  Thus in your annual rents they share,
  And ’scape the noose from year to year. 
  Consider, ere you make the bet,
  That sum might cross your tailor’s debt. 
  When you the pilfering rattle shake,
  Is not your honour too at stake?
40
  Must you not by mean lies evade
  To-morrow’s duns from every trade? 
  By promises so often paid,
  Is yet your tailor’s bill defrayed? 
  Must you not pitifully fawn,
  To have your butcher’s writ withdrawn? 
  This must be done.  In debts of play
  Your honour suffers no delay: 
  And not this year’s and next year’s rent
  The sons of rapine can content.
50
     Look round.  The wrecks of play behold,
  Estates dismembered, mortgaged, sold! 
  Their owners, not to jails confined,
  Show equal poverty of mind. 
  Some, who the spoil of knaves were made,
  Too late attempt to learn their trade. 
  Some, for the folly of one hour,
  Become the dirty tools of power,
  And, with the mercenary list,
  Upon court-charity subsist.
60
     You’ll find at last this maxim true,
  Fools are the game which knaves pursue. 
     The forest (a whole century’s shade)
  Must be one wasteful ruin made. 
  No mercy’s shewn to age or kind;
  The general massacre is signed. 
  The park too shares the dreadful fate,
  For duns grow louder at the gate,
  Stern clowns, obedient to the squire,
  (What will not barbarous hands for hire?)
70
  With brawny arms repeat the stroke. 
  Fallen are the elm and reverend oak. 
  Through the long wood loud axes sound,
  And echo groans with every wound. 
     To see the desolation spread,
  Pan drops a tear, and hangs his head: 
  His bosom now with fury burns: 
  Beneath his hoof the dice he spurns. 
  Cards, too, in peevish passion torn,
  The sport of whirling winds are borne.
80
     ’To snails inveterate hate I bear,
  Who spoil the verdure of the year;
  The caterpillar I detest,
  The blooming spring’s voracious pest;
  The locust too, whose ravenous band
  Spreads sudden famine o’er the land. 
  But what are these?  The dice’s throw
  At once hath laid a forest low.