Ponderous with brass, and starr’d with Bristol-stone. 
  His royal consort next consults her glass,
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  And out of twenty boxes culls a face;
  The whitening first her ghastly looks besmears,
  All pale and wan the unfinish’d form appears;
  Till on her cheeks the blushing purple glows,
  And a false virgin-modesty bestows. 
  Her ruddy lips the deep vermilion dyes;
  Length to her brows the pencil’s arts supplies,
  And with black bending arches shades her eyes. 
  Well pleased at length the picture she beholds,
  And spots it o’er with artificial molds;
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  Her countenance complete, the beaux she warms
  With looks not hers:  and, spite of nature, charms. 
     Thus artfully their persons they disguise,
  Till the last flourish bids the curtain rise. 
  The prince then enters on the stage in state;
  Behind, a guard of candle-snuffers wait: 
  There swoln with empire, terrible and fierce,
  He shakes the dome, and tears his lungs with verse: 
  His subjects tremble; the submissive pit,
  Wrapt up in silence and attention, sit;
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  Till, freed at length, he lays aside the weight
  Of public business and affairs of state: 
  Forgets his pomp, dead to ambitious fires,
  And to some peaceful brandy-shop retires;
  Where in full gills his anxious thoughts he drowns,
  And quaffs away the care that waits on crowns. 
     The princess next her painted charms displays,
  Where every look the pencil’s art betrays;
  The callow squire at distance feeds his eyes,
  And silently for paint and washes dies: 
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  But if the youth behind the scenes retreat,
  He sees the blended colours melt with heat,
  And all the trickling beauty run in sweat. 
  The borrow’d visage he admires no more,
  And nauseates every charm he loved before: 
  So the famed spear, for double force renown’d,
  Applied the remedy that gave the wound. 
     In tedious lists ’twere endless to engage,
  And draw at length the rabble of the stage,
  Where one for twenty years has given alarms,
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  And call’d contending monarchs to their arms;
  Another fills a more important post,
  And rises every other night a ghost;
  Through the cleft stage his mealy face he rears,
  Then stalks along, groans thrice, and disappears;
  Others, with swords and shields, the soldier’s pride,
  More than a thousand times have changed their side,
  And in a thousand fatal battles died. 
     Thus several persons several parts perform;
  Soft lovers whine, and blustering heroes storm.
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  The stern exasperated tyrants rage,
  Till the kind bowl of poison clears the stage. 
  Then honours vanish, and distinctions cease;
  Then, with reluctance, haughty queens undress. 
  Heroes no more their fading laurels boast,
  And mighty kings in private men are lost. 
  He, whom such titles swell’d, such power made proud,
  To whom whole realms and vanquish’d nations bow’d,
  Throws off the gaudy plume, the purple train,
  And in his own vile tatters stinks again.
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