On every subject superseded,
My favorite topics all invaded,
I scarcely dip my pen in praise,
When fifty bardlings grasp my bays;
Or let me touch a drop of satire,
(I once knew something of the matter),
Just fifty bardlings take the trouble,
To be my tuneful worship’s double. 
Fine similies that nothing fit,
Joe Miller’s, that must pass for wit;
The dull, dry, brain-besieging jokes,
The humour that no laugh provokes—­
The nameless, worthless, witless rancours,
The rage that souls of scribblers cankers—­
(Administer’d in gall go thick,
It makes even Sunday critic’s sick!)
Disgust my passion, fill my place,
And snatch my prize before my face.

If then I take the “brilliant” pen. 
And “scorning measures” talk of men—­
There Luttrel steps ’twixt me and fame—­
So like, egad, we’re just the same;
I never half squeeze out a thought,
But jumps its fellow on the spot—­
My tenderest dreams, my fondest touch,
Are victims to his ready clutch;
The whirling waltz, the gay costume,
The porcelain tooth, the gallic bloom;
The vapid smiles, the lisping loves
Of turtles (never meant for doves)—­
The dreary stuff that fills the ears,
Where all the orators are peers—­
The hides reveal’d through ball-room dresses,
Where all the parties are peer-esses;
The dulness of the toujours gai,
The yawning night, the sleepy day,
The visages of cheese and chalk,
The drowsy, dreamy, languid talk;
The fifty other horrid things,
That strip old Time of both his wings! 
There’s not a topic of them all
But comes, hey presto! at his call.

Or when I turn my pen to love,
A theme that fits me like my glove,
A pang I’ve borne these twenty years
With ten-times twenty several dears,
Each glance a dart, each smile a quiver,
Stinging their bard from lungs to liver—­
To work my ruin, or my cure,
Up starts thy pen, Anacreon Moore! 
In vain I pour my shower of roses,
On which the matchless fair one dozes,
And plant around her conch the graces,
While jealous Venus breaks her laces,
To see a younger face promoted,
To see her own old face out-voted;
And myrtle branches twisting o’er her,
Bow down, each turn’d a true adorer. 
Up starts the Irish Bard—­in vain
I write, ’tis all against the grain: 
In vain I talk of smiles or sighs,
The girls all have him in their eyes;
And not a soul—­mamma, or miss—­
But vows he’s the sole Bard of Bliss!

Since first I dipp’d in the romantic,
A hundred thousand have run frantic—­
There’s not a hideous highland spot,
(Long fallowed to the core by Scott)—­
No rill, through rack and thistle dribbling,
But has its deadlier crop of scribbling. 
Each fen, and flat, and flood, and fell,
Gives birth to verses by the ell—­
There Wordsworth, for his muse’s sallies,
Claims all the ponds, the lanes, and alleys—­
There Coleridge swears none else shall tune
A bag-pipe to the list’ning moon;
On come in clouds the scribbling columns,
Each prowling for his next three volumes. 
I scorn the rascal tribe, and spurn all
The yearly, monthly, and diurnal.