Henceforth retire, reduce your roving airs,
  Haunt less the plays, and more the public prayers,
  Reject the Mechlin head, and gold brocade,
  Go pray, in sober Norwich crape array’d. 
  Thy pendant diamonds let thy Fanny take,
  Their trembling lustre shows how much you shake;
  Or bid her wear thy necklace row’d with pearl,
  You’ll find your Fanny an obedient girl. 50
  So, for the rest, with less incumbrance hung,
  You walk through life, unmingled with the young;
  And view the shade and substance as you pass
  With joint endeavour trifling at the glass,
  Or Folly dress’d, and rambling all her days,
  To meet her counterpart, and grow by praise: 
  Yet still sedate yourself, and gravely plain,
  You neither fret, nor envy at the vain.

   ’Twas thus, if man with woman we compare,
  The wise Athenian cross’d a glittering fair; 60
  Unmoved by tongues and sights, he walk’d the place,
  Through tape, toys, tinsel, gimp, perfume, and lace;
  Then bends from Mars’s hill his awful eyes,
  And ‘What a world I never want!’ he cries;
  But cries unheard:  for Folly will be free. 
  So parts the buzzing gaudy crowd, and he: 
  As careless he for them, as they for him;
  He wrapt in wisdom, and they whirl’d by whim

* * * * *

  THE BOOK-WORM.

  Come hither, boy, we’ll hunt to-day
  The book-worm, ravening beast of prey! 
  Produced by parent Earth, at odds
  (As Fame reports it) with the gods. 
  Him frantic Hunger wildly drives
  Against a thousand authors’ lives: 
  Through all the fields of Wit he flies;
  Dreadful his head with clustering eyes,
  With horns without, and tusks within,
  And scales to serve him for a skin. 10
  Observe him nearly, lest he climb
  To wound the bards of ancient time,
  Or down the vale of Fancy go,
  To tear some modern wretch below: 
  On every corner fix thine eye,
  Or, ten to one, he slips thee by.

   See where his teeth a passage eat: 
  We’ll rouse him from the deep retreat. 
  But who the shelter’s forced to give? 
  ’Tis sacred Virgil, as I live! 20
  From leaf to leaf, from song to song,
  He draws the tadpole form along,
  He mounts the gilded edge before,
  He’s up, he scuds the cover o’er,
  He turns, he doubles, there he pass’d,
  And here we have him, caught at last.

   Insatiate brute, whose teeth abuse
  The sweetest servants of the Muse! 
  —­Nay, never offer to deny,
  I took thee in the act to fly—­ 30
  His roses nipp’d in every page,
  My poor Anacreon mourns thy rage. 
  By thee my Ovid wounded lies;
  By thee my Lesbia’s sparrow dies: 
  Thy rabid teeth have half destroy’d
  The work of love in Biddy Floyd;
  They rent Belinda’s locks away,
  And spoil’d the Blouzelind of Gay. 
  For all, for every single deed,
  Relentless Justice bids thee bleed. 40
  Then fall a victim to the Nine,
  Myself the priest, my desk the shrine.