Of useful epithets repeated o’er,
     Verb, substantive, and pronoun, to transpose,
     And into tinkling metre hitch dull prose. 
     But I—­who tremble o’er each word I use,
     And all that do not aid the sense refuse,
     Who cannot bear those phrases out of place
     Which rhymers stuff into a vacant space—­Ponder
     my scrupulous verses o’er and o’er,
     And when I write five words, oft blot out four.

     Plague on the fool who taught us to confine
     The swelling thought within a measured line;
     Who first in narrow thraldom fancy pent,
     And chained in rhyme each pinioned sentiment. 
     Without this toil, contentment’s soothing balm
     Might lull my languid soul in listless calm: 
     Like the smooth prebend how might I recline,
     And loiter life in mirth and song and wine! 
     Roused by no labor, with no care opprest,
     Pass all my nights in sleep, my days in rest. 
     My passions and desires obey the rein;
     No mad ambition fires my temperate vein;
     The schemes of busy greatness I decline,
     Nor kneel in palaces at Fortune’s shrine. 
     In short, my life had been supremely blest
     If envious rhyme had not disturbed my rest: 
     But since this freakish fiend began to roll
     His idle vapors o’er my troubled soul,
     Since first I longed in polished verse to please,
     And wrote with labor to be read with ease,
     Nailed to my chair, day after day I pore
     On what I write and what I wrote before;
     Retouch each line, each epithet review,
     Or burn the paper and begin anew. 
     While thus my labors lengthen into years,
     I envy all the race of sonneteers.

     Hail, happy Scudere! whose prolific brain
     Brings forth a monthly volume without pain;
     What though thy works, offending every rule,
     Proclaim their author an insipid fool;
     Still have they found, whate’er the critic says,
     Traders to buy and emptier fools to praise.

     And, truly, if in rhymes the couplets close,
     What should it matter that the rest is prose? 
     Who stickles now for antiquated saws,
     Or cramps his verses with pedantic laws? 
     The fool can welcome every word he meets,
     With placid joy contemplating his feats;
     And while each stanza swells his wondering breast
     Admires them all, yet thinks the last the best. 
     But towering Genius, hopeless to attain
     That unknown summit which he pants to gain,
     Displeased himself, enchanting all beside,
     Scorns each past effort that his strength supplied,
     And filling every reader with delight,
     Repents the hour when he began to write.

     To you, who know how justly I complain,
     To you I turn for medicine to my pain! 
     Grant me your talent, and impart your store,
     Or teach me, Moliere, how to rhyme no more.