Who dare revile the integrity of verse: 
Ah, favourite youth, how happy is thy lot!—­
But I’m deceived, or thou regard’st me not;
Speak, for I wait thy answer, and expect
Thy just submission for this bold neglect. 
  Unknown the forms we the high-priesthood use
At the divine appearance of the Muse,
Which to divulge might shake profane belief,
And tell the irreligion of my grief;
Grief that excused the tribute of my knees,
And shaped my passion in such words as these! 
  Malignant goddess! bane to my repose,
Thou universal cause of all my woes;
Say whence it comes that thou art grown of late
A poor amusement for my scorn and hate;
The malice thou inspirest I never fail
On thee to wreak the tribute when I rail;
Fool’s commonplace thou art, their weak ensconcing fort,
Th’appeal of dulness in the last resort: 
Heaven, with a parent’s eye regarding earth,
Deals out to man the planet of his birth: 
But sees thy meteor blaze about me shine,
And passing o’er, mistakes thee still for mine: 
Ah, should I tell a secret yet unknown,
That thou ne’er hadst a being of thy own,
But a wild form dependent on the brain,
Scattering loose features o’er the optic vein;
Troubling the crystal fountain of the sight,
Which darts on poets’ eyes a trembling light;
Kindled while reason sleeps, but quickly flies,
Like antic shapes in dreams, from waking eyes: 
In sum, a glitt’ring voice, a painted name,
A walking vapour, like thy sister fame. 
But if thou be’st what thy mad votaries prate,
A female power, loose govern’d thoughts create;
Why near the dregs of youth perversely wilt thou stay,
So highly courted by the brisk and gay? 
Wert thou right woman, thou should’st scorn to look
On an abandon’d wretch by hopes forsook;
Forsook by hopes, ill fortune’s last relief,
Assign’d for life to unremitting grief;
For, let Heaven’s wrath enlarge these weary days,
If hope e’er dawns the smallest of its rays. 
Time o’er the happy takes so swift a flight,
And treads so soft, so easy, and so light,
That we the wretched, creeping far behind,
Can scarce th’impression of his footsteps find;
Smooth as that airy nymph so subtly born
With inoffensive feet o’er standing corn;[3]
Which bow’d by evening breeze with bending stalks,
Salutes the weary traveller as he walks;
But o’er the afflicted with a heavy pace
Sweeps the broad scythe, and tramples on his face. 
Down falls the summer’s pride, and sadly shows
Nature’s bare visage furrow’d as he mows: 
See, Muse, what havoc in these looks appear,
These are the tyrant’s trophies of a year;
Since hope his last and greatest foe is fled,
Despair and he lodge ever in its stead;
March o’er the ruin’d plain with motion slow,
Still scattering desolation where they go. 
To thee I owe that fatal bent of mind,
Still to unhappy restless thoughts inclined;