When men may eat and drink their fill, 365
And when be temp’rate, if they will;
When use and when abstain from vice,
Figs, grapes, phlebotomy, and spice. 
And as in prison mean rogues beat
Hemp for the service of the great, 370
So Whachum beats his dirty brains,
T’ advance his master’s fame and gains
And, like the Devil’s oracles,
Put into doggrel rhimes his spells,
Which, over ev’ry month’s blank page 375
I’ th’ almanack, strange bilks presage. 
He would an elegy compose
On maggots squeez’d out of his nose;
In lyrick numbers write an ode on
His mistress, eating a black-pudden:  380
And when imprison’d air escap’d her,
It puft him with poetic rapture. 
His sonnets charm’d th’ attentive crowd,
By wide-mouth’d mortal troll’d aloud,
That ’circl’d with his long-ear’d guests, 385
Like Orpheus look’d among the beasts. 
A carman’s horse could not pass by,
But stood ty’d up to poetry: 
No porter’s burthen pass’d along,
But serv’d for burthen to his song:  390
Each window like a pill’ry appears,
With heads thrust through, nail’d by the ears
All trades run in as to the sight
Of monsters, or their dear delight
The gallow tree, when cutting purse 395
Breeds bus’ness for heroic verse,
Which none does hear, but would have hung
T’ have been the theme of such a song.

Those two together long had liv’d,
In mansion prudently contriv’d; 400
Where neither tree nor house could bar
The free detection of a star
And nigh an ancient obelisk
Was rais’d by him, found out by Fisk,
On which was a written not in words, 405
But hieroglyphic mute of birds,
Many rare pithy saws concerning
The worth of astrologic learning. 
From top of this there hung a rope,
To a which he fasten’d telescope; 410
The spectacles with which the stars
He reads in smallest characters. 
It happen’d as a boy, one night,
Did fly his tarsel of a kite,
The strangest long-wing’d hawk that flies, 415
That, like a bird of Paradise,
Or herald’s martlet, has no legs,
Nor hatches young ones, nor lays eggs;
His train was six yards long, milk-white,
At th’ end of which there hung a light, 420
Inclos’d in lanthorn, made of paper,
That far off like a star did appear. 
This Sidrophel by chance espy’d,
And with amazement staring wide,
Bless us! quoth he, what dreadful wonder 425
Is that appears in heaven yonder? 
A comet, and without a beard! 
Or star that ne’er before appear’d! 
I’m certain ’tis not in the scrowl