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For Fees each Term sweat in the crowded Hall,
And there for Charters, and crak'd Titles bawl;
Where Md thrives, and pockets more each year
Than forty Laureats at the Theater.
Or else to Orders, and the Church betake
Thy self, and that thy future Refuge make:
There fawn on some Patron to engage
Th' Advowson of each Punk, and Parsonage:
Or sooth the Court, and Preach up Kingly Right,
To gain a Prebend or Miter by't.
In fine, turn Pettifogger, Canonist,
Civilian, Pedant, Mountebank, or Priest,
Soldier, or Merchant, Fidler, Painter, Fencer,
Jack-pudding, Juggler, Player, or Rope-dancer:
Preach, Plead, Cure, Fight, Game, Pimp, Beg, Cheat, or Thieve;
Be all but Poet, and there's way to live.
But why do I in vain my counsel spend
On one whom there's so little hope to mend?
Where I perhaps as fruitlesly exhort,
As Lenten Doctors, when they Preach at Court;
Not enter'd Punks from Lust they once have try'd,
Not Fops, and Women from Conceit, and Pride,
Not Bawds from Impudence, Cowards from Fear,
Not seer'd unfeeling Sinners past Despair,
Are half so hard, and stubborn to reduce,
As a poor Wretch, when once possess'd with Muse.
If therefore, what I've said, cannot avail,
Nor from the Rhiming Folly thee recal,
But spight of all thou wilt be obstinate,
And run thy self upon avoidless Fate;
May'st thou go on unpitied, till thou be
Brought to the Parish-Badg, and Beggary:
Till urg'd by Want, like broken Scriblers, thou
Turn Poet to a Booth, a Smithfield Show,
And write Heroick verse for Barthol'mew.
Then slighted by the very Nursery,
May'st thou at last be forc'd to starve, like me.
FINIS.
