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DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING A BIRTHDAY SONG. 1725.
TO form a just and finish'd piece,
Take twenty gods of Rome or Greece,
Whose godships are in chief request,
And fit your present subject best:
And, should it be your hero's case,
To have both male and female race,
Your business must be to provide
A score of goddesses beside.
Some call their monarchs sons of Saturn,
For which they bring a modern pattern;
Because they might have heard of one,
Who often long'd to eat his son:
But this, I think, will not go down,
For here the father kept his crown.
Why, then, appoint him son of Jove,
Who met his mother in a grove:
To this we freely shall consent,
Well knowing what the poets meant;
And in their sense, 'twixt me and you,
It may be literally true.
Next, as the laws of verse require,
He must be greater than his sire;
For Jove, as every schoolboy knows.
Was able Saturn to depose:
And sure no Christian poet breathing
Would be more scrupulous than a Heathen!
Or, if to blasphemy it tends,
That's but a trifle among friends.
