Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/423

For never did poetick mine before
Produce a richer vein or cleaner ore;
The bullion stamped in your refining mind
Serves by retail to furnish half mankind.
With indignation I behold your wit
Forced on me, crack'd, and clipp'd, and counterfeit,
By vile pretenders, who a stock maintain
From broken scraps and filings of your brain.
Through native dross your share is hardly known,
And by short views mistook for all their own;
So small the gain those from your wit do reap,
Who blend it into folly's larger heap,
Like the sun's scatter'd beams which loosely pass,
When some rough hand breaks the assembling glass.
Yet want your criticks no just cause to rail,
Since knaves are ne'er obliged for what they steal.
These pad on wit's high road, and suits maintain
With those they rob, by what their trade does gain.
Thus censure seems that fiery froth which breeds
O'er the sun's face, and from his heat proceeds,
Crusts o'er the day, shadowing its partent beam
As ancient nature's modern masters dream;
This bids some curious praters here below
Call Titan sick, because their sight is so;
And well, methinks, does this allusion fit
To scribblers, and the god of light and wit;
Those who by wild delusions entertain
A lust of rhyming for a poet's vein,
Raise envy's clouds to leave themselves in night,
But can no more obscure my Congreve's light
Than swarms of gnats, that wanton in a ray
Which gave them birth, can rob the world of day.
What northern hive pour'd out these foes to wit?
Whence came these Goths to overrun the pit?

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