You strove to cultivate a barren court in vain,
Your garden's better worth your nobler pain,
Here mankind fell, and hence must rise again.
XI
Shall I believe a spirit so divine
Was cast in the same mould with mine?
Why then does Nature so unjustly share
Among her elder sons the whole estate,
And all her jewels and her plate?
Poor we! cadets of Heaven, not worth her care,
Take up at best with lumber and the leavings of a fare:
Some she binds 'prentice to the spade,
Some to the drudgery of a trade:
Some she does to Egyptian bondage draw,
Bids us make bricks, yet sends us to look out for straw:
Some she condemns for life to try
To dig the leaden mines of deep philosophy:
Me she has to the Muse's galleys tied:
In vain I strive to cross the spacious main,
In vain I tug and pull the oar;
And when I almost reach the shore,
Straight the Muse turns the helm, and I launch out again:
And yet, to feed my pride,
Whene'er I mourn, stops my complaining breath,
With promise of a mad reversion after death.
XII
Then, Sir, accept this worthless verse,
The tribute of an humble Muse,
'Tis all the portion of my niggard stars;
Nature the hidden spark did at my birth infuse,
And kindled first with indolence and ease;
And since too oft debauch'd by praise,
'Tis now grown an incurable disease:
In vain to quench this foolish fire I try
In wisdom and philosophy:
In vain all wholesome herbs I sow,
Where nought but weeds will grow
Whate'er I plant (like corn on barren earth)
By an equivocal birth,
Seeds, and runs up to poetry.
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