Hence, thou tormenting wayward Being!
For ever courting, trifling, spreeing.
Thou _Erysipelas_ of thrall:
For ever, with thine addled hatch,
I’ll shun thee as an arrant Scratch,
Unworthy to be scratched at all.
Thy Sonnets, staves, and stanzas rhyming
To every key, to every chiming,
St. _Vitus’ Dance_ is ease to Thee:
Thou shalt no more provoke my Quill
To deeds of labour, or of skill,
Thou _cacoëthes mise-re_.
Promethean fire--Parnassus smiling,
Helicon’s spirituous drops beguiling,--
Where’er thou com’st--whate’er thou be:
The _Vagrant Act_ may take thee in;
I’ll drive thee out as Satan’s sin
Thou worse than _fire of Anthony_.
Hence Jade! tormentress of the feelings;--
Thou _Witch of End-or_ like revealings:--
Go--haunt the brains, not frenzy past:
I’ll haste to Monmouth Street and buy
A suit of Prose--then joyful cry
_Ecce Stultus!_ grown wise at last.
If thou shou’d’st to my brain-door, knocking,
Come with thy wheedling-pamby, mocking;
I’ll catch thee _vi et armis_:--then
By Habeas Corpus to the Pleas--
--_Sure_ I will rob thee of degrees,
And scare thee from my _Smithfield Pen_.
If I’m asleep--then thou art waiting,
Angler-like, with thy couplets baiting,
To drag my crazy thought to light:
Awake! thy float, with stanza-hook,
Is ever dipping in _Mal-Brook_--
I’ll brook no more--if sense is right.
*, *, P.
* * * * *