A pleasing subject first with care provide;
Your matter must with nature be supplied;
Nervous your diction, be your measure long,
Nor fear your verse too stiff if sense be strong:
In proper places proper numbers use,
And now the quicker, now the slower chuse:
Too soon the dactyl the performance ends,
But the slow spondee coming thoughts suspends;
Your last attention on the sting bestow,
To that your good or ill success you’ll owe;
For there, not wit alone must shine, but humour flow.
Observing these, your epigram’s completed;
Nor fear ’twill tire, though seven times repeated.
_On Ben Jonson’s Bust set up in Westminster Abbey, with the buttons on
the wrong side of his coat._