Since ink, thank heaven! is all the blood you spill, Health to the driver of the grey goose quill: Such war shall leave no widow in despair, Nor curse one orphan with the public care.
‘ Tis the worst wound the heart of man can feel, When touched, or worried, by an ass's heel — With generous satire give your foes their due, Nay, give them more, and prove them scoundrels too:
Make them as black as hell's remotest gloom, But still to genius let them owe their doom:— By Jove's red lightnings‘ tis no shame to bleed, But by a grovelling swine — is death indeed!—
Now, by the laurels of your royal crew, I knew no shame, till I engaged with you:— But such an odour atmosphered your song, I held my nose, and quickly passed along,
Grieved for the wretch who could such filth display, His maw disgorging in the public way. Armed though we are, unusual tumults rise;— But all resentment in my bosom dies.
We deem, that in the skirmish of a day, This bard must perish, and his verse decay: This day he goes to black oblivion's clime; Turned, chased, and routed by the “power of rhyme.”
We wished him still unhandled and unhurt — We wished no evils to this man of dirt; We thought to leave him sweltering in his den, Not with such rotten trash to tinge the pen:
But his mean labours wrought his present woe, And his own scribblings, now, have laid him low! Before his eyes the sexton's spade appears, And muffled bells disorganize his ears:
Already is his mean existence fled, Sense, wit, and reason — all proclaim him dead: In his own lines he tolled his funeral bell, And when he could not sing — he stunk — farewell!
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