The Works of Peter Pindar [i.e. John Wolcot] :: :: University of Virginia Library

If monarchs (the suggestion, p'rhaps of liars)
Turn housebreakers, and rob the nuns and friars;
Steal pictures, crucifixes, heav'nly chattels,
To purchase swords and guns and souls for battles:

In spite of all the world may say or think,
If empresses will punk-like kiss and drink:

If kings will sell the hares and boars they kill,
And snipe and partridge blood for mammon spill,
Denying thus themselves a dainty dish,
And go themselves to market with their fish:

Pleas'd with the vulgar herd to join their name,
If kings, ambitious of a blacksmith's fame,
Not wondrously ambitious in their views,
Instead of mending empires, make horse shoes:

Dead to fair science, if to vagrant hogs,
To toymen, conjurors, and dancing dogs,
Great princes, pleas'd, a patronage extend;
Whilst modest genius pines without a friend:

Dismissing grandeur as an idle thing,
If on bob wigs, slouch'd hats, and thread-bare coats,
Upon vulgarity a monarch doats,
More pleas'd to look a coachman than a king:

If with their bullocks kings delight to battle:
On hard horse chesnuts make them dine and sup,
Resolv'd to starve the nice-mouth'd cattle
Until they eat the chesnuts up;
Poor fellows, from the nuts who turn away,
And think it dev'lish hard they can't have hay:

If kings will mount old houses upon rollers,
Converting sober mansions into strollers,
Heraclitus's gravity can't bear it—
I must laugh out, and all the world must hear it.