 | The poems (1969) |  |
19 Epilogue to The Good Natured Man
665
To swear the pill or drop has wrought a cure;
Thus on the stage our playwrights still depend
For Epilogues and Prologues on some friend,
Who knows each art of coaxing up the town,
And make full many a bitter pill go down.
Conscious of this, our bard has gone about,
And teased each rhyming friend to help him out.
‘An Epilogue—things can't go on without it;
It could not fail, would you but set about it.’
‘Young man,’ cries one—a bard laid up in clover—
‘Alas, young man, my writing days are over;
Let boys play tricks and kick the straw, not I:
Your brother Doctor there, perhaps, may try.’
‘What I? dear Sir,’ the Doctor interposes,
‘What, plant my thistle, Sir, among his roses!
No, no, I've other contests to maintain;
666
Go, ask your manager.’ ‘Who, me? Your pardon;
Those things are not our forte at Covent Garden.’
Our author's friends, thus placed at happy distance,
Give him good words indeed, but no assistance.
As some unhappy wight, at some new play,
At the pit door stands elbowing a way,
While oft, with many a smile and many a shrug,
He eyes the centre, where his friends sit snug;
His simpering friends, with pleasure in their eyes,
Sink as he sinks and as he rises rise;
He nods, they nod; he cringes, they grimace;
But not a soul will budge to give him place.
Since then, unhelped, our bard must now conform
‘To bide the pelting of this pitiless storm’,
Blame where you must, be candid where you can,
And be each critic the Good Natured Man.
| The poems (1969) | |