University of Virginia Library

Hee must encrease, but I must decrease. JOHN 3. 30.

Time voyds the Table: Dinner's done;
And now our daies declining Sun
Hath hurried his diurnall Loade
To th'Borders of the Westerne roade;
Fierce Phlegon, with his fellow Steeds,
Now puffes and pants, and blowes and bleeds,
And froths, and fumes, remembering still
Their lashes up th'Olympick Hill:
Which, having conquerd, now disdaine
The whip, and champs the frothy reyn,
And, with a full Career, they bend
Their paces to their Journies end:
Our blazing Tapour now hath lost
Her better halfe: Nature hath crost
Her forenoone book, and cleard that score,
But scarce gives trust for so much more:
And now the gen'rous Sappe forsakes
Her seir-grown twig: A breath ev'n shakes
The down-ripe fruit; fruit soon divorc'd
From her deare Branch, untouchd, unforc'd.
Now sanguine Venus doth begin
To draw her wanton colours in;
And flees neglected in disgrace,
Whil'st Mars supplies her lukewarm place:
Blood turnes to Choler: What this Age
Loses in strength it finds in Rage:
That rich Ennamell, which of old,
Damaskt the downy Cheeke, and told
A harmeless guile, unaskt, is now
Worne off from the audacious brow;
Luxurious Dalliance, midnight Revells,
Loose Ryot, and those veniall evils
Which inconsiderate youth of late
Could pleade, now wants an Advocate,
And what appeard in former times
Whispring as faults, now roare as crimes.
And now all yee, whose lippes were wont
To drench their Currall in the Font
Of forkt Parnassus, you that be
The Sons of Phoebus, and can flee
On wings of Fancy, to display
The Flagge of high invention, stay:
Repose your Quills; Your veines grow sower,
Tempt not your Salt beyond her power:
If your pall'd Fancies but decline,
Censure will strike at every line
And wound your names; The popular eare
Weighs what you are, not what you were.
Thus hackney like, we tire our Age,
Spurgall'd with Change, from Stage to Stage.