Page:Hudibras - Volume 2 (Butler, Nash, Bohn; 1859).djvu/37

CANTO III.] When terms begin, and end, could tell, With their returns, in doggerel; When the exchequer opes and shuts, And sow-gelder with safety cuts; When men may eat and drink their fill, And when be temp'rate if they will; When use, and when abstain from vice, Figs, grapes, phlebotomy, and spice. And as in prison mean rogues beat Hemp for the service of the great, So Whachum beat his dirty brains T' advance his master's fame and gains, And like the devil's oracles, Put into dogg'rel rhymes his spells, Which, over ev'ry month's blank page I' th' almanack, strange bilks presage. He would an elegy compose On maggots squeez'd out of his nose; In lyric numbers write an ode on His mistress, eating a black-pudden; And, when imprison'd air escap'd her, It puft him with poetic rapture: His sonnets charm'd th' attentive crowd, By wide-mouth'd mortal troll'd aloud, That, circled with his long-ear'd guests, Like Orpheus look'd among the beasts: A carman's horse could not pass by, But stood ty'd up to poetry: No porter's burden pass'd along, But serv'd for burden to his song: