Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/329

 COUNTESS OP WINCHILSEA 191 �A TALE OF THE MISER AND THE POET �Written about the Year 1709 �A Wit, transported with Inditing, �Unpay'd, unprais'd, yet ever Writing; �Who, for all Fights and Fav'rite Friends, �Had Poems at his Finger Ends ; �For new Events was still providing ; �Yet now desirous to be riding, �He pack'd-up ev'ry Ode and Ditty �And in Vacation left the City ; �So rapt with Figures, and Allusions, �With secret Passions, sweet Confusions; 10 �With Sentences from Plays well-known, �And thousand Couplets of his own; �That ev'n the chalky Road look'd gay, �And seem'd to him the Milky Way. �But Fortune, who the Ball is tossing, �And Poets ever will be crossing, �Misled the Steed, which ill he guided, �Where several gloomy Paths divided. �The steepest in Descent he followed, �Enclos'd by Rocks, which Time had hollow'd; 20 �Till, he believed, alive and booted, �He'd reach'd the Shades by Homer quoted. �But all, that he cou'd there discover, �Was, in a Pit with Thorns grown over, �Old Mammon digging, straining, sweating, �As Bags of Gold he thence was getting ; �Who, when reproved for such Dejections �By him, who lived on high Reflections, �Reply'd ; Brave Sir, your Time is ended, �And Poetry no more befriended. 30 ��� �