Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/230

220 For if you want estate to set it forth, In vain you boast the splendour of your birth; Your prized gentility for madness goes, And each your kindred shuns and disavows. But he that's rich is praised at his full rate, And though he once cried 'Small-coal!' in the street, Though he, nor one of his e'er mentioned were, But in the parish-book or register, Dugdale, by help of chronicle, shall trace An hundred barons of his ancient race.

F you're so out of love with happiness, To quit a college life and learned ease, Convince me first, and some good reasons give, What methods and designs you'll take to live; For such resolves are needful in the case, Before you tread the world's mysterious maze. Without the premises, in vain you'll try To live by systems of philosophy; Your Aristotle, Cartes, and Le Grand, And Euclid too, in little stead will stand. How many men of choice and noted parts, Well fraught with learning, languages, and arts, Designing high preferment in their mind, And little doubting good success to find, With vast and towering thoughts have flocked to town, But to their cost soon found themselves undone,