A Licentious Stage: Stray Lines poem

STRAY LINES.

[We do not insert the following in compliment to the author, who is quite unknown to us, and, as we suspect, to poetic fame; neither do we publish them to rescue intrinsic merit from obscurity; but simply because there is an honest quaintness about them which we admire.--Ed.]

If poets are poor, may not rhymes be rich?

Or are both to be penniless?--no matter which;

As I'm of the latter, my fortune I'll wage,

A man or a mouse, on a licentious stage.

Yet I may be at best but a very bad judge,

And all my bombast and my splutter be fudge!

Should I gain but two farthings, would I, in a rage,

Crest-fallen, abandon a licentious stage?

But if I'm a man--why debase myself so?

A true man could never, I think, stoop so low;

A modest man could not, in this present age

Even mix himself up with a licentious stage.

Yet a reason I have, and my reason is good--

That my cronies and friends all agree that I should

Try my powers as logician, philosopher, sage;

And prove mankind blest by a licentious stage.

But, alas, for the manners! alas, for the Times!!

I fear I had better continue my rhymes;

For a penny a line if I write half a page,

Pays better by far than a licentious stage.

For a pure-minded man must be happier far,

Than a Solomon was, or is now the Czar:

While mad dissipation still seeks to assuage

Its thirst, but in vain, from a licentious stage.

OLD COLONIST