Charles Churchill
Charles Churchill
empty readings stored various
With various readings stored his empty skull, / Learn'd without sense, and venerably dull.
humor serious serious-things
A joke's a very serious thing.
fashion use may
Fashion--a word which knaves and fools may use, Their knavery and folly to excuse.
fool dunces folly
Fool beckons fool, and dunce awakens dunce.
haste speed worst
The more haste, ever the worst speed.
son men justice
Amongst the sons of men how few are known Who dare be just to merit not their own.
land knaves fool
Knaves starve not in the land of fools.
mind attention blank
Constant attention wears the active mind, Blots out our pow'rs, and leaves a blank behind.
woods flood command
The oak, when living, monarch of the wood; The English oak, which, dead, commands the flood.
poet rapture prose
Who all in raptures their own works rehearse, And drawl out measur'd prose, which they call verse.
religion saint mercy
The rigid saint, by whom no mercy's shown To saints whose lives are better than his own.
purple shining vices
Though folly, robed in purple, shines, Though vice exhausts Peruvian mines, Yet shall they tremble and turn pale When satire wields her mighty flail.
wings giving age
When satire flies abroad on falsehood's wing, Short is her life, and impotent her sting; But when to truth allied, the wound she gives Sinks deep, and to remotest ages lives.
pride scotland cry
The Scots are poor, cries surly English pride; True is the charge, nor by themselves denied. Are they not then in strictest reason clear, Who wisely come to mend their fortunes here?