To the Concealed Royalist: On His Farewell

Since ink, thank heaven! is all the blood you spill,
Health to the driver of the grey goose quill:
Such war shall leave no widow in despair,
Nor curse one orphan with the public care.
'Tis the worst wound the heart of man can feel,
When touched, or worried, by an ass's heel--
With generous satire give your foes their due,
Nay, give them more, and prove them scoundrels too:
Make them as black as hell's remotest gloom,
But still to genius let them owe their doom:--
By Jove's red lightnings 'tis no shame to bleed,
But by a grovelling swine--is death indeed!--
Now, by the laurels of your royal crew,
I knew no shame, till I engaged with you:--
But such an odour atmosphered your song,
I held my nose, and quickly passed along,
Grieved for the wretch who could such filth display,
His maw disgorging in the public way.
Armed though we are, unusual tumults rise;--
But all resentment in my bosom dies.
We deem, that in the skirmish of a day,
This bard must perish, and his verse decay:
This day he goes to black oblivion's clime;
Turned, chased, and routed by the "power of rhyme."
We wished him still unhandled and unhurt--
We wished no evils to this man of dirt;
We thought to leave him sweltering in his den,
Not with such rotten trash to tinge the pen:
But his mean labours wrought his present woe,
And his own scribblings, now, have laid him low!
Before his eyes the sexton's spade appears,
And muffled bells disorganize his ears:
Already is his mean existence fled,
Sense, wit, and reason--all proclaim him dead:
In his own lines he tolled his funeral bell,
And when he could not sing--he stunk--farewell!