year's and next year's rent
The sons of rapine can content.
_50
Look round. The wrecks of play behold,
Estates dismembered, mortgaged, sold!
Their owners, not to jails confined,
Show equal poverty of mind.
Some, who the spoil of knaves were made,
Too late attempt to learn their trade.
Some, for the folly of one hour,
Become the dirty tools of power,
And, with the mercenary list,
Upon court-charity subsist.
_60
You'll find at last this maxim true,
Fools are the game which knaves pursue.
The forest (a whole century's shade)
Must be one wasteful ruin made.
No mercy's shewn to age or kind;
The general massacre is signed.
The park too shares the dreadful fate,
For duns grow louder at the gate,
Stern clowns, obedient to the squire,
(What will not barbarous hands for hire?)
_70
With brawny arms repeat the stroke.
Fallen are the elm and reverend oak.
Through the long wood loud axes sound,
And echo groans with every wound.
To see the desolation spread,
Pan drops a tear, and hangs his head:
His bosom now with fury burns:
Beneath his hoof the dice he spurns.
Cards, too, in peevish passion torn,
The sport of whirling winds are borne.
_80
'To snails inveterate hate I bear,
Who spoil the verdure of the year;
The caterpillar I detest,
The blooming spring's voracious pest;
The locust too, whose ravenous band
Spreads sudden famine o'er the land.
But what are these? The dice's throw
At once hath laid a forest low.
The cards are dealt, the bet is made,
And the wide park hath lost its shade.
_90
Thus is my kingdom's pride defaced,
And all its ancient glories waste.
All this,' he cries, 'is Fortune's doing:
'Tis thus she meditates my ruin.
By Fortune, that false, fickle jade,
More havoc in one hour is made,
Than all the hungry insect race,
Combined, can in an age deface.'
Fortune, by chance, who near him pass'd,
O'erheard the vile aspersion cast.
_100
'Why, Pan,' says she, 'what's all this rant?
'Tis every country-bubble's cant;
Am I the patroness of vice?
Is't I who cog or palm the dice?
Did I the shuffling art reveal, 105
To mark the cards, or range the deal?
In all the employments men pursue,
I mind the least what gamesters do.
There may (if computation's just)
One now and then my conduct trust:
_110
I blame the fool, for what can I,
When ninety-nine my pow