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Ben Jonson - Ode upon the Censure of his New Inn
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Come, leave the loathed stage,
      And the more loathsome age;
    Where pride and impudence, in faction knit,
       Usurp the chair of wit!
    Indicting and arraigning every day
       Something they call a play.
      Let their fastidious, vain
      Commission of the brain
    Run on and rage, sweat, censure, and condemn;
   They were not made for thee, less thou for them.

      Say that thou pour`st them wheat,
     And they will acorns eat;
   `Twere simple fury still thyself to waste
      On such as have no taste!
   To offer them a surfeit of pure bread
      Whose appetites are dead!
     No, give them grains their fill,
     Husks, draff to drink and swill:
   If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine,
   Envy them not, their palate`s with the swine.

      No doubt some mouldy tale,
     Like Pericles, and stale
   As the shrieve`s crusts, and nasty as his fish—
      Scraps out of every dish
   Thrown forth, and rak`d into the common tub,
      May keep up the Play-club:
     There, sweepings do as well
     As the best-order`d meal;
   For who the relish of these guests will fit,
   Needs set them but the alms-basket of wit.

      And much good do`t you then:
     Brave plush-and-velvet-men
   Can feed on orts; and, safe in your stage-clothes,
      Dare quit, upon your oaths,
   The stagers, and the stage-wrights too (your peers)
      Of larding your large ears
     With their foul comic socks,
     Wrought upon twenty blocks;
   Which if they are torn, and turn`d, and patch`d enough,
   The gamesters share your gilt, and you their stuff.

      Leave things so prostitute,
     And take the Alcaic lute;
   Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon`s lyre;
      Warm thee by Pindar`s fire:
   And though thy nerves be shrunk, and blood be cold,
      Ere years have made thee old,
     Strike that disdainful heat
     Throughout, to their defeat,
   As curious fools, and envious of thy strain,
   May blushing swear, no palsy`s in thy brain.

      But when they hear thee sing
     The glories of thy king,
   His zeal to God, and his just awe o`er men:
      They may, blood-shaken then,
   Feel such a flesh-quake to possess their powers,
      As they shall cry: "Like ours
     In sound of peace or wars,
     No harp e`er hit the stars,
   In tuning forth the acts of his sweet reign,
   And raising Charles his chariot `bove his Wain."
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