Then at our leisure we'll be witty,
And in the streets divert the city;
The ladies from the windows gaping,
The children all our motions aping.
Your conversation to refine,
I'll take you to some friends of mine,
Choice spirits, who employ their parts
To mend the world by useful arts;
Some cleansing hollow tubes, to spy
Direct the zenith of the sky;
Some have the city in their care,
From noxious steams to purge the air;
Some teach us in these dangerous days
How to walk upright in our ways;
Some whose reforming hands engage
To lash the lewdness of the age;
Some for the public service go
Perpetual envoys to and fro:
Whose able heads support the weight
Of twenty ministers of state.
We scorn, for want of talk, to jabber
Of parties o'er our bonnyclabber;
Nor are we studious to inquire,
Who votes for manors, who for hire:
Our care is, to improve the mind
With what concerns all human kind;
The various scenes of mortal life;
Who beats her husband, who his wife;
Or how the bully at a stroke
Knock'd down the boy, the lantern broke.
One tells the rise of cheese and oatmeal;
Another when he got a hot-meal;
One gives advice in proverbs old,
Instructs us how to tame a scold;
One shows how bravely Audouin died,
And at the gallows all denied;
How by the almanack 'tis clear,
That herrings will be cheap this year.
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