Now, to describe the way I think,
I take in hand my pen and ink;
I rub my forehead, scratch my head,
Revolving all the rhymes I read.
Each complimental thought sublime,
Reduced by favourite Pope to rhyme,
And those by you to Oxford writ,
With true simplicity and wit.
Yet after all I cannot find
One panegyric to my mind.
Now I begin to fret and blot,
Something I schemed, but quite forgot;
My fancy turns a thousand ways,
Through all the several forms of praise,
What eulogy may best become
The greatest dean in Christendom.
At last I've hit upon a thought----
Sure this will do---- 'tis good for nought----
This line I peevishly erase,
And choose another in its place;
Again I try, again commence,
But cannot well express the sense;
The line's too short to hold my meaning:
I'm cramp'd, and cannot bring the Dean in.
O for a rhyme to glorious birth!
I've hit upon't----The rhyme is earth----
But how to bring it in, or fit it,
I know not, so I'm forced to quit it.
Again I try--I'll sing the man--
Ay do, says Phoebus, if you can;
I wish with all my heart you would not;
Were Horace now alive he could not:
And will you venture to pursue,
What none alive or dead could do?
Pray see, did ever Pope or Gay
Presume to write on his birth-day;
Though both were fav'rite bards of mine,
The task they wisely both decline.
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