Sepulchral Lies, our holy walls to grace,

And New-year Odes, and all the Grub-street race.
In clouded Majesty here Dulness shone;
Four guardian Virtues, round, support her throne:
Fierce champion Fortitude, that knows no fears
Of hisses, blows, or want, or loss of ears:
Calm Temperance, whose blessings those partake
Who hunger, and who thirst for scribbling sake:
Prudence, whose glass presents th' approaching jail:
Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale,

Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,
And solid pudding against empty praise.

Here she beholds the Chaos dark and deep,
Where nameless Somethings in their causes sleep,
'Till genial Jacob, or a warm Third day,
Call forth each mass, a Poem, or a Play:

How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie,
How new-born nonsense first is taught to cry,
Maggots half-form'd in rhyme exactly meet,
And learn to crawl upon poetic feet.

Here one poor word an hundred clenches makes,
And ductile Dulness new meanders takes;
There motley images her fancy strike,

Figures ill pair'd, and Similes unlike.

She sees a Mob of Metaphors advance,
Pleas'd with the madness of the mazy dance;
How Tragedy and Comedy embrace:
How Farce and Epic get a jumbled race;
How Time himself stands still at her command,
Realms shift their place, and Ocean turns to land.
Here gay Description Egypt glads with show'rs,
Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flow'rs,
Glitt❜ring with ice here hoary hills are seen,
There painted valleys of eternal green;
In cold December fragrant chaplets blow,

And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow.

All these and more the cloud-compelling Queen
Beholds thro' fogs, that magnify the scene.
She, tinsell❜d o'er in robes of varying hues,
With self-applause her wild creation views;
Sees momentary monsters rise and fall,
And with her own fools-colours gilds them all.

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A Mud-diving Contest (Book II)

This labour past, by Bridewell all descend,
(As morning pray'r and flagellation end)
To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams
Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames,
The king of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud
With deeper sable blots the silver flood.
'Here strip, my children! here at once leap in,
Here prove who best can dash thro' thick and thin,
And who the most in love of dirt excel,

Or dark dexterity of groping well.

Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around
The stream, be his the Weekly Journals bound;
A pig of lead to him who dives the best;
A peck of coals a-piece shall glad the rest.'
In naked majesty Oldmixon stands,

And Milo-like surveys his arms and hands;

Then, sighing, thus, ‘And am I now three-score?
Ah why, ye Gods, should two and two make four?'
He said, and climb'd a stranded lighter's height,
Shot to the black abyss, and plung'd downright.
The Senior's judgment all the crowd admire,
Who but to sink the deeper, rose the higher.
Next Smedley div'd; slow circles dimpled o'er

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The quaking mud, that clos'd, and op'd no more,
All look all sigh, and call on Smedley lost;
'Smedley' in vain resounds thro' all the coast.
Then essay'd; scarce vanish'd out of sight,
He buoys up instant, and returns to light:
He bears no token of the sabler streams,
And mounts far off among the Swans of Thames.
True to the bottom see Concanen creep,
A cold, long-winded native of the deep;
If perseverance gain the Diver's prize,
Not everlasting Blackmore this denies;

No noise, no stir, no motion canst thou make,
Th' unconscious stream sleeps o'er thee like a lake.
Next plung'd a feeble, but a desp'rate pack,
With each a sickly brother at his back:
Sons of a Day! just buoyant on the flood,
Then number'd with the puppies in the mud.
Ask ye their names? I could as soon disclose
The names of these blind puppies as of those.
Fast by, like Niobe (her children gone)
Sits Mother Osborne, stupefy'd to stone!
And Monumental brass this record bears,
"These are, ah no! these were, the Gazetteers!'
Not so bold Arnall; with a weight of skull,
Furious he dives, precipitately dull.
Whirlpools and storms his circling arm invest,
With all the might of gravitation blest.
No crab more active in the dirty dance,
Downward to climb, and backward to advance.
He brings up half the bottom on his head,

And loudly claims the Journals and the Lead.

The plunging Prelate, and his pond'rous Grace,
With holy envy gave one Layman place.
When lo! a burst of thunder shook the flood;
Slow rose a form, in majesty of Mud;

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Shaking the horrors of his sable brows,
And each ferocious feature grim with ooze.
Greater he looks, and more than mortal stares;
Then thus the wonders of the deep declares.
First he relates, how sinking to the chin,

Smit with his mien the Mud-nymphs suck'd him in:
How young Lutetia, softer than the down,
Nigrina black, and Merdamante brown,
Vied for his love in jetty bow'rs below,
As Hylas fair was ravished long ago.

Then sung, how shown him by the Nut-brown maids
A branch of Styx here rises from the Shades,
That tinctur'd as it runs with Lethe's streams,
And wafting Vapours from the Land of dreams,
(As under seas Alpheus' secret sluice
Bears Pisa's off'rings to his Arethuse)

Pours into Thames: and hence the mingled wave
Intoxicates the pert, and lulls the grave:
Here brisker vapours o'er the TEMPLE creep,
There, all from Paul's to Aldgate drink and sleep.

Thence to the banks where rev'rend Bards
They led him soft; each rev'rend Bard arose;
And Milbourn chief, deputed by the rest,
Gave him the cassock, surcingle, and vest.

repose,

'Receive' (he said) 'these robes which once were mine,
Dulness is sacred in a sound divine.'

He ceas'd, and spread the robe; the crowd confess
The rev'rend Flamen in his lengthen'd dress.
Around him wide a sable Army stand,

A low-born, cell-bred, selfish, servile band,
Prompt or to guard or stab, to saint or damn,
Heav'n's Swiss, who fight for any God or Man.
Thro' Lud's fam'd gates, along the well-known Fleet,
Rolls the black troop, and overshades the street;
'Till show'rs of Sermons, Characters, Essays,

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In circling fleeces whiten all the ways:

So clouds, replenish'd from some bog below,
Mount in dark volumes, and descend in snow.

The Dunciad

Book IV

YET, yet a moment, one dim Ray of Light
Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!
Of darkness visible so much be lent,
As half to shew, half veil, the deep Intent.
Ye Pow'rs! whose Mysteries restor❜d I sing,
To whom Time bears me on his rapid wing,
Suspend awhile your Force inertly strong,
Then take at once the Poet and the Song.

Now flam'd the Dog-star's unpropitious ray,
Smote ev'ry Brain, and wither'd ev'ry Bay;
Sick was the Sun, the Owl forsook his bow'r,
The moon-struck Prophet felt the madding hour:
Then rose the Seed of Chaos, and of Night,
To blot out Order, and extinguish Light,
Of dull and venal a new World to mould,
And bring Saturnian days of Lead and Gold.

She mounts the Throne: her head a Cloud conceal'd
In broad Effulgence all below reveal'd;
('T is thus aspiring Dulness ever shines)
Soft on her lap her Laureate son reclines.

Beneath her footstool, Science groans in Chains,
And Git dreads Exile, Penalties, and Pains.
There foam'd rebellious Logic, gagg'd and bound,
There, stript, fair Rhet'ric languish'd on the ground;