Poetical Works - 1807 Author:Samuel Butler Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SATIRE ON OUIl RIDICULOUS IMITATION OP THE TBENCII. W Ho would not rather get him gone Beyond th" intolerable? zone, Or steer his passage thro' those... more » seas That burn in flames, or those that freeze, Than see one nation go to school, And learn of another, like a fool ? To study all iis tricks and fashions With epidemic affectations, And dare to wear no mode or dress, But what they in their wisdom please ; As monkies are, by being taught To put on gloves and stockings, caught; Submit to all that they devise, As if it wore their liveries; Make ready and dress th'imagination, Not with the clothes, but with the fashion; And change it, to fulfil the curse Of Adam's fall, for new, tho' worse ; ' To make their breeches fall nnd rise From middle legs to middle thighs, The tropics between which the hose Move always as the fashion goes: Sometimes wear hats like pyramids, And sometimes flat, like pipkins' lids; With broad brims, sometimes, like umbrellas, And sometimes narrow as Punchinello's: Id coldest weather go unbrac'd, And close in hot, as if th' were lac'd ; Sometimes with sleeves and bodies wide, And sometimes straiter than a hide : Wear perukes, and with false grey hairs Disguise the true ones, and their years; TIt.it, when they're modish, with the young The old may seem so in the throng; And as some pupils have been known, In time to put their tutors down, So ours are often found to'ave got, More tricks than ever they were taught: With sly intrigues and artifices Usurp their poxes and their vices: With garnitures upon their shoes, Made good their claim to gouty toes; By sadden starts, and shrugs, and groans, Pretend to aches in their bones, To scab...« less