Ben Jonson's Ode To Himself Upon The Censure Of His New Inn

by Ben Jonson

January 1630

Come, leave the loathe'd stage,
And the more loathsome age;
Where pride and inpudence 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 pourst 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 raked into the common tub,
May keep up the Play-club:
There, sweepings do as well
As the best-ordered meal;
For who the relish of these guests will fit,
Needs set them but the alms-basket of wit.

And much good do 't to 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 turned, and patched 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.