Advice To The Grub Street Verse-writers

Jonathan Swift

  Ye poets ragged and forlorn,
    Down from your garrets haste;
Ye rhymers, dead as soon as born,
    Not yet consign’d to paste;

  I know a trick to make you thrive;
    O, ’tis a quaint device:
Your still-born poems shall revive,
    And scorn to wrap up spice.

  Get all your verses printed fair,
    Then let them well be dried;
And Curll must have a special care
    To leave the margin wide.

  Lend these to paper-sparing Pope;
    And when he sets to write,
No letter with an envelope
    Could give him more delight.

  When Pope has fill’d the margins round,
    Why then recall your loan;
Sell them to Curll for fifty pound,
    And swear they are your own.

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