Our poet, gentlemen, thought to steal away,
Hoping those wretched rhymes, i' th' end o' th' play,
Might serve for epilogue; for truly he
Takes epilogues for arrant bribery.
H' observes your poet in our modern plays,
Humbly showeth, and then as humbly prays;
So that it can't be said, what they have writ
Was without fear, though often without wit.
He trusts (as ye say papists do) to merit;
Leaves you (like quakers) to be mov'd by th' spirit.
But since that epilogues are so much in vogue,
Take this as prologue to the epilogue.

Some, as soon as th' enter, we wish 'em gone,
Taking their visit as a visitation:
Yet when they go, there are certain grimaces
(Which in plain English, is but making faces)
That we, for manners' sake, to all allow.
The poet's parting; don't rise, but smile and bow;
And's back being turn'd, ye may take the liberty
To turn him, and all h' has writ to raillery.
Now, as I shall be sav'd, were I as you,
I'd make no bones on't—why, 'tis but his due.
A fop! in this brave, licentious age,
To bring his musty morals on the stage?
Rhyme us to reason, and our lives redress
In metre, as Druids did the savages?
Affront the freeborn vices of the nation?
And bring dull virtue into reputation?
Virtue! would any man of common sense
Pretend to't? why, virtue now is impudence;
And such another modest play would blast
Our new stage, and put your palates out of taste.
We told him, Sir, 'tis whisper'd in the pit
This may be common sense, but 'tis not wit;
That has a flaming spirit, and stirs the blood
That's bawdry, said he, if rightly understood;
Which our late poets make their chiefest tasks,
As if they writ only to th' vizard-masks.
Nor that poetic rage, which hectors heaven,
Your writer's style, like's temper, 's grown more even;
And he's afraid to shock their tender ears.
Whose God, say they, 's the fiction of their fears;
Your moral's to no purpose. He replied,
Some men talk'd idly just before they died,
And yet we heard them with respect. 'Twas all he said.
Well, we may count him now as good as dead;
And since ghosts have left walking, if you please,
We'll let our virtuous poet rest in peace.