Ode on the Pleasure of Being Out of Debt
Horace, Ode XXII. Book I. Imitated — Integer Vitæ Scelerisque Purus, &c.
I.
The man who not a farthing owes,
Looks down with scornful eye on those
Who rise by fraud and cunning;
Though in the Pig-market he stand,
With aspect grave and clear-starched band,
He fears no tradesman’s dunning.
II.
He passes by each shop in town,
Nor hides his face beneath his gown,
No dread his heart invading;
He quaffs the nectar of the Tuns,
Or on a spur-gall’d hackney runs
To London masquerading.
III.
What joy attends a new-paid debt!
Our Manciple10 I lately met,
Of visage wise and prudent;
I on the nail my battels paid,
The master turn’d away dismay’d,
Hear this each Oxford student!
IV.
With justice and with truth to trace
The grisly features of his face,
Exceeds all man’s recounting;
Suffice, he look’d as grim and sour
As any lion in the Tower,
Or half starved cat-a-mountain.
V.
A phiz so grim you scarce can meet,
In Bedlam, Newgate, or the Fleet,
Dry nurse of faces horrid!
Not Buckhorse fierce, with many a bruise,
Displays such complicated hues
On his undaunted forehead.
VI.
Place me on Scotland’s bleakest hill,
Provided I can pay my bill,
Stay ev’ry thought of sorrow;
There falling sleet, or frost, or rain,
Attack a soul resolved, in vain—
It may be fair to-morrow.
VII.
To Haddington then let me stray,
And take Joe Pullen’s tree away,
I’ll ne’er complain of Phœbus;
But while he scorches up the grass,
I’ll fill a bumper to my lass,
And toast her in a rebus.
Notes
10 Churton says, in his Lives of the Founders of Brazenose College, Oxford, that “Manciples, the purveyors general of Colleges and Halls, were formerly men of so much consequence, that, to check their ambition, it was ordered by an express statute, that no Manciple should be Principal of a Hall.”