To live in fear, suspicion, variance,
With thieves, fanatics, and barbarians? 
  But here my lady will object;
Your deanship ought to recollect,
That, near the knight of Gosford[1] placed,
Whom you allow a man of taste,
Your intervals of time to spend
With so conversable a friend,
It would not signify a pin
Whatever climate you were in. 
  ’Tis true, but what advantage comes
To me from all a usurer’s plums;
Though I should see him twice a-day,
And am his neighbour ’cross the way: 
If all my rhetoric must fail
To strike him for a pot of ale? 
  Thus, when the learned and the wise
Conceal their talents from our eyes,
And from deserving friends withhold
Their gifts, as misers do their gold;
Their knowledge to themselves confined
Is the same avarice of mind;
Nor makes their conversation better,
Than if they never knew a letter. 
Such is the fate of Gosford’s knight,
Who keeps his wisdom out of sight;
Whose uncommunicative heart
Will scarce one precious word impart: 
Still rapt in speculations deep,
His outward senses fast asleep;
Who, while I talk, a song will hum,
Or with his fingers beat the drum;
Beyond the skies transports his mind,
And leaves a lifeless corpse behind. 
  But, as for me, who ne’er could clamber high,
To understand Malebranche or Cambray;
Who send my mind (as I believe) less
Than others do, on errands sleeveless;
Can listen to a tale humdrum,
And with attention read Tom Thumb;
My spirits with my body progging,
Both hand in hand together jogging;
Sunk over head and ears in matter. 
Nor can of metaphysics smatter;
Am more diverted with a quibble
Than dream of words intelligible;
And think all notions too abstracted
Are like the ravings of a crackt head;
What intercourse of minds can be
Betwixt the knight sublime and me,
If when I talk, as talk I must,
It is but prating to a bust? 
  Where friendship is by Fate design’d,
It forms a union in the mind: 
But here I differ from the knight
In every point, like black and white: 
For none can say that ever yet
We both in one opinion met: 
Not in philosophy, or ale;
In state affairs, or planting kale;
In rhetoric, or picking straws;
In roasting larks, or making laws;
In public schemes, or catching flies;
In parliaments, or pudding pies. 
  The neighbours wonder why the knight
Should in a country life delight,
Who not one pleasure entertains
To cheer the solitary scenes: 
His guests are few, his visits rare;
Nor uses time, nor time will spare;
Nor rides, nor walks, nor hunts, nor fowls,
Nor plays at cards, or dice, or bowls;
But seated in an easy-chair,
Despises exercise and air. 
His rural walks he ne’er adorns;
Here poor Pomona sits on thorns: 
And there neglected Flora settles
Her bum upon a bed of nettles.