Ode to Himself | The Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson

The just indignation the author took at the vulgar censure
of his play by some malicious spectators begat this following
Ode to Himself.

Come, leave the loathèd stage,

And the more loathsome age,

Where pride and impudence, in faction knit,

Usurp the chair of wit,

Indicting and arraigning every day 5

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. 10

Say that thou pour’st 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 15

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. 20

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, 25

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. 30

And much good do’t 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) 35

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 guilt, and you their stuff. 40

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 45

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. 50

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 55

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.’ 60

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

Ode to Himself (‘Come, leave the loathed stage’) (1629)