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Title: The Play!
Author: John Castillo [
More Titles by Castillo]
On being solicited to attend a Theatre, by two young women, who
urged their entreaties by the argument, “There is no harm in
attending the Play!”
Ye daughters of Albion’s flourishing isle,
Come listen awhile to my lay;
Defending your morals, you say with a smile,
“There’s no harm in attending the Play!”
Ye Theatre gallants, and deep witted men,
Whose counsels so many obey,
Come lend a poor ignorant rustic a pen,
And he’ll help you to plead for the Play!
If you are not immortal, but end when you die,
As some have the courage to say,
Why need you look out for a mansion on high,
You’ve nothing to fear from the Play!
If you are immortal, yet free from the fall,
And never have wander’d astray;
If you have no sin to repent of at all,
You’ve nothing to fear from the Play!
If Christ in His word, has left no command,
For people to watch and to pray,
If an house cannot fall that is built on the sand,
There’s no harm in attending the Play!
Not calling in question your baptismal vow,
If life’s like a long summer’s day,
And you have not to reap such fruit as ye sow,
There’s no harm in attending the Play!
If the Christian’s creed from the truth be reverse,
And the fair crown of life can decay;
If the Bible be false, and Religion a farce,
There’s no harm in attending the Play!
Should a visit from Death come and put you in mind
Of your frail habitation of clay,
You may try to obstruct the unwelcome design,
With the transient delights of the Play!
If a faithful reproof you should happen to meet,
You can soon turn your faces away,
And pass by the blind and the lame in the street,
And carry your cash to the Play!
But if Parsons themselves so often attend,
Then surely their followers may;
And no wonder that they so well can defend,
The moral effects of the Play.
If Wesley and Whitfield have pleaded in vain,
And led their disciples astray;
Let Simpson and Hervey in silence remain,
You’ve nothing to fear from the Play.
If you of your time have to give no account,
At the last, the great Judgment day,
The troubles of life you may quickly surmount,
By clapping them off at the Play.
If safe ’midst seduction and ruin you roam,
You may laugh at the stoppers away,
Who sit pining and pulling long faces at home,
And are missing the joys of the Play.
Should the roof be crush’d in, and you kill’d we’ll suppose,
Why some angel would bear you away,
To some distant region of milder repose,
Where your spirit might dream of the Play.
Having no tribulation, no robe wash’d in blood,
Nor tears that need wiping away,
You might sing in those realms to the praise of your god,
How oft you had been at the Play.
[The end]
John Castillo's poem: Play!
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