TO AN AGED POET.
Why, O true poet of the country! why
With goat-skin glove an ancient friend defy?
Think timely (for our coming years are few)
Their worst diseases mortals may subdue;
Which, if they grow around the loftier mind,
Death, when ourselves are smitten, leaves behind.
Our frowardness, our malice, our distrust,
Cling to our name and sink not with our dust.
Like peer’s and pauper’s are our flesh and blood,
Perish like them we can not, if we would.
Is not our sofa softer when one end
Sinks to the welcome pressure of a friend?
If he hath rais’d us from our low estate,
Are we not happier when they call him great?
Some who sat round us while the grass was green
Fear the chill air and quit the duller scene;
Some, unreturning, through our doors have past,
And haply we may live to see the last.