| |
| YES, social friend, I love thee well, | |
| In learned doctors’ spite; | |
| I love thy fragrant, misty spell, | |
| I love thy calm delight. | |
| |
| What though they tell, with phizzes long, | 5 |
| My years are sooner past; | |
| I would reply, with reason strong, | |
| They ’re sweeter while they last. | |
| |
| And oft, mild friend, to me thou art | |
| A monitor, though still; | 10 |
| Thou speak’st a lesson to my heart, | |
| Beyond the preacher’s skill. | |
| |
| Thou ’rt like the man of worth, who gives | |
| To goodness every day, | |
| The odor of whose virtues lives, | 15 |
| When he has pass’d away. | |
| |
| When in the lonely evening hour, | |
| Attended but by thee, | |
| O’er history’s varied page I pore, | |
| Man’s fate in thine I see. | 20 |
| |
| Oft as thy snowy column grows, | |
| Then breaks and falls away, | |
| I trace how mighty realms thus rose, | |
| Thus tumbled to decay. | |
| |
| Awhile like thee earth’s masters burn, | 25 |
| And smoke and fume around, | |
| And then like thee to ashes turn, | |
| And mingle with the ground. | |
| |
| Life ’s but a leaf adroitly roll’d, | |
| And time ’s the wasting breath, | 30 |
| That late or early, we behold, | |
| Gives all to dusty death. | |
| |
| From beggar’s frieze to monarch’s robe, | |
| One common doom is pass’d, | |
| Sweet nature’s works, the swelling globe, | 35 |
| Must all burn out at last. | |
| |
| And what is he who smokes thee now?— | |
| A little moving heap, | |
| That soon like thee to fate must bow, | |
| With thee in dust must sleep. | 40 |
| |
| But though thy ashes downward go, | |
| Thy essence rolls on high; | |
| Thus when my body must lie low, | |
| My soul shall cleave the sky. | |
| |
