Classic Poem

HORACE B. 2. O. 14. IMITATED

With how impetuous a career
Runs out of sight the rapid year!

Believe me, Langhorne, though we pray,
Like my good grandame, thrice a day,
Old age and coughs, and aches and agues,
In spite of piety will plague us.
Time out of mem'ry has been mad,
And gallops over good and bad.
Tityus and Geryon triple-fold,
The Broughton and the Slack of old,
Felt both alack! a fatal day; —
And are we half as hard as they?
Assiduous Charon, quick as thought,
With ling'ring culls will cram the boat,
Nor will he bend or bate the least
To Dick the squire, or thee the priest.
What though you scape the wind and rain,
Nor teaze for gold the fretful main,
Ne'er be by grace or sense forsook,
To cut a purse, or make a book,
You soon must quit your cure, to be
With Sisyphus and company.

Ah! then at last the love-struck swain
Shall cease of Sylvia to complain!
You'll — won't you, think on many a day
That you and I have laugh'd away,
Of many a smiling social scene,
Of many a gambol on the green;
And look confoundedly askew
On sooty cypress and dull yew?

Indeed if grapes or barley grow,
Or snipe or woodcock fly below,
The sight some small relief may be;
But not a single trout you'll see.
" To fish (you'll cry) in such a flood!
O cursed Coccytaean mud!
Was it for this I wore my eyes
In forming artificial flies?
Was it for this, that better far
I threw my line than J — y C — r?"

When you are dead, and fair and clear
Our common sheets of song appear,
Your son will think they serve to show
Your brains and mine were but so — so.
He'll see how you have slily stole
From Seed and South your sermons whole
He'll wonder how you could for shame,
Then shake his head, and do the same.