Classic Poem

Reputation, Love, and Death,
(The last all bones, the first all breath,
The midst composed of restless fire)
From each other would retire;
Through the world resolved to stray,
Every one a several way;
Exercising, as they went,
Each such power as Fate had lent;
Which, if it united were,
Wretched mortals could not bear.
But, as parting friends do show
To what place they mean to go,
Correspondence to engage,
Nominate their utmost stage;
Death declare he would be found
Near the fatal trumpet's sound;
Or where pestilences reign,
And quacks the greater plagues maintain;
Shaking still his sandy glass,
And mowing human flesh, like grass.
Love, as next his leave he took,
Cast on both so sweet a look,
As their tempers near disarmed,
One relaxed, and t'other warmed;
Shades for his retreat he chose,
Rural plains and soft repose;
Where no dowry e'er was paid,
Where no jointure e'er was made,
No ill tongue the nymph perplexed,
Where no forms the shepherd vexed;
Where himself should be the care
Of the fond and of the fair:
Where that was, they soon should know.
Au revoir! then turned to go.
Reputation made a pause
Suiting her severer laws;
Second thoughts and third she used,
Weighing consequences mused;
When at length to both she cried:
" You two safely may divide,
To the Antipodes may fall
And reascend the encompassed ball;
Certain still to meet agen
In the breasts of tortured men,
Who, by one too far betrayed,
Call in t'other to their aid:
Whilst I, tender, coy, and nice,
Raised and ruined in a trice
Either fix with those I grace,
Or, abandoning the place,
No return my nature bears,
From green youth, or hoary hairs;
If through guilt, or chance, I sever,
I, once parting, part for ever. "