Classic Poem

Sitting one day beside the banks of Mole,
Whose sleepy stream by passages unknown
Conveys the fry of all her finny shoal,
As of the fisher she were fearful grown;
I thought upon the various turns of time,
And sudden changes of all human state;
The fear-mix'd pleasures of all such as climb
To fortunes merely by the hand of fate,
Without desert. Then weighing inly deep
The griefs of one whose nearness makes him mine,
Wearied with thoughts, the leaden god of sleep
With silken arms of rest did me entwine:
While such strange apparitions girt me round,
As need another Joseph to expound.