Classic Poem

Ah! would that poets all could write
In ink as clear as Dobson's was:
Master of airy fancy, light
As morning cobwebs on the grass.

Tenderest trifler! how he caught
(So charmingly, so many times)
The swift, reluctant birds of thought
In the bright cages of his rhymes.

And Time, that jingles in his purse
Mixed coinages, both new and old,
Makes change with bronze or silver verse
But spends not his, a coin of gold!