Classic Poem

But you can Life upon the Poor bestow,
Without return like Life's First Giver too;
Nay, like the Great Physician of the Soul,
Do good against our Wills, our Fates control;
In your self you, what is most hard to do,
By those, whom of your Faculty, we know,
All evils cure of your Profession too;
Pride's Tympany, Hydropic Avarice
Against which, few can give themselves Advice;
Unlike them, you make Patients ne'er endure,
Less Danger, Pain, from their Disease than Cure;
We both serve the same Saving Deity,
The God of Physic and of Poetry,
By which men think to live immortally;
Could I prevent your death, as mine you do,
You then should live by me, as I by you;
Which, if by any's Art, it could be done,
Could be, by none sure, so sure as your own;
You make Fate on you not on it wait,
Thus overpowering it, you grow Fate's Fate;
Not, like your Brethren, its Minister,
Fate's King and not its Executioner.