Classic Poem

To meet affliction, with a scorn divine,
Befits, oh! D — , a soul like thine;
Calmnly encounter calumny and pain,
While fix'd in conscious virtue you remain;
So much your sentiment the world transcends,
That few have sentiments to be your friends.
Amidst that few, oh! let the Muse be plac'd,
In fortune humble, but refin'd in taste:
I see your worth, your merit I adore,
And court your smile, when fortune smiles no more.
Can there be anguish where such sweetness dwells,
Where Phaebus visits our sequester'd cells;
Where sense, and worth, and elegance, can chuse
To kill one moment wih the suff'ring Muse?
Let this to reptiles be the scourge of vice;
While you enrich it, 'tis a Paradise.
Permit this spirit when the hand of fate
Shall waft my spirit to its wish'd-for state;
When persecution, with an iron rod,
Frees me from man, and gives me to my God,
Let this convince the abject, human race,
I honour dignity, and scorn the base —
Not all the glitt'ring Mammon of Peru
Could force these strains that Nature gives to you;
And when your bard, unbidden, I commence,
I raise one monument to prove my sense.