Classic Poem

" MY spirits are infected, and my tomb
Yawns to devour me; my last days are come.
Yet you with bitter scorn my pangs increase,
Nor, ah! will suffer me to die in peace.
What advocate will take your cause in hand,
And for you at the high tribunal stand,
Since God your erring souls deprives of sense,
Nor will exalt you in your own defence?
His children shall their days in sorrow end,
Whose tongue with flattery deludes his friend.
I to the vulgar am become a jest,
Esteemed as a minstrel at a feast;
My sleepless eyes their splendour quench in tears;
My tortur'd body to a shadow wears.
This, in the righteous wonder shall excite;
The innocent shall hate the hypocrite.
He in the path prescrib'd shall boldly go,
And his untainted strength shall stronger grow.
Revoke your wand'ring censures, nor despise
The wretched, you who seem, but are not, wise.
My flying hours arrive at their last date,
My thoughts and fortunes buried in my fate.
How soon my shorten'd day is chang'd to night!
Abortive darkness veils my setting light.
Oh! can your counsel his despair defer,
Who now is housed in his sepulchre?
I in the shades of death my bed have made.
" Corruption, thou my father art," I said,
" And thou, O worm, my mother; by thy birth
My sister, born and nourished by earth."
Where now are all my hopes? O never more
Shall they revive, nor death her rapes restore!
But to the grave's infernal prison must
With me descend, and rot in shrouds of dust. "