A Poet’s Epitaph
A POET’s EPITAPH.
Art thou a Statesman, in the van
Of public business train’d and bred,
—First learn to love one living man;
Then may’st thou think upon the dead.
A Lawyer art thou ?—draw not nigh;5
Go, carry to some other place
The hardness of thy coward eye,
The falshood of thy sallow face.
Art thou a man of purple cheer ?
A rosy man, right plump to see ?10
Approach; yet Doctor, not too near:
This grave no cushion is for thee.
Art thou a man of gallant pride,
A Soldier, and no man of chaff ?
Welcome !—but lay thy sword aside,15
And lean upon a Peasant’s staff.
Physician art thou ? One, all eyes,
Philosopher ! a fingering slave,
One that would peep and botanize
Upon his mother’s grave ?20
Wrapp’d closely in thy sensual fleece
O turn aside, and take, I pray,
That he below may rest in peace,
Thy pin-point of a soul away !
—A Moralist perchance appears;25
Led, Heaven knows how ! to this poor sod:
And He has neither eyes nor ears;
Himself his world, and his own God;
One to whose smooth-rubb’d soul can cling
Nor form nor feeling great nor small,30
A reasoning, self-sufficing thing,
An intellectual All in All !
Shut close the door ! press down the latch:
Sleep in thy intellectual crust,
Nor lose ten tickings of thy watch,35
Near this unprofitable dust.
But who is He with modest looks,
And clad in homely russet brown ?
He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own.40
He is retired as noontide dew,
Or fountain in a noonday grove;
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.
The outward shews of sky and earth,45
Of hill and valley he has view’d;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.
In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart50
The harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.
But he is weak, both man and boy,
Hath been an idler in the land;
Contented if he might enjoy55
The things which others understand.
—Come hither in thy hour of strength,
Come, weak as is a breaking wave !
Here stretch thy body at full length;
Or build thy house upon this grave.—60
