Ode on the Departing Year - Coleridge (1796)/Lines addressed to a young man of Fortune
LINES
Addressed to a young man of Fortune who abandoned himself to
an indolent and causeless Melancholy.
HENCE, that fantastic Wantonness of Woe
O Youth to partial Fortune vainly dear!
To plunder'd Want's half-shelter'd Hovel go,
Go, and some hunger-bitten Infant hear
Moan haply in a dying Mother's Ear;
Or when the cold and dismal fog-damps brood
O'er the rank church-yard with sear elm-leaves strew'd,
Pace round some Widow's grave, whose dearer Part
Was slaughter'd, where o'er his uncoffin'd limbs
The flocking Flesh-birds scream'd! Then, while thy Heart
Groans, and thine eyes a fiercer Sorrow dims,
Know (and the Truth shall kindle, thy young mind)
What Nature makes thee mourn, she bids thee heal!
O abject! if to sickly Dreams resign'd
All effortless thou leave Earth's common-weal
A prey, to the thron'd Murderers of Mankind!
S. T. Coleridge.