Pale Avarice and lurking Fraud,
Stand in your sacred presence aw'd;
Your hand alone from gold abstains,
Which drags the slavish world in chains.
Him for a happy man I own,
Whose fortune is not overgrown;
And happy he, who wisely knows
To use the gifts that Heaven bestows;
Or, if it please the Powers Divine,
Can suffer want, and not repine.
The man, who infamy to shun
Into the arms of death would run;
That man is ready to defend,
With life, his country or his friend.
TO you, whose virtues, I must own
With shame, I have too lately known;
To you, by art and nature taught
To be the man I long have sought,
Had not ill Fate, perverse and blind,
Plac'd you in life too far behind:
Or, what I should repine at more,
Plac'd me in life too far before:
To you the Muse this verse bestows,
Which might as well have been in prose;
No thought, no fancy, no sublime,
But simple topicks told in rhyme.
Talents for conversation fit
Are humour, breeding, sense, and wit:
