Sibylline Leaves (Coleridge)/To a Young Man of Fortune
ADDRESSED
TO A YOUNG MAN OF FORTUNE
Who abandon'd 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 eye 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 life's common-weal
A prey to Tyrants, Murderers of Mankind.