Classic Poem

“Study the mournful hours away,
Lest in dull sloth thy spirit pine.”
Hard words thou writest: verse is gay,
And asks a lighter heart than mine.

No calms my stormy life beguile,
Than mine can be no sadder chance;
You bid bereaved Priam smile,
And Niobe the childless dance.

In grief or study more my part,
Whose life is doomed to wilds like these,
Though you should make my feeble heart
Strong with the strength of Socrates.

Such ruin would crush wisdom down;
Stronger than man is wrath divine.
That sage whom Phœbus gave the crown
Never could write in grief like mine.

Can I my land and thee forget,
Nor the felt sorrow wound my breast?
Say that I can—but foes beset
This place and rob me of all rest.

Add that my mind hath rusted now
And fallen far from what it was.
The land though rich that lacks the plough
Is barren, save of thorns and grass.

The horse that long hath idle stood,
Is soon o'ertaken in the race;
And, torn from its familiar flood,
The chinky pinnace rots apace.

Nor hope that I, before but mean,
Can to my former self return.
Long sense of ills hath burned my brain;
Half the old fires no longer burn.

Yet oft I take the pen and try,
As now to build the measured rime.
Words come not, or, as meet thine eye,
Words worthy of their place and time.

Last, glory cheers the heart that fails
And love of praise inspires the mind—
I followed once Fame's star, my sails
Filled with a favourable wind.

But now 't is not so well with me,
To care if Fame be lost or won.
Nay, but I would, if that might be,
Live all unknown beneath the sun.