With added years if Life bring nothing new,
But like a Sieve let ev'ry bleffing thro',
Some joy ftill loft, as each vain year runs o'er,
And all we gain, fome fad Reflection more;
Is that a Birth-day? 'tis alas! too clear,
"Tis but the Funeral of the former year.

Let Joy or Eafe, let Affluence or Content,
And the gay Confcience of a life well spent,
Calm ev'ry thought, infpirit ev'ry grace,
Glow in thy heart, and smile upon thy face.
Let day improve on day, and year on year,
Without a Pain, a Trouble, or a Fear;
Till Death unfelt that tender frame destroy,
In fome foft dream, or Extafy of joy,

Peaceful fleep out the Sabbath of the Tomb,
And wake to Raptures in a Life to come.

VARIATIONS.

VER. 15. Originally thus in the MS.

And oh fince Death must that fair frame destroy,
Dye, by fome fudden Extasy of Joy;

In fome foft dream may thy mild foul remove,

And be thy latest gasp a Sigh of Love,

5

10

15

20

To Mr. THOMAS SOUTHERN,

R

On his Birth-day, 1742.

ESIGN'D to live, prepar'd to die,
With not one fin, but poetry,

This day Tom's fair account has run
(Without a blot) to eighty one.
Kind Boyle, before his poet, lays
A table, with a cloth of bays;
And Ireland, mother of fweet fingers,
Prefents her harp ftill to his fingers.
The feaft, his tow'ring genius marks
In yonder wild goofe and the larks!
The mushrooms fhew his wit was fudden !
And for his judgment, lo a pudden !
Roast beef, tho' old, proclaims him ftout,
And grace, altho' a bard, devout.

May Toм, whom heav'n fent down to raise

The price of prologues and of plays,

VER. 5. A table] He was invited to dine on his birth-day with this Nobleman, who had prepared for him the entertainment of which the bill of fare is here fet down.

VER. 8. Prefents ber barp] The harp is generally wove on the Irish Linen; fuch as Table-cloths, etc.

VER. 16. The price of prologues and of plays,] This alludes to a story Mr. Southern told of Dryden, about the fame time,

Be ev'ry birth-day more a winner,
Digeft his thirty-thoufandth dinner;
Walk to his grave without reproach,
And fcorn a rafcal and a coach.

20

to Mr. P. and Mr. W. When Southern firft wrote for the stage, Dryden was fo famous for his Prologues that the players would act nothing without that decoration. His usual price till then had been four guineas: But when Southern came to him for the Prologue he had bespoke, Dryden told him he must have fix guineas for it; "which (faid he) young man, " is out of no disrespect to you; but the players have had "my goods too cheap."---We now look upon these Prologues with the fame admiration that the Virtuofi do on the Apothecaries pots painted by Raphael.

ORSET, the Grace of Courts, the Mufes
Pride,

DORS

Patron of Arts, and judge of Nature, dy'd.
The fcourge of Pride, tho' fan&tified or great,
Of Fops in Learning, and of Knaves in State:

Epitaphs.] Thefe little compofitions far exceed any thing we have of the fame kind from other hands; yet, if we except the Epitaph on the young Duke of Buckingham, and perhaps one or two more, they are not of equal force with the rest of our Author's writings. The nature of the Compofition itself is delicate; and generally it was a task imposed on him; tho' he rarely complied with requests of this nature, as we may fee by the small number of thefe poems, but where the fubject was worthy of his pen.

Yet foft his Nature, tho' fevere his Lay,

His Anger moral, and his Wisdom gay.
Bleft Sat'rift! who touch'd the Mean so true,
As fhow'd, Vice had his hate and pity too.
Bleft Courtier! who could King and Country please,
Yet facred keep his Friendships, and his Ease.
Bleft Peer! his great Forefathers ev'ry grace
Reflecting, and reflected in his Race;

Where other BUCKHURSTS, other DORSETS fhine,
And Patriots still, or Poets, deck the Line.

For random praise the Work would neʼer be done s
Each Mother afks it for her booby Son:
Each Widow afks it for the beft of Men;

For bim fhe weeps, for him she weds again.

Yet when these elegiac movements came freely from the heart, he mourns in fuch strains as fhew he was equally a mafter of this kind of Compofition with every other he undertook, as the following lines in the Epiftle to Jervas may witness; which would have made the finest Epitaph in the world:

Call round her Tomb each object of defire,

Each purer frame inform'd with purer fire:
Bid her be all that chears or foftens life,
The tender fifter, daughter, friend, and wife :
Bid her be all that makes mankind adore;
Then view this marble, and be vain no more.