Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

The Poet's Cottage to Dr. Mavor, Who Zealously Enforced the Expediency of Raising a Fund, to Secure the Comforts of the Author for the Decline of Life [from Harvest-Home: Consisting of Supplementary Gleanings, Original Dramas and Poems, Contributions of Literary Friends, and Select Re-publications, Including Sympathy, a Poem, Revised, Corrected, and Enlarged. From the Eighth edition]

London

Printed for Richard Phillips

1805

"Or, when deserted by the Nine, / Forc'd to elaborate the line, / To labour more, yet less to please, / In the Mind's anguish or disease."

And ah! a Lot more dire behind
Awaits debility of Mind.
Alas! when ev'ry Muse is fled,
How wretched He who writes for bread!
Who, when the joyous years are flown,
And Reason totters on her throne,
And Fancy fails, and Nature tires,
And Fame herself no more inspires,
And ev'n the sweet return of Spring
No more can make the Poet sing,
Tho' each Musician of the Fields,
Soft to the tuneful Season yields
The glossy plume, the warbling throat,
To Passion's and to Rapture's note,
And ev'ry shrub and ev'ry tree
Resounds with Nature's minstrelsy!
How wretched He who strives to shun
The clamour of the frowning Dun,
Or to keep Famine from the door--
That fiercest Wolf that haunts the poor!
How dire, that He, who many a year
Had rais'd the smile or caus'd the tear
Of wholesome Mirth and tender Grief,
Should want himself the Poor's relief!--
Condemn'd to eat the beggar's meal
In pangs that beggars ne'er can feel;
Or, when deserted by the Nine,
Forc'd to elaborate the line,
To labour more, yet less to please,
In the Mind's anguish or disease--
Of these the Warning Voice I hear,
And know it comes from lips sincere.

Body::Disease Body::Pain

HDIS (Poetry)

07/27/2004