To Mr Thomas Southern, on His Birthday, 1742
Resign'd to live, prepared to die,With not one sin, but poetry,This day Tom's fair account has run(Without a blot) to eighty-one.Kind Boyle, before his poet laysA table, with a cloth of bays;And Ireland, mother of sweet singers,Presents her harp still to his fingers.The feast, his towering genius marksIn yonder wild goose and the larks;The mushrooms show his wit was sudden;And for his judgment, lo, a pudden!Roast beef, though old, proclaims him stout,And grace, although a bard, devout.May Tom, whom Heaven sent down to raiseThe price of prologues and of plays,Be every birthday more a winner,Digest his thirty-thousandth dinner;Walk to his grave without reproach,And scorn a rascal and a coach.
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