To the Author of the Farmer’s Boy
I
If wealth, if honour, at command were mine,
And every boast Ambition could desire,
The pompous Gifts, sweet Bard, I would resign
For the aft Music of thy tuneful Lyre,
II
Which speaks the soul awake to every charm
That Nature open’d from thy humble cot:
Speaks powers chill Indigence could not disarm;
Proof to Humanity’s severest lot.
III
Thou Friend to Nature, and of Man the Friend;
Of every generous and benignant cause;
The accents of thy glowing worth, unfeign’d,
Live in the cadence of each feeling pause.
Here thought, alternate, in the noble Plan
Admires the POET, and reveres the Man.
25 Aug. 1800.