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 lays

A table, with a cloth of bays;

And Ireland, mother of sweet singers,

Presents her harp still to his fingers.

The feast, his towering genius marks

In 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 raise

The 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.