RESIGNED 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 gooee and the larks! The mushrooms show his wit was sudden! And for his judgement, 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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SNOWFLAKES by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: FIDDLER JONES by EDGAR LEE MASTERS MUTABILITY (2) by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S BURIAL HYMN by WALT WHITMAN THE OVIPAROUS TAILOR by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES TO A DEAD JOURNALIST by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT LINES; TO ONE WHO WISHED TO READ A POEM I HAD WRITTEN by ANNE CHARLOTTE LYNCH BOTTA |