Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow TO MR. THOMAS SOUTHERN ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 1742 - The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope

Return to Title Page for The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Literature

TO MR. THOMAS SOUTHERN ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 1742 - Alexander Pope, The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope [1903]

Edition used:

The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope. Cambridge Edition, ed. Henry W. Boynton (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1903).

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


TO MR. THOMAS SOUTHERN

ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 1742

Southern was invited to dine on his birthday with Lord Orrery, who had prepared the entertainment, of which the bill of fare is here set down.

  • 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 tow’ring Genius marks
  • In yonder wildgoose and the larks!
  • The mushrooms show his Wit was sudden!
  • And for his Judgment, lo, a pudden!
  • Roast beef, tho’ old, proclaims him stout,
  • And grace, although a bard, devout.
  • May Tom, whom Heav’n sent down to raise
  • The price of Prologues and of Plays,
  • Be ev’ry birthday more a winner,
  • Digest his thirty-thousandth dinner,
  • Walk to his grave without reproach,
  • And scorn a Rascal and a Coach.