41
Count all the trees that crown Jamaica's hills,
Count all the stars that through the heavens you see.
Count every drop that the wide ocean fills;
Then count the pleasures Bacchus yields to me.
42
The aids of wine for toiling man were meant;
I prize the smiling Caribbean bowl—
Enjoy those gifts that bounteous nature lent,
Death to thy cares, refreshing to the soul.
43
Here fixt to-day in plenty's smiling vales,
Just as the month revolves we laugh or groan,
September comes, seas swell with horrid gales,
And old Port Royal's fate may be our own.
44
A few short years, at best, will bound our span,
Wretched and few, the Hebrew exile said;
Live while you may, be jovial while you can,
Death as a debt to nature must be paid.
45
When nature fails, the man exists no more,
And death is nothing but an empty name,
Spleen's genuine offspring at the midnight hour,
The coward's tyrant, and the bad man's dream.