Wert thou the rich,
The idol of a gazing crowd?
Wert thou the great,
To whom obsequious thousands bow’d?
Was learning’s store
E’er treasur’d up within this shell?
Did wisdom e’er within
This empty hollow dwell?
Did youthful charms
E’er redden on this ghastful face?
Did beauty’s bloom these cheeks,
This forehead ever grace?
If on this brow
E’er sat the scornful, haughty frown,
Deceitful pride! where now
Is that disdain?——’tis gone.
If cheerful mirth
A gayness o’er this baldness cast,
Delusive, fleeting joy!
Where is it now?——’tis past.
To deck this scalp
If tedious long-liv’d hours it cost.
Vain, fruitless toil! where’s now
That labour seen?——’tis lost.
But painful sweat,
The dear-earn’d price of daily bread,
Was all, perhaps, that thee
With hungry sorrows fed.
Perhaps but tears,
Surest relief of heart-sick woe,
Thine only drink, from down
These sockets us’d to flow.
Oppress’d perhaps
With aches and with aged cares,
Down to the grave thou brought’st
A few, and hoary, hairs:
’Tis all perhaps!
No marks, no token can I trace
What, on this stage of life
Thy rank or station was.