Never Was It Given To

In Vain Sedate Reflections We Would Make When Half Our Knowledge We Must Snatch, Not Take.

To Rest, The Cushion And Soft Dean Invite, Who Never Mentions Hell To Ears Polite.

Why Did I Write? Whose Sin To Me Unknown Dipt Me In Ink, My Parents', Or My Own? As Yet A Child, Nor Yet A Fool To Fame, I Lisp'd In Numbers, For The Numbers Came.

The Life Of A Wit Is A Warfare Upon Earth.

There Various News I Heard Of Love And Strife,of Peace And War, Health, Sickness, Death, And Life,of Loss And Gain, Of Famine And Of Store,of Storms At Sea, And Travels On The Shore,of Prodigies, And Portents Seen In Air,of Fires And Plagues, And Stars With Blazing Hair,of Turns Of Fortune, Changes In The State,the Fall Of Favourites, Projects Of The Great,of Aid Mismanagements, Taxations New:all Neither Wholly False, Nor Wholly True.