Sick gluttons of a next-door funeral hear,
And learn self-mastery in the school of fear:
And so a neighbour's scandal many a time
Has kept young minds from running into crime.
Thus I grew up, unstained by serious ill,
Though venial faults, I grant you, haunt me still:
Yet items I could name retrenched e'en there
By time, plain speaking, individual care;
For, when I chance to stroll or lounge alone,
I'm not without a Mentor of my own:
"This course were better: that might help to mend
My daily life, improve me as a friend:
There some one showed ill-breeding: can I say
I might not fall into the like one day?"
So with closed lips I ruminate, and then
In leisure moments play with ink and pen:
For that's an instance, I must needs avow,
Of those small faults I hinted at just now:
Grant it your prompt indulgence, or a throng
Of poets shall come up, some hundred strong,
And by mere numbers, in your own despite,
Force you, like Jews, to be our proselyte.
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