Absent Or Dead, Still Let A Friend

No More The Mounting Larks, While Daphne Sings, Shall, List'ning, In Mid-air Suspend Their Wings.

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.

Some Have At First For Wits, Then Poets Passed, Turned Critics Next, And Proved Plain Fools At Last.

Know, Nature's Children All Divide Her Care, The Fur That Warms A Monarch Warmed A Bear.

Good God! How Often Are We To Die Before We Go Quite Off This Stage? In Every Friend We Lose A Part Of Ourselves, And The Best Part.