To Mr Thomas Southern, on His Birthday, 1742.

Resign'd to live, prepared to die, With not one sin, but poetry, This day Tom's fair account has run (Without a blot) to eighty-one. Kind Boyle, before his poet lays A table, with a cloth of bays; And Ireland, mother of sweet singers, Presents her harp still to his fingers. The feast, his towering genius marks In yonder wild goose and the larks; The mushrooms show his wit was sudden; And for his judgment, lo, a pudden!…