The Few That Pray At All Pray

How Readily We Wish Time Spent Revoked, That We Might Try The Ground Again Where Once--through Inexperience, As We Now Perceive--we Missed That Happiness We Might Have Found!

A Man Renowned For Repartee Will Seldom Scruple To Make Free With Friendship's Finest Feeling, Will Thrust A Dagger At Your Breast, And Say He Wounded You In Jest, By Way Of Balm For Healing.

Ages Elapsed Ere Homer's Lamp Appear'd, And Ages Ere The Mantuan Swan Was Heard: To Carry Nature Lengths Unknown Before, To Give A Milton Birth, Ask'd Ages More.

The Things That Mount The Rostrum With A Skip, And Then Skip Down Again, Pronounce A Text, Cry Hem; And Reading What They Never Wrote Just Fifteen Minutes, Huddle Up Their Work, And With A Well-bred Whisper Close The Scene!

A Tale Should Be Judicious, Clear, Succinct; The Language Plain, And Incidents Well Link'd; Tell Not As New What Ev'ry Body Knows; And, New Or Old, Still Hasten To A Close.