Epistle: From Dr. Franklin to His Poetical Panegyrists

"Good Poets, why so full of pain,
Are you sincere--or do you feign?
Love for your tribe I never had,
Nor penned three stanzas, good or bad.

At funerals, sometimes, grief appears,
Where legacies have purchased tears:
'Tis folly to be sad for nought,
From me you never gained a groat.

To better trades I turned my views,
And never meddled with the muse;
Great things I did for rising States,
And kept the lightning from some pates.

This grand discovery, you adore it,
But ne'er will be the better for it:
You still are subject to those fires,
For poets' houses have no spires.

Philosophers are famed for pride;
But, pray, be modest--when I died,
No "sighs disturbed old ocean's bed,"
No "Nature wept" for Franklin dead!

That day, on which I left the coast,
A beggar-man was also lost:
If "Nature wept," you must agree
She wept for him--as well as me.

There's reason even in telling lies--
In such profusion of her "sighs,"
She was too sparing of a tear--
In Carolina, all was clear:

And, if there fell some snow and sleet,
Why must it be my winding sheet?
Snows oft have cloathed the April plain,
Have melted, and will melt again.

Poets, I pray you, say no more,
Or say what Nature said before;
That reason should your pens direct,
Or else you pay me no respect.

Let reason be your constant rule,
And Nature, trust me, is no fool--
When to the dust great men she brings,
Make her do--some uncommon things."