English Poetry. Richard Hovey. To a Friend. Ричард Хави.

Richard Hovey (Ричард Хави)

To a Friend

ALL too grotesque our thoughts are sometimes. Odd,
That there will come a day when you and I
Shall not be you and I! that we shall lie—
We two—i' the damp earth-mould—above each clod
A drunken headstone in the neglected sod—
Thereon the phrase, "Hic Jacet," carved awry,
And then our virtues, Bah! and piety—
Perhaps some cheeky reference to God!
And haply after many a century
Some spectacled old man shall drive the birds
A moment from their song i' the lonely spot
And make a copy of the quaint old words—
They will then be quaint and old—and all for what?
To fill a gap in a genealogy.

Richard Hovey’s other poems:

1. Earth’s Lyric
2. Lancelot and Gawaine
3. The Old Pine
4. John Keats
5. College Days

Poems of other poets with the same name (Стихотворения других поэтов с таким же названием):

Matthew Arnold (Мэтью Арнольд) To a Friend (“Who prop, thou ask’st in these bad days, my mind?”)

Anna Barbauld (Анна-Летиция Барбо) To a Friend (“May never more of pensive melancholy”)

William Bowles (Уильям Боулз) To a Friend (“Go, then, and join the murmuring city’s throng!”)

William Shenstone (Уильям Шенстон) To a Friend (“Have you ne’er seen, my gentle Squire!”)

Joseph Drake (Джозеф Дрейк) To a Friend (“Yes, faint was my applause and cold my praise”)

James Fields (Джеймс Филдс) To a Friend (“Go, with a manly heart”)

Amy Lowell (Эми Лоуэлл) To a Friend (“I ask but one thing of you, only one”)

John Pierpont (Джон Пирпонт) To a Friend (“Friend of my dark and solitary hour”)

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