Good Lord, what is man! for as simple he looks, Do but try to develop his books and his crooks, With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil, All in all, he's a problem must puzzle the devil.
For thus the royal mandate ran, When first the human race began, "The social, friendly honest man, Whate'er he be, Tis he fulfils great Nature's plan, And none but he!"
But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, it's bloom is shed; Or, like the snow-fall in the river, A moment white, then melts forever.
Not the bee upon the blossom, In the pride o' sunny noon; Not the little sporting fairy, All beneath the simmer moon; Not the poet, in the moment Fancy lightens in his e'e, Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture, That thy presence gi'es to me.
God knows, I'm not the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be, But twenty times I rather would be An atheist clean, Than under gospel colours hid be Just for a screen.