To The Kind Reader

To The Kind Reader

No one talks more than a Poet;

Fain he’d have the people know it.

Praise or blame[4]he ever loves；

None in prose confess an error,

Yet we do so,void of terror,

In the Muses’silent groves.

What I err’d in,what corrected,

What I suffer’d,what effected,

To this wreath as flow’rs belong;

For the aged,and the youthful,

And the vicious[5]，and the truthful，

All are fair when viewed in song.

1800.