Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A HINT TO A YOUNG PERSON, .. IMPROVEMENT, BY READING OR CONVERSATION, by JOHN BYROM


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A HINT TO A YOUNG PERSON, .. IMPROVEMENT, BY READING OR CONVERSATION, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: In reading authors, when you find
Last Line: That socrates does now speak truth.
Subject(s): Authors & Authorship; Books; Reason; Reading; Intellect; Rationalism; Brain; Mind; Intellectuals


IN reading authors, when you find
Bright passages that strike your mind,
And which, perhaps, you may have reason
To think on at another season,
Be not contented with the sight,
But take them down in Black and White;
Such a respect is wisely shewn
As makes another's sense one's own.

When you're asleep upon your bed
A thought may come into your head,
Which may be useful, if 'tis taken
Due notice of when you are waken.
Of midnight thoughts to take no heed
Betrays a sleepy soul indeed;
It is but dreaming in the day
To throw our nightly hours away.

In conversation when you meet
With persons cheerful and discreet,
That speak or quote, in prose or rhyme,
Facetious things, or things sublime,
Observe what passes, and anon
When you get home, think thereupon;
Write what occurs, forget it not,
A good thing sav'd is so much got.

Let no remarkable event
Pass with a gaping wonderment,
A fool's device,—"Lord, who would think!"
Rather record with Pen and ink
Whate'er deserves attention now;
For when 'tis gone you know not how,
Too late you'll find that, to your cost,
So much of human life is lost.

Were it not for the written letter,
Pray what were living men the better
For all the labours of the dead?
For all that Socrates e'er said?
The morals brought from Heav'n to men
He would have carry'd back again;
'Tis owing to his Short-hand youth
That Socrates does now speak truth.





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