To A Friend Chafing At Enforced Idleness From Interrupted Health
by
Soon may the edict lapse, that on you lays
This dire compulsion of infertile days,
This hardest penal toil, reluctant rest!
Meanwhile I count you eminently blest,
Happy from labours heretofore well done,
Happy in tasks auspiciously begun.
For they are blest that have not much to rue–
That have not oft mis-heard the prompter’s cue,
Stammered and stumbled and the wrong parts played,
And life a Tragedy of Errors made.