Complaints of lovers help to ease their pain;
  It shows a rest of kindness to complain;
  A friendship loath to quit its former hold;
  And conscious merit may be justly bold. 
  But much more just your jealousy would show,
  If others’ good were injury to you: 
  Witness, ye heavens, how I rejoice to see 90
  Rewarded worth and rising loyalty! 
  Your warrior offspring that upheld the crown. 
  The scarlet honour of your peaceful gown,
  Are the most pleasing objects I can find,
  Charms to my sight, and cordials to my mind: 
  When virtue spooms before a prosperous gale,
  My heaving wishes help to fill the sail;
  And if my prayers for all the brave were heard,
  Caesar should still have such, and such should still reward.

   The labour’d earth your pains have sow’d and till’d; 100
  ’Tis just you reap the product of the field: 
  Yours be the harvest, ’tis the beggar’s gain
  To glean the fallings of the loaded wain. 
  Such scatter’d ears as are not worth your care,
  Your charity, for alms, may safely spare,
  For alms are but the vehicles of prayer. 
  My daily bread is literally implored;
  I have no barns nor granaries to hoard. 
  If Caesar to his own his hand extends,
  Say which of yours his charity offends:  110
  You know he largely gives to more than are his friends. 
  Are you defrauded when he feeds the poor? 
  Our mite decreases nothing of your store. 
  I am but few, and by your fare you see
  My crying sins are not of luxury. 
  Some juster motive sure your mind withdraws,
  And makes you break our friendship’s holy laws;
  For barefaced envy is too base a cause.

    Show more occasion for your discontent;
  Your love, the Wolf, would help you to invent:  120
  Some German quarrel, or, as times go now,
  Some French, where force is uppermost, will do. 
  When at the fountain’s head, as merit ought
  To claim the place, you take a swilling draught,
  How easy ’tis an envious eye to throw,
  And tax the sheep for troubling streams below;
  Or call her (when no farther cause you find)
  An enemy possess’d of all your kind! 
  But then, perhaps, the wicked world would think,
  The Wolf design’d to eat as well as drink. 130

    This last allusion gall’d the Panther more,
  Because indeed it rubb’d upon the sore. 
  Yet seem’d she not to wince, though shrewdly pain’d: 
  But thus her passive character maintain’d.

    I never grudged, whate’er my foes report,
  Your flaunting fortune in the Lion’s court. 
  You have your day, or you are much belied,
  But I am always on the suffering side: 
  You know my doctrine, and I need not say,
  I will not, but I cannot disobey. 140
  On this firm principle I ever stood;
  He of my sons who fails to make it good,
  By one rebellious act renounces to my blood.