Saturday Rave: A Short Song of Congratulation by Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson is not well known nowadays as a poet, but as a celebrity and a man of wit: eccentric, unclean, blunt, learned, fascinating and extraordinary.

But Johnson was a poet. Not only that, but he was born poor, into an unhappy home, was ill all his life, and was never financially secure: so his stuff surely must be worth a look.

Here's...but the clue is in the title.

A Short Song of Congratulations

LONG-EXPECTED one and twenty
Ling'ring year at last has flown,
Pomp and pleasure, pride and plenty
Great Sir John, are all your own.

Loosen'd from the minor's tether,
Free to mortgage or to sell,
Wild as wind, and light as feather
Bid the slaves of thrift farewell.

Call the Bettys, Kates, and Jenneys
Ev'ry name that laughs at care,
Lavish of your Grandsire's guineas,
Show the spirit of an heir.

All that prey on vice and folly
Joy to see their quarry fly,
Here the gamester light and jolly
There the lender grave and sly.

Wealth, Sir John, was made to wander,
Let it wander as it will;
See the jocky, see the pander,
Bid them come, and take their fill.

When the bonny blade carouses,
Pockets full, and spirits high,
What are acres? What are houses?
Only dirt, or wet or dry.

If the Guardian or the Mother
Tell the woes of willful waste,
Scorn their counsel and their pother,
You can hang or drown at last.

**

The centuries go on, but people don't change, do they?

Word To Use Today: blade. In this sense, a blade is a dashing and swaggering young man. It's the same word as the kind of blade as a knife has, and the Old English form of it was blæd. The word is connected to the Latin folium, which means leaf.