A Consolation

Edward Young, Night Thoughts, Night Ninth, The Consolation:

As when a traveller, a long day past

In painful search of what he cannot find,

At night’s approach, content with the next cot,

There ruminates, a while, his labour lost;

Then cheers his heart with what his fate affords,

And chants his sonnet to deceive the time,

Till the due season calls him to repose:

Thus I, long-travell’d in the ways of men,

And dancing, with the rest, the giddy maze,

Where Disappointment smiles at Hope’s career;               10

Warn’d by the languor of life’s evening ray,

At length have housed me in an humble shed;

Where, future wandering banish’d from my thought,

And waiting, patient, the sweet hour of rest,

I chase the moments with a serious song.

Song soothes our pains; and age has pains to soothe.