On Thomas Southern’s eighty-first birthday, Alexander Pope offers a poem that feels like an affectionate toast over a table loaded with playful symbols. Rather than solemn praise, he turns a birthday feast into a portrait of the aging playwright: a cloth of bays sets the scene, Ireland’s harp celebrates his roots, and each dish becomes a gentle compliment. Wild goose and larks speak to his soaring genius, mushrooms to his sudden wit, and a homely pudding to his sound judgment; even the roast beef echoes his stout old age. The tone stays warm and teasing, never mean—a friend grinning across the dinner table. Pope closes not with grand predictions but with earthy wishes: digest a lifetime’s worth of meals, walk unashamed toward the grave, and scorn both a rascal and a coach. It’s a rare thing—a birthday poem that refuses to stiffen up, and instead feels like a perfectly measured, fondly raised glass.
To Mr Thomas Southern, on His Birthday, 1742. — Summary
Resign'd to live, prepared to die, With not one sin, but poetry, This day Tom's fair account has run (Without a blot) to eighty-one. Kind Boyle, before his poet lays A table, with a cloth of bays; And Ireland, mother of sweet singers, Presents her harp still to his fingers. The feast, his towering genius marks In yonder wild goose and the larks; The mushrooms show his wit was sudden; And for his judgment, lo, a pudden! Roast beef, though old, proclaims him stout, And grace, although a bard, devout. May Tom, whom Heaven sent down to raise The price of prologues and of plays, Be every birthday more a winner, Digest his thirty-thousandth dinner; Walk to his grave without reproach, And scorn a rascal and a coach.