Samuel Wesley (poet, died 1739)

Samuel Wesley the Younger (10 February 1690 or 1691 – 6 November 1739) was a poet, schoolmaster and an Anglican cleric. He was the eldest of the Wesley brothers—with younger brothers John and Charles—but did not play a notable role in the nascent Methodist movement.

Quotes

Here lie I, once a witty fair,
   Ill-loving and ill-loved;
Whose heedless beauty was my snare,
   Whose wit my folly proved.
Reader, should any curious stay
   To ask my luckless name,
Tell them the grave that hides my clay
   Conceals me from my shame.
Tell them I mourned for guilt of sin
   More than for pleasure spent:
Tell them, whate’er my morn had been,
   My noon was penitent.
- "An Epitaph", in Poems on Several Occasions (1736), p. 226

English Epigrams

Reported in William Davenport Adams (ed.) English Epigrams (London, [1878])

From sunset to daybreak, when folks are asleep,
New watchmen are 'pointed the 'chequer to keep;
New locks and new bolts fasten every door,
And the chests are made three times as strong as before.
Yet the thieves, when 'tis open, the treasure may seize,
For the same are still trusted with care of the keys.
From the night to the morning, 'tis true, all is right;
But who shall secure it from morning to night?
- "On the Exchequer and its Custodians"
- [The allusion is probably to the supposed illegal use made of the secret-service money by Sir Robert Walpole]

Whilst Butler, needy wretch! was yet alive,
No gen'rous patron would a dinner give:
See him, when starved to death, and turn'd to dust,
Presented with a monumental bust!
The poet's fate is here in emblem shown,—
He ask'd for bread, and he receiv'd a stone.
- On the Erection of a Statue to the Poet Butler in Westminster Abbey"
- [Printed in Miscellaneous Poems, by Several Hands (London: D. Lewis, 1726). The monument here referred to was erected in 1721, about forty years after the death of Butler]

External links

Encyclopedic article on Samuel Wesley (poet, died 1739) on Wikipedia