Hence that fantastic wantonness of woe, O Youth to partial Fortune vainly dear! To plunder'd Want's half-shelter'd hovel go, Go, and some hunger-bitten infant hear Moan haply in a dying mother's ear: 5 Or when the cold and dismal fog-damps brood O'er the rank church-yard with sear elm-leaves strew'd, Pace round some widow's grave, whose dearer part Was slaughter'd, where o'er his uncoffin'd limbs The flocking flesh-birds scream'd! Then, while thy heart 10 Groans, and thine eye a fiercer sorrow dims, Know (and the truth shall kindle thy young mind) What Nature makes thee mourn, she bids thee heal! O abject! if, to sickly dreams resign'd, All effortless thou leave Life's commonweal 15 A prey to Tyrants, Murderers of Mankind. 1796. FOOTNOTES: [157:1] First published in the _Cambridge Intelligencer_, December 17, 1796: included in the Quarto Edition of the _Ode on the Departing Year_, 1796, in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1828, 1829, and 1834. The lines were sent in a letter to John Thelwall, dated December 17, 1796 (_Letters of S. T. C._, 1895, i. 207, 208). LINENOTES: Title] Lines, &c., C. I.: To a Young Man who abandoned himself to a causeless and indolent melancholy MS. Letter, 1796. [6-7] These lines were omitted in the MS. Letter and 4{o} 1796, but were replaced in Sibylline Leaves, 1817. [8] Or seek some widow's MS. Letter, Dec. 17, 1796. [11] eye] eyes MS. Letter, Dec. 9, 1796, C. I. [15-16] earth's common weal A prey to the thron'd Murderess of Mankind. MS. Letter, 1796. All effortless thou leave Earth's commonweal A prey to the thron'd Murderers of Mankind. C. I., 1796, 4{o}. TO A FRIEND[158:1] [CHARLES LAMB] WHO HAD DECLARED HIS INTENTION OF WRITING NO MORE POETRY