Original (English)

TO MY READERS NAY, blame me not; I might have spared Your patience many a trivial verse, Yet these my earlier welcome shared, So, let the better shield the worse. And some might say, "Those ruder songs Had freshness which the new have lost; To spring the opening leaf belongs, The chestnut-burs await the frost." When those I wrote, my locks were brown, When these I write—ah, well a-day! The autumn thistle's silvery down Is not the purple bloom of May.