Four Popular Songs (1)/The doctors

The Doctors.

Be honours which to kings we give
to doctors also paid:
We’re the king’s subjects while we l ve:
the doctors when we re dead.

Though when in health and thoughtless mood
we treat them oft with scoffing
Yet they, returning ill with good,
relieve us from our coughing (coffin.)

At times they kill us, to be sure,
in cases rather tickle;
But when they ve killed, they still can cure,
their patients - n a pickle.

And when at last we needs must die.—
the doctors' cannot save
From death—they still most kindly try
to snatch us from the grave