The poem begins with the speaker, a version of John Dryden himself, describing his friend as having had both too short a life and too modest of a reputation. Dryden remarks that he and Oldham were similar as both poets and people, with a similar distaste for unintelligent and unkind people. Moreover, the men shared the same literary aims, although Dryden, who began his poetry career after Oldham, has now outlived his friend. Dryden compares them to Nisus and Euralys, characters in Vergil's Aeneid. He references a scene in which the two men join a race, and Nisus, falling down and losing his lead, trips a third competitor to ensure Euralys wins. The allusion suggests that Oldham, himself removed from the metaphorical race of life and literary achievement, has given Dryden the support and inspiration to get ahead himself.
Remarking upon Oldham's early successes during his relatively short life, Dryden stops to mull over the question of whether a long life would have led Oldham to extraordinary achievement. It is possible, he concedes, that age might have given Oldham a better grasp of poetic meter. Young people, after all, often struggle with this technical skill. On the other hand, Oldham was a satirist, and satire can benefit from some amount of imperfection—its cleverness and humor are visible regardless of whether the meter is perfect. Oldham's work, a product of his youth, has an urgent quality that might have been dulled by age and experience, turning it into merely good meter and rhyme rather than brilliant satire.
In a final farewell, Dryden compares his friend to the Roman general Marcellus, and notes that he will be adorned with ivy and laurel—meaning that his reputation will flourish. However, Oldham himself is now exiled to a place of darkness and quiet.
