Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?
Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind?First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less?Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are madeTaller or stronger than the weeds they shade?Or ask of yonder argent fields above,Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove.
Of systems possible, if 'tis confessedThat wisdom infinite must form the best,Where all must full or not coherent be,And all that rises, rise in due degree;Then, in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain,There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man:And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)Is only this, if God has placed him wrong?
Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,May, must be right, as relative to all.In human works, though laboured on with pain,A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;In God's, one single can its end produce;Yet serves to second too some other use.So man, who here seems principal alone,Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
When the proud steed shall know why man restrainsHis fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains;When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god:Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehendHis actions', passions', being's, use and end;Why doing, suffering, checked, impelled; and whyThis hour a slave, the next a deity.
Then say not man's imperfect, Heaven in fault;Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought:His knowledge measured to his state and place,His time a moment, and a point his space.If to be perfect In a certain sphere,What matter, soon or late, or here or there?The blest to-day is as completely so,As who began a thousand years ago.
Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate,All but the page prescribed, their present state:From brutes what men, from men what spirits knowOr who could suffer being here below?The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.Oh, blindness to the future! kindly given,That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven:Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore.What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.Hope springs eternal in the human breast:Man never is, but always to be blessed.The soul, uneasy and confined from home,Bests and expatiates in a life to come.
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mindSees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;His soul, proud science never taught to strayFar as the solar walk, or milky way;Yet simple nature to his hope has given,Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler Heaven;Some safer world in depths of woods embraced,Some happier island in the watery waste,Where slaves once more their native land behold,No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.To be, contents his natural desire,He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of senseWeigh thy opinion against Providence;Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,Say, 'Here he gives too little, there too much;'Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,Yet cry, 'If man's unhappy, God's unjust;'If man alone engross not Heaven's high care,Alone made perfect here, immortal there,Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,Bejudge his justice, be the god of God.In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,Men would be angels, angels would be gods.Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,Aspiring to be angels, men rebel:And who but wishes to invert the lawsOf order, sins against the Eternal Cause.
V.Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine,Earth for whose use? Pride answers, ''Tis for mine:For me kind nature wakes her genial power,Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower;Annual for me, the grape, the rose renewThe juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings;For me, health gushes from a thousand springs;Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;My footstool earth, my canopy the skies.'But errs not Nature from this gracious end,From burning suns when livid deaths descend,When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweepTowns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?'No ('tis replied), the first Almighty CauseActs not by partial, but by general laws;Th' exceptions few; some change, since all began:And what created perfect?' Why then man?If the great end be human happiness,Then nature deviates; and can man do less?As much that end a constant course requiresOf showers and sunshine, as of man's desires;As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,As men forever temperate, calm, and wise.If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's design,Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms,Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms;Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind,Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?From pride, from pride, our very reasoning springs.Account for moral, as for natural things:Why charge we Heaven in those, in these acquit?In both, to reason right is to submit.Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,Were there all harmony, all virtue here;That never air or ocean felt the wind;That never passion discomposed the mind.But all subsists by elemental strife;And passions are the elements of life.The general order, since the whole began,Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.
VI.What would this man? Now upward will he soar,And little less than angel, would he more;Now looking downwards, just as grieved appearsTo want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.Made for his use all creatures if he call,Say what their use, had he the powers of all?Nature to these, without profusion, kind,The proper organs, proper powers assigned;Each seeming want compensated of course,Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;All in exact proportion to the state;Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:Is Heaven unkind to man, and man alone?Shall he alone, whom rational we call,Be pleased with nothing, if not blessed with all?The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)Is not to act or think beyond mankind;No powers of body or of soul to share,But what his nature and his state can bear.Why has not man a microscopic eye?For this plain reason, man is not a fly.Say what the use, were finer optics given,T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven?Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,To smart and agonize at every pore?Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,Die of a rose in aromatic pain?If nature thundered in his opening ears,And stunned him with the music of the spheres,How would he wish that Heaven had left him stillThe whispering zephyr, and the purling rill?Who finds not Providence all good and wise,Alike in what it gives and what denies?
VII.Far as creation's ample range extends,The scale of sensual, mental power ascends.Mark how it mounts, to man's imperial race,From the green myriads in the peopled grass:What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:Of smell, the headlong lioness betweenAnd hound sagacious on the tainted green:Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,To that which warbles through the vernal wood:The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:In the nice bee, what sense so subtly trueFrom poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew?How instinct varies in the grovelling swine,Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine!'Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier,Forever separate, yet forever near!Remembrance and reflection how allied;What thin partitions sense from thought divide:And middle natures, how they long to join,Yet never pass th' insuperable line!Without this just gradation, could they beSubjected, these to those, or all to thee?The powers of all subdued by thee alone,Is not thy reason all these powers in one?
VIII.See, through this air, this ocean, and this earthAll matter quick, and bursting into birth.Above, how high, progressive life may go!Around, how wide! how deep extend below!Vast chain of being! which from God began,Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,No glass can reach; from infinite to thee,From thee to nothing.—On superior powersWere we to pass, Inferior might on ours;Or in the full creation leave a void,Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed:From nature's chain whatever link you strike,Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.And, if each system in gradation rollAlike essential to th' amazing whole,The least confusion but in one, not allThat system only, but the whole must fall.Let earth unbalanced from her orbit fly,Planets and suns run lawless through the sky;Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled,Being on being wrecked, and world on world;Heaven's whole foundations to their centre nod,And nature tremble to the throne of God.All this dread order break—for whom? for thee?Vile worm!—Oh, madness! pride! impiety!
IX.What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread,Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head?What if the head, the eye, or ear repinedTo serve mere engines to the ruling mind?Just as absurd for any part to claimTo be another, in this general frame;Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains,The great directing Mind of all ordains.All are but parts of one stupendous whole,Whose body nature is, and God the soul;That, changed through all, and yet in all the same;Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame;Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,Lives through all life, extends through all extent,Spreads undivided, operates unspent;Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:To him no high, no low, no great, no small;He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.
X.Cease then, nor order imperfection name:Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.Know thy own point: this kind, this due degreeOf blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee.Submit.—In this, or any other sphere,Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:Safe in the hand of one disposing Power,Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.All nature is but art, unknown to thee;All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;All discord, harmony not understood;All partial evil, universal good:And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,One truth is clear,Whatever is, is right.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;The proper study of mankind is Man.Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,A being darkly wise, and rudely great:With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest,In doubt to deem himself a god or beast;In doubt his mind or body to prefer,Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;Alike in ignorance, his reason suchWhether he thinks too little or too much:Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;Still by himself abused, or disabused;Created half to rise, and half to fall;Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Oh blind to truth, and God's whole scheme below,Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe!Who sees and follows that great scheme the best,Best knows the blessing, and will most be blessed.But fools, the good alone unhappy call,For ills or accidents that chance to all.See Falkland dies, the virtuous and the just!See godlike Turenne prostrate on the dust!See Sidney bleeds amid the martial strife!Was this their virtue, or contempt of life?Say, was it virtue, more though Heaven ne'er gave,Lamented Digby! sunk thee to the grave?Tell me, if virtue made the son expire,Why, full of days and honour, lives the sire?Why drew Marseilles' good bishop purer breath,When nature sickened, and each gale was death?Or why so long (in life if long can be)Lent Heaven a parent to the poor and me?What makes all physical or moral ill?There deviates nature, and here wanders will.God sends not ill; if rightly understood,Or partial ill is universal good.Or change admits, or nature lets it fall,Short, and but rare, till man improved it all.We just as wisely might of Heaven complainThat righteous Abel was destroyed by Cain,As that the virtuous son is ill at ease,When his lewd father gave the dire disease.Think we, like some weak prince, th' Eternal CauseProne for his favourites to reverse his laws?Shall burning Etna, if a sage requires,Forget to thunder, and recall her fires?On air or sea new motions be impressed,Oh blameless Bethel! to relieve thy breast?When the loose mountain trembles from on high,Shall gravitation cease, if you go by?Or some old temple, nodding to its fall,For Chartres' head reserve the hanging wall?But still this world (so fitted for the knave)Contents us not. A better shall we have?A kingdom of the just then let it be:But first consider how those just agree.The good must merit God's peculiar care;But who, but God, can tell us who they are?One thinks on Calvin Heaven's own spirit fell;Another deems him instrument of hell;If Calvin feel Heaven's blessing, or its rod.This cries, there is, and that, there is no God.What shocks one part will edify the rest,Nor with one system can they all he blessed.The very best will variously incline,And what rewards your virtue, punish mine.Whatever is, is right.—This world 'tis trueWas made for Caesar—but for Titus too.And which more blessed? who chained his country, say,Or he whose virtue sighed to lose a day?'But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed,'What then? Is the reward of virtue bread?That, vice may merit, 'tis the price of toil;The knave deserves it, when he tills the soil,The knave deserves it when he tempts the main,Where folly fights for kings, or dives for gain.The good man may be weak, be indolent:Nor is his claim to plenty, but content.But grant him riches, your demand is o'er;'No—shall the good want health, the good want power?'Add health, and power, and every earthly thing.'Why bounded power? why private? why no king?'Nay, why external for internal given?Why is not man a god, and earth a Heaven?Who ask and reason thus, will scarce conceiveGod gives enough, while he has more to give:Immense the power, immense were the demand;Say, at what part of nature will they stand?What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,The soul's calm sunshine, and the heart-felt joy,Is virtue's prize: A better would you fix?Then give humility a coach and six,Justice a conqueror's sword, or truth a gown,Or public spirit its great cure, a crown.Weak, foolish man! will Heaven reward us thereWith the same trash mad mortals wish for here?The boy and man an individual makes,Yet sigh'st thou now for apples and for cakes?Go, like the Indian, in another lifeExpect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife,As well as dream such trifles are assigned,As toys and empires, for a god-like mind.Rewards, that either would to virtue bringNo joy, or be destructive of the thing:How oft by these at sixty are undoneThe virtues of a saint at twenty-one!To whom can riches give repute, or trust,Content, or pleasure, but the good and just?Judges and senates have been bought for gold,Esteem and love were never to be sold.Oh fool! to think God hates the worthy mind,The lover and the love of human-kind,Whose life is healthful, and whose conscience clear,Because he wants a thousand pounds a year.Honour and shame from no condition rise;Act well your part, there all the honour lies.Fortune in men has some small difference made,One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;The cobbler aproned, and the parson gowned,The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned.'What differ more (you cry) than crown and cowl?'I'll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool.You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow,The rest is all but leather or prunella.
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God loves from whole to parts; but human soulMust rise from individual to whole.Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake;The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds,Another still, and still another spreads;Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace;His country next; and next all human race;Wide and more wide, th' o'erflowings of the mindTake every creature in, of every kind;Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blessed,And Heaven beholds its image in his breast.Come then, my friend! my Genius! come along;Oh master of the poet, and the song!And while the Muse now stoops, or now ascends,To man's low passions, or their glorious ends,Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise,To fall with dignity, with temper rise;Formed by thy converse, happily to steerFrom grave to gay, from lively to severe;Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease,Intent to reason, or polite to please.Oh! while along the stream of time thy nameExpanded flies, and gathers all its fame,Say, shall my little bark attendant sail,Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale?When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose,Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes,Shall then this verse to future age pretendThou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend?That urged by thee, I turned the tuneful artFrom sounds to things, from fancy to the heart;For wit's false mirror held up Nature's light;Shewed erring pride,Whatever is, is right;That reason, passion, answer one great aim;That true self-love and social are the same;That virtue only, makes our bliss below;And all our knowledge is,ourselves to know.
Nothing so true as what you once let fall,'Most women have no characters at all.'Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.How many pictures of one nymph we view,All how unlike each other, all how true!Arcadia's countess, here in ermined pride,Is there Pastora by a fountain side;Here Fannia, leering on her own good man,And there, a naked Leda with a swan.Let then the fair one beautifully cry,In Magdalen's loose hair and lifted eye,Or dressed in smiles of sweet Cecilia shine,With simpering angels, palms, and harps divine;Whether the charmer sinner it, or saint it,If folly grow romantic, I must paint it.
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Flavia's a wit, has too much sense to pray;To toast our wants and wishes, is her way;Nor asks of God, but of her stars, to giveThe mighty blessing, 'while we live, to live.'Then for all death, that opiate of the soul!Lucretia's dagger, Rosamonda's bowl.Say, what can cause such impotence of mind?A spark too fickle, or a spouse too kind.Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please;With too much spirit to be e'er at ease;With too much quickness ever to be taught;With too much thinking to have common thought:You purchase pain with all that joy can give,And die of nothing but a rage to live.Turn then from wits; and look on Simo's mate,No ass so meek, no ass so obstinate;Or her, that owns her faults, but never mends,Because she's honest, and the best of friends;Or her, whose life the Church and scandal share,Forever in a passion, or a prayer;Or her, who laughs at hell, but (like her Grace)Cries, 'Ah! how charming, if there's no such place!'Or who in sweet vicissitude appearsOf mirth and opium, ratafie and tears,The daily anodyne, and nightly draught,To kill those foes to fair ones, time and thought.Woman and fool are two hard things to hit;For true no-meaning puzzles more than wit.But what are these to great Atossa's mind?Scarce once herself, by turns all womankind!Who, with herself, or others, from her birthFinds all her life one warfare upon earth;Shines, in exposing knaves, and painting fools,Yet is, whate'er she hates and ridicules.No thought advances, but her eddy brainWhisks it about, and down it goes again.Full sixty years the world has been her trade,The wisest fool much time has ever made.From loveless youth to unrespected age,No passion gratified except her rage.So much the fury still outran the wit,The pleasure missed her, and the scandal hit.Who breaks with her, provokes revenge from hell,But he's a bolder man who dares be well.Her every turn with violence pursued,Nor more a storm her hate than gratitude:To that each passion turns, or soon or late;Love, if it makes her yield, must make her hate:Superiors? death! and equals? what a curse!But an inferior not dependent? worse.Offend her, and she knows not to forgive;Oblige her, and she'll hate you while you live;But die, and she'll adore you—then the bustAnd temple rise—then fall again to dust.Last night, her lord was all that's good and great;A knave this morning, and his will a cheat.Strange! by the means defeated of the ends,By spirit robbed of power, by warmth of friends,By wealth of followers! without one distress,Sick of herself through very selfishness!Atossa, cursed with every granted prayer,Childless with all her children, wants an heir.To heirs unknown descends th' unguarded store,Or wanders, Heaven-directed, to the poor.Pictures like these, dear Madam, to design,Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line;Some wandering touches, some reflected light,Some flying stroke alone can hit them right:For how should equal colours do the knack?Chameleons who can paint in white and black?'Yet Chloe sure was formed without a spot'—Nature in her then erred not, but forgot.'With every pleasing, every prudent part,Say, what can Chloe want?'—She wants a heart.She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought;But never, never, reached one generous thought.Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour,Content to dwell in decencies forever.So very reasonable, so unmoved,As never yet to love, or to be loved.She, while her lover pants upon her breast,Can mark the figures on an Indian chest;And when she sees her friend in deep despair,Observes how much a chintz exceeds mohair.Forbid it Heaven, a favour or a debtShe e'er should cancel—but she may forget.Safe is your secret still in Chloe's ear;But none of Chloe's shall you ever hear.Of all her dears she never slandered one,But cares not if a thousand are undone.Would Chloe know if you're alive or dead?She bids her footman put it in her head.Chloe is prudent—would you too be wise?Then never break your heart when Chloe dies.
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But grant in public men sometimes are shown,A woman's seen in private life alone:Our bolder talents in full light displayed;Your virtues open fairest in the shade,Bred to disguise, in public 'tis you hide;There none distinguish 'twixt your shame or pride,Weakness or delicacy, all so nice,That each may seem a virtue or a vice.In men, we various ruling passions find;In women two almost divide the kind;Those, only fixed, they first or last obey,The love of pleasure, and the love of sway.
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Pleasures the sex, as children birds, pursue,Still out of reach, yet never out of view;Sure, if they catch, to spoil the toy at most,To covet flying, and regret when lost:At last, to follies youth could scarce defend,It grows their age's prudence to pretend;Ashamed to own they gave delight before,Reduced to feign it, when they give no more:As hags hold Sabbaths, less for joy than spite,So these their merry, miserable night;Still round and round the ghosts of beauty glide,And haunt the places where their honour died.See how the world its veterans rewards!A youth of frolics, an old age of cards;Fair to no purpose, artful to no end,Young without lovers, old without a friend;A fop their passion, but their prize a sot;Alive, ridiculous, and dead, forgot!Ah! Friend! to dazzle let the vain design;To raise the thought and touch the heart be thine!That charm shall grow, while what fatigues the RingFlaunts and goes down, an unregarded thing:So when the sun's broad beam has tired the sight,All mild ascends the moon's more sober light,Serene in virgin modesty she shines,And unobserved the glaring orb declines.Oh! blest with temper whose unclouded rayCan make to-morrow cheerful as to-day;She, who can love a sister's charms, or hearSighs for a daughter with unwounded ear;She, who ne'er answers till a husband cools,Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules;Charms by accepting, by submitting, sways,Yet has her humour most, when she obeys;Let fops or fortune fly which way they will;Disdains all loss of tickets, or codille;Spleen, vapours, or small-pox, above them all,And mistress of herself, though china fall.And yet, believe me, good as well as ill,Woman's at best a contradiction still.Heaven, when it strives to polish all it canIts last best work, but forms a softer man;Picks from each sex, to make the favourite blest,Your love of pleasure, our desire of rest:Blends, in exception to all general rules,Your taste of follies, with our scorn of fools:Reserve with frankness, art with truth allied,Courage with softness, modesty with pride;Fixed principles, with fancy ever new;Shakes all together, and produces—You.
P. Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigued, I said;Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead.The Dog-star rages! nay, 'tis past a doubt,All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,They rave, recite, and madden round the land.What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide?They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide;By land, by water, they renew the charge;They stop the chariot, and they board the barge.No place is sacred, not the church is free;E'en Sunday shines no Sabbath day to me:Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme,Happy to catch me just at dinner-time.Is there a parson, much demused in beer,A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer,A clerk, foredoomed his father's soul to cross,Who pens a stanza, when he should engross?Is there, who, locked from ink and paper, scrawlsWith desperate charcoal round his darkened walls?All fly to Twit'nam, and in humble strainApply to me, to keep them mad or vain.Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws,Imputes to me and my damned works the cause;Poor Comus sees his frantic wife elope,And curses wit, and poetry, and Pope.Friend to my life! (which did not you prolong,The world had wanted many an idle song)What drop or nostrum can this plague remove?Or which must-end me, a fool's wrath or love?A dire dilemma! either way I'm sped:If foes, they write, if friends, they read me dead.Seized and tied down to judge, how wretched I!Who can't be silent, and who will not lie.To laugh, were want of goodness and of grace,And to be grave, exceeds all power of face.I sit with sad civility, I readWith honest anguish, and an aching head;And drop at last, but in unwilling ears,This saving counsel, 'Keep your piece nine years.''Nine years!' cries he, who high in Drury Lane,Lulled by soft zephyrs through the broken pane,Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before term ends,Obliged by hunger, and request of friends:'The piece, you think, it incorrect? why, take it,I'm all submission, what you'd have it, make it.'Three things another's modest wishes bound,My friendship, and a prologue, and ten pound.Pitholeon sends to me: 'You know his Grace,I want a patron; ask him for a place.''Pitholeon libelled me'—'But here's a letterInforms you, sir, 'twas when he knew no better.Dare you refuse him? Curll invites to dine,He'll write a journal, or he'll turn divine.'Bless me! a packet.—''Tis a stranger sues,A virgin tragedy, an orphan Muse.'If I dislike it, 'Furies, death, and rage!'If I approve, 'Commend it to the stage.'There (thank my stars) my whole commission ends,The players and I are, luckily, no friends.Fired that the house reject him, ''Sdeath I'll print it,And shame the fools—Your interest, sir, with Lintot!''Lintot, dull rogue! will think your price too much:''Not, sir, if you revise it, and retouch.'All my demurs but double his attacks;At last he whispers, 'Do; and we go snacks.'Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door;'Sir, let me see your works and you no more.'
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There are, who to my person pay their court:I cough like Horace, and, though lean, am short,Ammon's great son one shoulder had too high,Such Ovid's nose, and 'Sir! you have an eye'—Go on, obliging creatures, make me seeAll that disgraced my betters, met in me.Say for my comfort, languishing in bed,'Just so immortal Maro held his head:'And when I die, be sure you let me knowGreat Homer died three thousand years ago.Why did I write? what sin to me unknownDipped me in ink, my parents', or my own?As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.I left no calling for this idle trade,No duty broke, no father disobeyed.The Muse but served to ease some friend, not wife,To help me through this long disease, my life,To second, Arbuthnot! thy art and care,And teach the being you preserved, to bear.But why then publish? Granville the polite,And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise,And Congreve loved, and Swift endured my lays;The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield, read;Even mitred Rochester would nod the head,And St. John's self (great Dryden's friends before)With open arms received one poet more.Happy my studies, when by these approved!Happier their author, when by these beloved!From these the world will judge of men and books,Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes.Soft were my numbers; who could take offenceWhile pure description held the place of sense?Like gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme,A painted mistress, or a purling stream.Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill;—I wished the man a dinner, and sat still.Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret;I never answered—I was not in debt.If want provoked, or madness made them print,I waged no war with Bedlam or the Mint.Did some more sober critic come aboard;If wrong, I smiled; if right, I kissed the rod.Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence,And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense.Commas and points they set exactly right,And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite;Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel graced these ribalds,From slashing Bentley down to piddling Tibbalds.Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells,Each word-catcher, that lives on syllables,Even such small critics some regard may claim,Preserved in Milton's or in Shakespeare's name.Pretty! in amber to observe the formsOf hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms!The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,But wonder how the devil they got there.Were others angry: I excused them too;Well might they rage, I gave them but their due.A man's true merit 'tis not hard to find;But each man's secret standard in his mind,—That casting-weight pride adds to emptiness,—This, who can gratify? for who can guess?The bard whom pilfered Pastorals renown,Who turns a Persian tale for half a crown,Just writes to make his barrenness appear,And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year;He, who still wanting, though he lives on theft,Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left;And he, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,Means not, but blunders round about a meaning;And he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad,It is not poetry, but prose run mad:All these, my modest satire bade translate,And owned that nine such poets made a Tate.How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe!And swear, not Addison himself was safe.Peace to all such! but were there one whose firesTrue genius kindles, and fair fame inspires;Blessed with each talent and each art to please,And born to write, converse, and live with ease:Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend;Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged,And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged;Like Cato, give his little senate laws,And sit attentive to his own applause;While wits and Templars every sentence raise,And wonder with a foolish face of praise—Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?Who would not weep, if Atticus were he!
* * * * *
Oh, let me live my own, and die so too!(To live and die is all I have to do:)Maintain a poet's dignity and ease,And see what friends, and read what books I please;Above a patron, though I condescendSometimes to call a minister my friend.I was not born for courts or great affairs;I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers;Can sleep without a poem in my head,Nor know, if Dennis be alive or dead.Why am I asked what next shall see the light?Heavens! was I born for nothing but to write?Has life no joys for me? or (to be grave)Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save?'I found him close with Swift.'—'Indeed? no doubt,'Cries prating Balbus, 'something will come out.''Tis all in vain, deny it as I will.'No, such a genius never can lie still;'And then for mine obligingly mistakesThe first lampoon Sir Will or Bubo makes.Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile,When every coxcomb knows me by my style?Cursed be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,That tends to make one worthy man my foe,Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear!But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace,Insults fallen worth, or beauty in distress;Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about;Who writes a libel, or who copies out;That fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,Yet absent, wounds an author's honest fame;Who can your merit selfishly approve,And show the sense of it without the love;Who has the vanity to call you friend,Yet wants the honour, injured, to defend;Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,And, if he lie not, must at least betray;Who to the Dean and silver bell can swear,And sees at Canons what was never there;Who reads, but with a lust to misapply,Make satire a lampoon, and fiction, lie:A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.
* * * * *
Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause,While yet in Britain honour had applause)Each parent sprung—-A.What fortune, pray?—P.Their own,And better got, than Bestia's from the throne.Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,Nor marrying discord in a noble wife,Stranger to civil and religious rage,The good man walked innoxious through his age.No courts he saw, no suits would ever try,Nor dared an oath, nor hazarded a lie.Unlearn'd, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,No language, but the language of the heart.By nature honest, by experience wise,Healthy by temperance, and by exercise;His life, though long, to sickness passed unknown,His death was instant, and without a groan.O grant me thus to live, and thus to die!Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I.O friend! may each domestic bliss be thine!Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:Me, let the tender office long engage,To rock the cradle of reposing age,With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death,Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,And keep awhile one parent from the sky!On cares like these if length of days attend,May Heaven, to bless those days, preserve my friend,Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene,And just as rich as when he served a queen.A.Whether that blessing be denied or given,Thus far was right, the rest belongs to Heaven.
[To GEORGE II: ON THE STATE OF LITERATURE]
To thee, the world its present homage paysThe harvest early, but mature the praise:Great friend of liberty! in kings a nameAbove all Greek, above all Roman fame:Whose word is truth, as sacred and revered,As Heaven's own oracles from altars heard.Wonder of kings! like whom, to mortal eyesNone e'er has risen, and none e'er shall rise.
Just in one instance, be it yet confessed,Your people, Sir, are partial in the rest:Foes to all living worth except your own,And advocates for folly dead and gone.Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old;It is the rust we value, not the gold.Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learned by rote,And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote:One likes no language but the Faery Queen;A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green;And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,He swears the muses met him at the Devil.Though justly Greece her eldest sons admires,Why should not we be wiser than our sires?In every public virtue we excel,We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well.And learned Athens to our art must stoop,Could she behold us tumbling through a hoop.If time improves our wit as well as wine,Say at what age a poet grows divine?Shall we, or shall we not, account him so,Who died, perhaps, a hundred years ago?End all dispute; and fix the year preciseWhen British bards begin t' immortalize?'Who lasts a century can have no flaw,I hold that wit a classic, good in law.'Suppose he wants a year, will you compound?And shall we deem him ancient, right and sound,Or damn to all eternity at once,At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce?'We shall not quarrel for a year or two;By courtesy of England, he may do.'Then, by the rule that made the horse-tail bare,I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair,And melt down ancients like a heap of snow:While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe,And estimating authors by the year,Bestow a garland only on a bier.Shakespeare, (whom you and every play-house billStyle the divine, the matchless, what you will,)For gain, not glory, winged his roving flight,And grew immortal in his own despite.Ben, old and poor, as little seemed to heedThe life to come, in every poet's creed.Who now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet,His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;Forgot his epic, nay Pindaric art,But still I love the language of his heart.'Yet surely, surely, these were famous men!What boy but hears the sayings of old Ben?In all debates where critics bear a part,Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art,Of Shakespeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit;How Beaumont's judgment checked what Fletcher writ;How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow;But, for the passions, Southern sure and Rowe.These, only these, support the crowded stage,From eldest Heywood down to Cibber's age.'All this may be; the people's voice is odd,It is, and it is not, the voice of God.To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays,And yet deny the Careless Husband praise,Or say our fathers never broke a rule;Why then, I say, the public is a fool.But let them own, that greater faults than weThey had, and greater virtues, I'll agree.Spenser himself affects the obsolete,And Sidney's verse halts ill on Roman feet:Milton's strong pinion now not heaven can bound,Now serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground,In quibbles angel and archangel join,And God the Father turns a school-divine.Not that I'd lop the beauties from his book,Like slashing Bentley with his desperate hook,Or damn all Shakespeare, like th' affected foolAt court, who hates whate'er he read at school.But for the wits of either Charles's days,The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease;Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more,(Like twinkling stars the Miscellanies o'er,)One simile, that solitary shinesIn the dry desert of a thousand lines,Or lengthened thought that gleams through many a page,Has sanctified whole poems for an age.I lose my patience, and I owe it too,When works are censured, not as bad but new;While if our elders break all reason's laws,These fools demand not pardon, but applause.On Avon's bank, where flowers eternal blow,If I but ask, if any weed can grow;One tragic sentence if I dare derideWhich Betterton's grave action dignified,Or well-mouthed Booth with emphasis proclaims,(Though but, perhaps, a muster-roll of names,)How will our fathers rise up in a rage,And swear all shame is lost in George's age!You'd think no fools disgraced the former reign,Did not some grave examples yet remain,Who scorn a lad should teach his father skill,And, having once been wrong, will be so still.He, who to seem more deep than you or I,Extols old bards, or Merlin's prophecy,Mistake him not; he envies, not admires,And to debase the sons, exalts the sires.Had ancient times conspired to disallowWhat then was new, what had been ancient now?Or what remained, so worthy to be readBy learned critics, of the mighty dead?
* * * * *
Time was, a sober Englishman would knockHis servants up, and rise by five o'clock,Instruct his family in every rule,And send his wife to church, his son to school.To worship like his fathers, was his care;To teach their frugal virtues to his heir;To prove that luxury could never hold;And place, on good security, his gold.Now times are changed, and one poetic itchHas seized the court and city, poor and rich:Sons, sires, and grandsires, all will wear the bays,Our wives read Milton, and our daughters plays,To theatres, and to rehearsals throng,And all our grace at table is a song.I, who so oft renounce the muses, lie,Not ——'s self e'er tells more fibs than I;When sick of Muse, our follies we deplore,And promise our best friends to rhyme no more;We wake next morning in a raging fit,And call for pen and ink to show our wit.He served a prenticeship, who sets up shop;Ward tried on puppies, and the poor, his drop;Even Radcliffe's doctors travel first to France,Nor dare to practise till they've learned to dance.Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile?(Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile;)But those who cannot write, and those who can,All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man.Yet, Sir, reflect, the mischief is not great;These madmen never hurt the church or state:Sometimes the folly benefits mankind;And rarely avarice taints the tuneful mind.Allow him but his plaything of a pen,He ne'er rebels, or plots, like other men:Flight of cashiers, or mobs, he'll never mind;And knows no losses while the Muse is kind.To cheat a friend, or ward, he leaves to Peter,The good man heaps up nothing but mere metre,Enjoys his garden and his book in quiet;And then—a perfect hermit in his diet.Of little use the man you may supposeWho says in verse what others say in prose;Yet let me show, a poet's of some weight,And (though no soldier) useful to the state.What will a child learn sooner than a song?What better teach a foreigner the tongue?What's long or short, each accent where to place,And speak in public with some sort of grace?I scarce can think him such a worthless thing,Unless he praise some monster of a king;Or virtue, or religion turn to sport,To please a lewd, or unbelieving Court.Unhappy Dryden!—In all Charles's days,Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays;And in our own (excuse some courtly stains)No whiter page than Addison remains.He, from the taste obscene reclaims our youth,And sets the passions on the side of truth,Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art,And pours each human virtue in the heart.Let Ireland tell, how wit upheld her cause,Her trade supported, and supplied her laws;And leave on Swift this grateful verse engraved,'The rights a court attacked, a poet saved.'Behold the hand that wrought a nation's cure,Stretched to relieve the idiot and the poor,Proud vice to brand, or injured worth adorn,And stretch the ray to ages yet unborn.Not but there are, who merit other palms;Hopkins and Sternhold glad the heart with psalms:The boys and girls whom charity maintains,Implore your help in these pathetic strains:How could devotion touch the country pews,Unless the Gods bestowed a proper Muse?Verse cheers their leisure, verse assists their work,Verse prays for peace, or sings down Pope and Turk,The silenced preacher yields to potent strain,And feels that grace his prayer besought in vain;The blessing thrills through all the labouring throng,And Heaven is won by violence of song.Our rural ancestors, with little blessed,Patient of labour when the end was rest,Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,With feasts, and offerings, and a thankful strain:The joy their wives, their sons, and servants share,Ease of their toil, and partners of their care:The laugh, the jest, attendants on the bowl,Smoothed every brow, and opened every soul:With growing years the pleasing licence grew,And taunts alternate innocently flew.But times corrupt, and nature, ill-inclined,Produced the point that left a sting behind;Till friend with friend, and families at strife,Triumphant malice raged through private life.Who felt the wrong, or feared it, took th' alarm,Appealed to law, and justice lent her arm.At length, by wholesome dread of statutes bound,The poets learned to please, and not to wound:Most warped to flattery's side; but some, more nice,Preserved the freedom, and forbore the vice.Hence satire rose, that just the medium hit,And heals with morals what it hurts with wit.We conquered France, but felt our captive's charms;Her arts victorious triumphed o'er our arms;Britain to soft refinements less a foe,Wit grew polite, and numbers learned to flow.Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to joinThe varying verse, the full-resounding line,The long majestic march, and energy divine.Though still some traces of our rustic vein,And splay-foot verse, remained, and will remain.Late, very late, correctness grew our care,When the tired nation breathed from civil war.Exact Racine, and Corneille's noble fire,Showed us that France had something to admire.Not but the tragic spirit was our own,And full in Shakespeare, fair in Otway shone:But Otway failed to polish or refine,And fluent Shakespeare scarce effaced a line.Even copious Dryden wanted, or forgot,The last and greatest art, the art to blot.Some doubt, if equal pains, or equal fireThe humbler muse of comedy require.But in known images of life, I guessThe labour greater, as th' indulgence less.Observe how seldom even the best succeed:Tell me if Congreve's fools are fools indeed?What pert, low dialogue has Farquhar writ!How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit!The stage how loosely does Astraea tread,Who fairly puts all characters to bed!And idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws,To make poor Pinky eat with vast applause!But fill their purse, our poet's work is done,Alike to them, by pathos or by pun.
* * * * *
Yet lest you think I rally more than teach,Or praise malignly arts I cannot reach,Let me for once presume t' instruct the timesTo know the poet from the man of rhymes:'Tis he who gives my breast a thousand pains,Can make me feel each passion that he feigns;Enrage, compose, with more than magic art,With pity, and with terror, tear my heart;And snatch me, o'er the earth, or through the air,To Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where.
Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to seeMen not afraid of God, afraid of me:Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne,Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.O sacred weapon! left for truth's defense,Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence!To all but Heaven-directed hands denied,The Muse may give thee, but the gods must guide:Reverent I touch thee! but with honest zeal,To rouse the watchmen of the public weal;To virtue's work provoke the tardy hall,And goad the prelate slumbering in his stall,Ye tinsel insects! whom a court maintains,That counts your beauties only by your stains,Spin all your cobwebs, o'er the eye of day!The Muse's wing shall brush you all away.
Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne,And laughs to think Monroe would take her down,Where o'er the gates, by his famed father's hand,Great Cibber's brazen brainless brothers stand,One cell there is, concealed from vulgar eye.The cave of Poverty and Poetry.Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess,Emblem of music caused by emptiness.Hence bards, like Proteus long in vain tied down,Escape in monsters, and amaze the town.Hence Miscellanies spring, the weekly boastOf Curll's chaste press and Lintot's rubric post;Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines;Hence Journals, Medleys, Mercuries, Magazines,Sepulchral lies, our holy walls to grace,And New-year odes, and all the Grub Street race.In clouded majesty here Dulness shone.Four guardian Virtues, round, support her throne:Fierce champion Fortitude, that knows no fearsOf hisses, blows, or want, or loss of ears;Calm Temperance, whose blessings those partakeWho hunger and who thirst for scribbling sake;Prudence, whose glass presents th' approaching jail;Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale,Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,And solid pudding against empty praise.Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep,Where nameless somethings in their causes sleep,Till genial Jacob or a warm third dayCall forth each mass, a poem or a play:How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie;How new-born nonsense first is taught to cry;Maggots, half formed, in rhyme exactly meet,And learn to crawl upon poetic feet.Here one poor word an hundred clenches makes,And ductile Dulness new meanders takes;There motley images her fancy strike,Figures ill paired, and similes unlike.She sees a mob of metaphors advance,Pleased with the madness of the mazy dance;How Tragedy and Comedy embrace;How Farce and Epic get a jumbled race;How Time himself stands still at her command,Realms shift their place, and ocean turns to land.Here gay description Egypt glads with showers,Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flowers;Glittering with ice here hoary hills are seen,There painted valleys of eternal green;In cold December fragrant chaplets blow,And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow.All these and more the cloud-compelling queenBeholds through fogs, that magnify the scene:She, tinselled o'er in robes of varying hues,With self-applause her wild creation views;Sees momentary monsters rise and fall,And with her own fools-colours gilds them all.
* * * * *
In each she marks her image full expressed,But chief In Bays's monster-breeding breast;Bays, formed by nature stage and town to bless,And act, and be, a coxcomb with success.Dulness with transport eyes the lively dunce,Rememb'ring she herself was Pertness once.Now (shame to Fortune!) an ill run at playBlanked his bold visage, and a thin third day:Swearing and supperless the hero sate,Blasphemed his gods, the dice, and damned his fate;Then gnawed his pen, then dashed it on the ground,Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound!Plunged for his sense, but found no bottom there;Yet wrote and floundered on in mere despair.Round him much embryo, much abortion lay,Much future ode, and abdicated play;Nonsense precipitate, like running lead,That slipped through cracks and zigzags of the head;All that on Folly Frenzy could beget,Fruits of dull heat, and sooterkins of wit.Next o'er his books his eyes began to roll,In pleasing memory of all he stole—How here he sipped, how there he plundered snug,And sucked all o'er like an industrious bug.Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes, and hereThe frippery of crucified Molière;There hapless Shakespeare, yet of Tibbald sore,Wished he had blotted for himself before.
* * * * *
In vain, in vain—the all-composing hourResistless falls: the Muse obeys the power.She comes! she comes! the sable throne beholdOf Night primeval and of Chaos old!Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay,And all its varying rainbows die away.Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,The sickening stars fade off th' ethereal plain;As Argus' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppressed,Closed one by one to everlasting rest:Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,Art after art goes out, and all is night.See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head!Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!See Mystery to Mathematics fly!In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,And unawares Morality expires.Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored;Light dies before thy uncreating word:Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;And universal darkness buries all.
Exert thy voice, sweet harbinger of Spring!This moment is thy time to sing,This moment I attend to praise,And set my numbers to thy lays.Free as thine shall be my song;As thy music, short, or long.Poets, wild as thee, were born,Pleasing best when unconfined,When to please is least designed,Soothing but their cares to rest;Cares do still their thoughts molest,And still th' unhappy poet's breast,Like thine, when best he sings, is placed against a thorn.She begins, let all be still!Muse, thy promise now fulfil!Sweet, oh! sweet, still sweeter yet!Can thy words such accents fit?Canst thou syllables refine,Melt a sense that shall retainStill some spirit of the brain,Till with sounds like these it join?'Twill not be! then change thy note;Let division shake thy throat.Hark! division now she tries;Yet as far the muse outflies.Cease then, prithee, cease thy tune;Trifler, wilt thou sing till June?Till thy business all lies waste,And the time of building's past!Thus we poets that have speech,Unlike what thy forests teach,If a fluent vein be shownThat's transcendent to our own,Criticise, reform, or preach,Or censure what we cannot reach.
In such a night, when every louder windIs to its distant cavern safe confined,And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings,And lonely Philomel, still waking, sings;Or from some tree, famed for the owl's delight,She hollowing clear, directs the wanderer right;In such a night, when passing clouds give place,Or thinly veil the heaven's mysterious face;When in some river, overhung with green,The waving moon and trembling leaves are seen;When freshened grass now bears itself upright,And makes cool banks to pleasing rest invite,Whence springs the woodbine and the bramble-rose,And where the sleepy cowslip sheltered grows;Whilst now a paler hue the foxglove takes,Yet chequers still with red the dusky brakes;When scattered glow-worms, but in twilight fine,Show trivial beauties watch their hour to shine,Whilst Salisbury stands the test of every lightIn perfect charms and perfect virtue bright;When odours which declined repelling dayThrough temperate air uninterrupted stray;When darkened groves their softest shadows wear,And falling waters we distinctly hear;When through the gloom more venerable showsSome ancient fabric, awful in repose,While sunburnt hills their swarthy looks concealAnd swelling haycocks thicken up the vale;When the loosed horse now, as his pasture leads,Comes slowly grazing through th' adjoining meads,Whose stealing pace, and lengthened shade we fear,Till torn up forage in his teeth we hear;When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,And unmolested kine re-chew the cud;When curlews cry beneath the village-walls,And to her straggling brood the partridge calls;Their shortlived jubilee the creatures keep,Which but endures whilst tyrant-man does sleep;When a sedate content the spirit feels,And no fierce light disturb, whilst it reveals;But silent musings urge the mind to seekSomething too high for syllables to speak;Till the free soul to a composedness charmed,Finding the elements of rage disarmed,O'er all below a solemn quiet grown,Joys in th' inferior world and thinks it like her own:In such a night let me abroad remainTill morning breaks and all's confused again;Our cares, our toils, our clamours are renewed,Or pleasures, seldom reached, again pursued.