Of Paradise that has survived the fall! Though few now taste thee unimpair'd and pure, Or tasting, long enjoy thee, too infirm. Or too incautious to preserve thy sweets Unmixt with drops of bitter, which neglect Or temper sheds into thy crystal cup; Thou art the nurse of virtue. In thine arms She smiles, appearing, as in truth she is, Heaven-born and destined to the skies again. Thou art not known where Pleasure is adored, That reeling goddess with the zoneless waist And wandering eyes, still leaning on the arm Of Novelty, her fickle frail support;
For thou art meek and constant, hating change, And finding in the calm of truth-tied love Joys that her stormy raptures never yield. Forsaking thee, what shipwreck have we made Of honour, dignity, and fair renown, Till prostitution elbows us aside
In all our crowded streets, and senates seem Convened for purposes of empire less,
Than to release the adulteress from her bond. The adulteress ! what a theme for angry verse, What provocation to the indignant heart That feels for injured love! but I disdain The nauseous task to paint her as she is, Cruel, abandon'd, glorying in her shame. No. Let her pass, and charioted along In guilty splendour, shake the public ways! The frequency of crimes has wash'd them white; And verse of mine shall never brand the wretch, Whom matrons now of character unsmirched
And chaste themselves, are not ashamed to own. Virtue and vice had boundaries in old time Not to be pass'd; and she that had renounced Her sex's honour, was renounced herself By all that prized it; not for prudery's sake, But dignity's, resentful of the wrong.
'Twas hard perhaps on here and there a waif Desirous to return and not received; But was an wholesome rigour in the main, And taught the unblemish'd to preserve with care That purity, whose loss was loss of all. Men too were nice in honour in those days, And judged offenders well. And he that sharp'd, And pocketed a prize by fraud obtain'd,
Was mark'd and shunn'd as odious. He that sold His country, or was slack when she required His every nerve in action and at stretch, Paid with the blood that he had basely spared The price of his default. But now, yes, now, We are become so candid and so fair, So liberal in construction, and so rich In christian charity, a good-natured age! That they are safe, sinners of either sex,
Transgress what laws they may. Well dress'd, well bred, Well equipaged, is ticket good enough
To pass us readily through every door. Hypocrisy, detest her as we may,
(And no man's hatred ever wrong'd her yet,) May claim this merit still, that she admits The worth of what she mimics with such care,
Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.
And thus gives virtue indirect applause ; But she has burnt her mask not needed here, Where vice has such allowance, that her shifts And specious semblances have lost their use. I was a stricken deer that left the herd Long since with many an arrow deep infixt My panting side was charged when I withdrew To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. There was I found by one who had himself Been hurt by the archers. In his side he bore And in his hands and feet the cruel scars.
With gentle force soliciting the darts
He drew them forth, and heal'd and bade me live. Since then, with few associates, in remote
And silent woods I wander, far from those My former partners of the peopled scene, With few associates, and not wishing more. Here much I ruminate, as much I may, With other views of men and manners now Than once, and others of a life to come. I see that all are wanderers, gone astray, Each in his own delusions; they are lost In chase of fancied happiness, still wooed
And never won. Dream after dream ensues,
And still they dream that they shall still succeed,
And still are disappointed; rings the world
With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind,
And add two-thirds of the remainder half,
And find the total of their hopes and fears
Dreams, empty dreams. The million flit as gay As if created only, like the fly
That spreads his motley wings in the eye of noon, 135
To sport their season and be seen no more. The rest are sober dreamers, grave and wise, And pregnant with discoveries new and rare. Some write a narrative of wars and feats Of heroes little known, and call the rant An history"; describe the man, of whom
His own coevals took but little note,
And paint his person, character and views,
As they had known him from his mother's womb. They disentangle from the puzzled skein
In which obscurity has wrapp'd them up, The threads of politic and shrewd design
That ran through all his purposes, and charge His mind with meanings that he never had, Or having, kept conceal'd. Some drill and bore The solid earth, and from the strata there
Extract a register, by which we learn That He who made it and reveal'd its date To Moses, was mistaken in its age.
Some more acute and more industrious still Contrive creation; travel nature up
5 Then came Domitian, dragging in Suetonius: There is no greater pest, said he, than that generation of scribbling rogues the historians, when they have vented the humour and caprice of their own brains, that forsooth must be called-" the Life of such an Emperor."-Quevedo. Vision vii.
6 Great actions, the lustre of which dazzles us, are by politicians represented as the effects of deep designs, whereas they are commonly the effects of caprice and passion.
Rochefoucauld. Maxim vii.
These leave the sense their learning to display,
And these explain the meaning quite away.
Pope. Essay on Crit. 116.
To the sharp peak of her sublimest height,
And tell us whence the stars; why some are fixt, And planetary some; what gave them first
Rotation, from what fountain flow'd their light. 160 Great contest follows, and much learned dust Involves the combatants, each claiming truth, And truth disclaiming both. And thus they spend The little wick of life's poor shallow lamp, In playing tricks with nature, giving laws To distant worlds and trifling in their own./ Is 't not a pity now that tickling rheums Should ever tease the lungs and blear the sight Of oracles like these? Great pity too, That having wielded the elements, and built A thousand systems, each in his own way, They should go out in fume and be forgot? Ah! what is life thus spent? and what are they But frantic who thus spend it? all for smoke,- Eternity for bubbles, proves at last
A senseless bargain. When I see such games Play'd by the creatures of a Power who swears
He his fabric of the heavens
Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move His laughter at their quaint opinions wide Hereafter, when they come to model heaven And calculate the stars, how they will wield The mighty frame, how build, unbuild, contrive, To save appearances. Par. Lost, viii. 76.
5 What win I, if I gain the thing I seek?
A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy : Who buys a minute's worth to wail a week, Or sells eternity to get a toy?
Shakespeare. Turq. and Luc. st. 31.
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