When to the grave we follow the renown'd For valour, virtue, science, all we love,
And all we praise; for worth, whose noon-tide
Enabling us to think in higher style,
Mends our ideas of ethereal powers;
Dream we, that lustre of the moral world
Goes out in stench, and rottenness the close?
Why was he wise to know, and warm to praise,
And strenuous to transcribe, in human life,
The mind Almighty? Could it be, that fate,
Just when the lineaments began to shine,
And dawn the Deity, should snatch the draught,
With night eternal blot it out, and give
The skies alarm, lest angels too might die?
If human souls, why not angelic too
Extinguish'd? and a solitary God,
O'er ghastly ruin, frowning from his throne?
Shall we this moment gaze on God in man?
The next, lose man for ever in the dust?
From dust we disengage, or man mistakes;
And there, where least his judgment fears a flaw.
Wisdom and worth, how boldly he commends!
Wisdom and worth are sacred names; rever'd,
Where not embrac'd; applauded! deified!
Why not compassion'd too? If spirits die,
Both are calamities, inflicted both,
To make us but more wretched: Wisdom's eye
Acute, for what? to spy more miseries
And worth, so recompens'd, new points their stings.
Or man surmounts the grave, or gain is loss,
And worth exalted bumbles us the more.
Thou wilt not patronize a scheme that makes
Weakness, and vice, the refuge of mankind.
"Has virtue, then, no joys?"—Yes, joys dearbought.
Talk ne'er so long, in this imperfect state,
Virtue and vice are at eternal war,
Virtue's a combat; and who fights for nought?
Or for precarious, or for small reward?
Who virtue's self-reward so loud resound,
Would take degrees angelic here below,
And virtue, while they compliment, betray,
By feeble motives, and unfaithful guards.
The crown, th' unfading crown, her soul inspires :
'Tis that, and that alone, can countervail
The body's treacheries, and the world's assaults:
On earth's poor pay our famisht virtue dies.
Truth incontestable ! in spite of all
A Bayle has preach'd, or a Voltaire believ'd.
In man the more we dive, the more we see
Heaven's signet stamping an immortal make.
Dive to the bottom of his soul, the base
Sustaining all; what find we? knowledge, love.
As light and heat, essential to the sun,
These to the soul. And why, if souls expire?
How little lovely here? how little known?
Small knowledge we dig up with endless toil;
And love unfeign'd may purchase perfect hate.
Why starv'd, on earth, our angel appetites;
While brutal are indulg'd their fulsome fill?
Were then capacities divine conferr'd,
As a mock-diadem, in savage sport,
Rank insult of our pompous poverty,
Which reaps but pain, from seeming claims so fair?
In future age lies no redress? And shuts
Eternity the door on our complaint?
If so, for what strange ends were mortals made!
The worst to wallow, and the best to weep;
The man who merits most, must most complain :
Can we conceive a disregard in heaven,
What the worst perpetrate, or best endure?
This cannot be. To love, and know, in man
Is boundless appetite, and boundless power;
And these demonstrate boundless objects too.
Objects, powers, appetites, heaven suits in all;
Nor, nature thro', e'er violates this sweet,
Eternal concord, on her tuneful string.
Is man the sole exception from her laws?
Eternity struck off from human hope,
(I speak with truth, but veneration too,)
Man is a monster, the reproach of heaven,
A stain, a dark impenetrable cloud
On nature's beauteous aspect; and deforms,
(Amazing blot!) deforms her with her lord.
If such is man's allotment, what is heaven?
Or own the soul immortal, or blaspheme.
Or own the soul immortal, or invert
All order. Go, mock majesty! go, man.
And bow to thy superiors of the stall;
Thro' every scene of sense superior far:
They graze the turf untill'd, they drink the stream Unbrew'd, and ever full, and unembitter'd
With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, de
Mankind's peculiar! reason's precious dower!
No foreign clime they ransack for their robes;
Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar;
Their good is good entire, unmixt, unmarr❜d;
They find a paradise in every field,
On boughs forbidden where no curses hang:
Their ill no more than strikes the sense; unstretcht
By previous dread, or murmur in the rear:
When the worst comes, it comes unfear'd; one
Begins, and ends, their woe: they die but once;
Blest, incommunicable privilege! for which
Proud man, who rules the globe, and reads the stars,
Philosopher, or hero, sighs in vain.
Account for this prerogative in brutes.
No day, no glimpse of day to solve the knot,
But what beams on it from eternity.
O sole, and sweet solution! that unties
The difficult, and softens the severe;
The cloud on nature's beauteous face dispels;
Restores bright order; casts the brute beneath;
And re-inthrones us in supremacy
Of joy, ev'n here: admit immortal life,
And virtue is knight-errantry no more;
Each virtue brings in hand a golden dower,
Far richer in reversion: hope exults;
And tho' much bitter in our cup is thrown,
Predominates, and gives the taste of heaven.
O wherefore is the Deity so kind?
Astonishing beyond astonishment!
Heaven our reward for heaven enjoy'd below.
Still unsubdu'd thy stubborn heart? — For there
The traitor lurks who doubts the truth I sing.
Reason is guiltless; will alone rebels.
What, in that stubborn heart, if I should find
New, unexpected witnesses against thee?
Ambition, pleasure, and the love of gain!
Canst thou suspect, that these, which make the soul
The slave of earth, should own her heir of heaven?
Canst thou suspect what makes us disbelieve
Our immortality, should prove it sure?
First, then, ambition, summon to the bar.
Ambition's shame, extravagance, disgust,
And inextinguishable nature, speak.
Each much deposes; hear them in their turn.
Thy soul, how passionately fond of fame!
How anxious, that fond passion to conceal!
We blush, detected in designs on praise,
Tho' for best deeds, and from the best of men :
And why? Because immortal. Art divine
Has made the body tutor to the soul;
Heaven kindly gives our blood a moral flow;
Bids it ascend the glowing cheek, and there
Upbraid that little heart's inglorious aim,
Which stoops to court a character from man;
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