The beginning of the SECOND BOOK of
IS pleasant, fafely to behold from fhore
The rowling fhip, and hear the tempeft roar:
Not that another's pain is our delight;
But pains unfelt produce the pleafing fight.
'Tis pleasant also to behold from far
The moving legions mingled in the war.
But much more sweet thy lab'ring steps to guide
To virtue's heights, with wifdom well fupply'd,
And all the magazines of learning fortify'd:
From thence to look below on human kind,
Bewilder'd in the maze of life, and blind:
To fee vain fools ambitiously contend
For wit and pow'r; their laft endeavours bend
T'outfhine each other, wafte their time and health
In fearch of honour, and purfuit of wealth.
O wretched man! in what a mift of life,
Inclos'd with dangers and with noisy strife,
He fpends his little fpan; and overfeeds
His cramm'd defires, with more than nature needs!
For nature wifely ftints our appetite,
And craves no more than undisturb'd delight:
Which minds, unmix'd with cares and fears obtain ;
A foul ferene, a body void of pain.
So little this corporeal frame requires;
So bounded are our natural defires,
That wanting all, and fetting pain afide,
With bare privation fenfe is fatisfy'd.
If golden fconces hang not on the walls,
To light the coftly suppers and the balls;
If the proud palace fhines not with the state
Of burnish'd bowls, and of reflected plate;
If well-tun'd harps, nor the more pleasing found
Of voices, from the vaulted roofs rebound;
Yet on the grafs, beneath a poplar fhade,
By the cool ftream, our careless limbs are lay'd;
With cheaper pleasures innocently blest,
When the warm fpring with gaudy flow'rs is dreft.
Nor will the raging fever's fire abate,
With golden canopies and beds of state:
But the poor patient will as foon be found
On the hard mattress, or the mother ground.
Then fince our bodies are not eas'd the more
By birth, or pow'r, or fortune's wealthy store,
'Tis plain, thefe ufelefs toys of every kind
As little can relieve the lab'ring mind:
Unless we could fuppofe the dreadful fight
Of marshal'd legions moving to the fight,
Could, with their found and terrible array,
Expel our fears, and drive the thoughts of death away.
But, fince the fuppofition vain appears,
Since clinging cares, and trains of inbred fears,
Are not with founds to be affrighted thence,
But in the midst of pomp purfue the prince,
Not aw'd by arms, but in the prefence bold,
Without refpect to purple, or to gold;
Why fhould not we thefe pageantries defpife;
Whofe worth but in our want of reafon lies?
For life is all in wand'ring errors led;
And just as children are furpriz'd with dread,
And tremble in the dark, fo riper years
E'en in broad day-light are poffefs'd with fears;
And fhake at fhadows fanciful and vain,
As thofe which in the breafts of children reign.
Thefe bugbears of the mind, this inward hell, rays of outward funfhine can difpel;
But nature and right reafon must display
Their beams abroad, and bring the darksome foul to-day.
Against the Fear of Death.
HAT has this bugbear death to frighten men,
If fouls can die, as well as bodies can ?
For, as before our birth we felt no pain,
When Punic arms infefted land and main,
When Heav'n and earth were in confufion hurl'd
For the debated empire of the world,
Which aw'd with dreadful expectation lay,
Sure to be flaves, uncertain who fhould fway:
So, when our mortal flame fhall be disjoin'd,
The lifeless lump uncoupled from the mind,
From sense of grief and pain we shall be free;
We shall not feel, because we shall not Be.
Tho' earth in feas, and feas in Heav'n were loft,
We should not move, we only fhould be toft.
Nay, even fuppose when we have suffer'd fate,
The foul could feel in her divided state,
What's that to us? for we are only We
While fouls and bodies in one frame agree.
Nay, tho' our atoms fhould revolve by chance,
And matter leap into the former dance;
Tho' time our life and motion could restore,
And make our bodies what they were before,
What gain to us would all this buftle bring?
The new-made man would be another thing.
When once an interrupting paufe is made,
That individual being is decay'd.
We, who are dead and gone, fhall bear no part
In all the pleasures, nor fhall feel the smart,
Which to that other mortal fhall accrue,
Whom of our matter time fhall mould anew.
For backward if you look on that long space
Of ages paft, and view the changing face
Of matter, toft and variously combin'd
In fundry shapes, 'tis eafy for the mind
From thence t' infer, that feeds of things have been
In the fame order as they now are seen :
Which yet our dark remembrance cannot trace,
Because a paufe of life, a gaping space,
Has come betwixt, where memory lies dead,
And all the wand'ring motions from the sense are fled. For whofoe'er fhall in misfortunes live,
Muft Be, when those misfortunes shall arrive ;
And fince the man who Is not, feels not woe,
(For death exempts him, and wards off the blow, Which we, the living, only feel and bear)
What is there left for us in death to fear ?
When once that paufe of life has come between,
'Tis just the fame as we had never been.
And therefore if a man bemoan his lot,
That after death his mould'ring limbs fhall rot,
Or flames, or jaws of beafts devour his mass,
Know, he's an unfincere, unthinking afs.
A fecret fting remains within his mind;
The fool is to his own caft offals kind.
He boats no fenfe can after death remain ;
Yet makes himself a part of life again;
As if fome other He could feel the pain.
İf, while we live, this thought moleft his head,
What wolf or vulture fhall devour me dead?
He waftes his days in idle grief, nor can
Distinguish 'twixt the body and the man ;
But thinks himself can ftill himself furvive;
And, what when dead he feels not, feels alive.
Then he repines that he was born to die,
Nor knows in death there is no other He,
No living He remains his grief to vent,
And o'er his fenfelefs carcafe to lament.
If after death 'tis painful to be torn
By birds, and beafts, then why not fo to burn,
Or drench'd in floods of honey to be foak'd,
Imbalm'd to be at once preferv'd and choak'd;
Or on an airy mountain's top to lie,
Expos'd to cold and Heav'n's inclemency;
Or crowded in a tomb to be opprest
With monumental marble on thy breast?
But to be fnatch'd from all the houshold joys,
From thy chafte wife, and thy dear prattling boys,
Whofe little arms about thy legs are caft,
And climbing for a kifs prevent their mother's hafte,
Infpiring fecret pleafure thro' thy breaft;
Ah! thefe fhall be no more: thy friends opprest
Thy care and courage now no more fhall free;
Ah! wretch, thou cry'st, ah! miferable me ?
One woful day fweeps children, friends, and wife,
And all the brittle bleffings of my life!
Add one thing more, and all thou fay'st is true;
Thy want and with of them is vanish'd too:
Which well confider'd were a quick relief
To all thy vain imaginary grief.
'For thou shalt fleep, and never wake again,
And, quitting life, fhalt quit thy living pain.
But we thy friends fhall all thofe forrows find,
Which in forgetful death thou leav'ft behind;
No time fhall dry our tears, nor drive thee from our mind.
VOL. II.
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