And tho' success disgusts; yet still, LORENZO!
In vain we strive to pluck it from our hearts;
By nature planted for the noblest ends.
Absurd the fam'd advice to PYRRHUS given,
More prais'd, than ponder'd; specious, but unsound; Sooner than hero's sword the world had quell'd,
Than reason, his ambition.
An obstinate activity within,
An insuppressive spring, will toss him up
In spite of fortune's load. Not kings alone,
Each villager has his ambition too;
No Sultan prouder than his fetter'd slave:
Slaves build their little Babylons of straw,
Echo the proud Assyrian, in their hearts,
And cry," Behold the wonders of my might!"
And why? Because immortal as their lord;
And souls immortal must for ever heave
At something great; the glitter, or the gold;
The praise of mortals, or the praise of heaven.
Nor absolutely vain is human praise,
When human is supported by divine.
I'll introduce LORENZO to Himself;
Pleasure and pride (bad masters) share our hearts.
As love of pleasure is ordain'd to guard
And feed our bodies, and extend our race;
The love of praise is planted to protect,
And propagate the glories of the mind.
What is it, but the love of praise, inspires,
Matures, refines, embellishes, exalts,
Earth's happiness? From that, the delicate,
The grand, the marvellous, of civil life,
Want and convenience, under-workers, lay
The basis, on which love of glory builds.
Nor is thy life, O virtue! less in debt
To praise, thy secret stimulating friend.
Were men not proud, what merit should we miss!
Pride made the virtues of the pagan world.
Praise is the salt that seasons right to man,
And whets his appetite for moral good.
Thirst of applause is virtue's second guard;
Reason, her first; but reason wants an aid;
Our private reason is a flatterer;
Thirst of appause calls public judgment in,
To poise our own, to keep an even scale,
And give endanger'd virtue fairer play.
Here a fifth proof arises, stronger still:
Why this so nice construction of our hearts?
These delicate moralities of sense;
This constitutional reserve of aid
To succour virtue, when our reason fails;
If virtue, kept alive by care and toil,
And oft the mark of injuries on earth,
When labour'd to maturity (its bill
Of disciplines, and pains, unpaid) must die?
Why freighted-rich, to dash against a rock?
Were man to perish when most fit to live,
O how mis-spent were all these stratagems,
By skill divine inwoven in our frame !
Where are heav'n's holiness and mercy fled?
Laughs heav'n, at once, at virtue, and at man?
If not, why that discourag d, this destroy'd?
Thus far ambition. What
What says avarice?
This her chief maxim, which has long been Thine:
"The wise and wealthy are the same,"-I
To store up treasure with incessant toil,
This is man's province, this his highest praise.
To this great end keen instinct stings him on.
To guide that instinct, reason! is thy charge;
'Tis thine to tell us where true treasure lies:
But, reason failing to discharge her trust,
Or to the deaf discharging it in vain,
A blunder follows; and blind industry,
Gall'd by the spur, but stranger to the course,
(The course where stakes of more than gold are won) O'er-loading, with the cares of distant age,
The jaded spirits of the present hour,
Provides for an eternity below.
"Thou shalt not covet," is a wise command; But bounded to the wealth the sun surveys: Look farther, the command stands quite revers'd, And av'rice is a virtue most divine.
Is faith a refuge for our happiness?
Most sure: And is it not for reason too?
Nothing this world unriddles, but the next.
Whence inextinguishable thirst of gain?
From inextinguishable life in man:
Man, if not meant, by worth, to reach the skies,
Had wanted wing to fly so far in guilt.
Sour grapes, I grant, ambition, avarice,
Yet still their root is immortality:
These its wild growths so bitter, and so base,
(Pain and reproach!) religion can reclaim,
Refine, exalt, throw down their pois'nous lee,
And make them sparkle in the bowl of bliss.
See, the third witness laughs at bliss remote,
And falsely promises an Eden here:
Truth she shall speak for once, tho' prone to lye,
A common cheat, and Pleasure is her name.
To pleasure never was LORENZO deaf;
Then hear her now, now first thy real friend.
Since nature made us not more fond than proud
Of happiness (whence hypocrites in joy!
Makers of mirth artificers of smiles!)
Why should the joy most poignant sense affords,
Burn us with blushes, and rebuke our pride?-
Those heav'n-born blushes tell us man descends,
Ev'n in the zenith of his earthly bliss:
Should reason take her infidel repose,
This honest instinct speaks our lineage high;
This instinct calls on darkness to conceal
rapturous relation to the stalls.
Our glory covers us with noble shame,
And he that's unconfounded, is unmann'd.
The man that blushes, is not quite a brute.
Thus far with Thee, LORENZO! will I close,
Pleasure is good, and man for pleasure made;
But pleasure full of glory, as of joy ;
Pleasure, which neither blushes, nor expires.
The witnesses are heard; the cause is o'er ; Let conscience file the sentence in her court, Dearer than deeds that half a realm convey;
Thus seal'd by truth, th' authentic record runs,
"Know All; know, infidels,-unapt to know!
"'Tis immortality your nature solves;
""Tis immortality decyphers man,
"And opens all the myst'ries of his make.
"Without it, half his instincts are a riddle;
"Without it, all his virtues are a dream.
"His very crimes attest his dignity;
"His sateless thirst of pleasure, gold, and fame,
"Declares him born for blessings infinite:
"What less than infinite makes un-absurd "Passions, which all on earth but more inflames? "Fierce passions, so mis-measur'd to this scene, "Stretch'd out, like eagles wings, beyond our nest, "Far, far beyond the worth of all below, "For earth too large, presage a nobler flight, "And evidence our title to the skies."
Ye gentle theologues, of calmer kind!
Whose constitution dictates to your pen,
Who, cold yourselves, think ardour comes from hell!
Think not our passions from corruption sprung,
Tho' to corruption now they lend their wings;
That is their mistress, not their mother. All
(And justly) reason deem divine: I see,
I feel a grandeur in the passions too,
Which speaks their high descent, and glorious end; Which speaks them rays of an eternal fire.
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