For valour, virtue, fcience, all we love,
And all we praise; for worth, whofe noon-tide beam,
Enabling us to think in higher style,
Mends our ideas of ethereal powers;
Dream we, that luftre of the moral world
Goes out in ftench, and rottennefs the close ?
Why was he wife to know, and warm to praise,
And strenuous to transcribe, in human life,
The Mind Almighty? Could it be, that fate,
Juft when the lineaments began to shine,
And dawn the Deity, fhould fnatch the draught,
With night eternal blot it out, and give
The fkies alarm, left angels too might die?
If human fouls, why not angelic too
Extinguish'd and a folitary God,
O'er ghaftly ruin, frowning from his throne!
Shall we this moment gaze on God in man?
The next, lofe man for ever in the duft?
From duft we difengage, or man mistakes;
And there, where least his judgment fears a flaw, 225
Wisdom and worth how boldly he commends!
Wisdom and worth are facred names; rever'd,
Where not embrac'd; applauded! deify'd!
Why not compaffion'd too? If fpirits die,
Both are calamities, inflicted both,
To make us but more wretched: Wisdom's eye
Acute, for what? To fpy more miseries;
And worth, fo recompens'd, new-points their stings. Or man furmounts the grave, or gain is loss,
And worth exalted humbles 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 dear-bought.
Talk ne'er fo 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 fo 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 affaults:
On earth's poor pay our famish'd 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 fee
Heaven's fignet ftamping an immortal make.
Dive to the bottom of his foul, the base
Sustaining all; what find we? Knowledge, Love.
As light and heat, effential to the fun,
These to the foul. And why, if fouls 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 ftarv'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 favage fport,
Rank infult of our pompous poverty,
Which reaps but pain, from seeming claims fo fair?
In future age lies no redrefs? And fhuts
Eternity the door on our complaint?
If so, for what ftrange ends were mortals made! 270
The worst to wallow, and the best to weep;
The man who merits moft, muft. most complain:
Can we conceive a disregard in heaven,
What the worst perpetrate, or beft endure ?
This cannot be. To love, and know, in man
Is boundless appetite, and boundless power;
And these demonftrate boundless objects too.
Objects, powers, appetites, heaven fuits in All;
Nor, nature through, e'er violates this sweet,
Eternal concord, on her tuneful ftring.
Is man the fole exception from her laws?
Eternity struck off from human hope,
(I fpeak with truth, but veneration too)
Man is a monfter, the reproach of heaven,
A ftain, a dark impenetrable cloud
On nature's beauteous afpect; and deforms,
(Amazing blot!) deforms her with her lord.
If fuch is man's allotment, what is heaven?
Or own the foul immortal, or blafpheme.
Or own the foul immortal, or invert
All order. Go, mock-majesty! go, man!
And bow to thy fuperiors of the stall;
Through every scene of fenfe fuperior far:
They graze the turf untill'd; they drink the ftream
Unbrew'd, and ever full, and un-embitter'd.
With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despairs;
Mankind's peculiar! reafon's precious dower!
No foreign clime they ranfack for their robes;
Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar;
Their good is good intire, unmixt, unmarr'd; 300
They find a paradise in every field,
On boughs forbidden where no curses hang:
Their ill no more than ftrikes the fenfe; unftretcht
By previous dread, or murmur in the rear:
When the worst comes, it comes unfear'd; one stroke
Begins, and ends, their woe: they die but once;
Bleft, incommunicable privilege! for which
Proud man, who rules the globe, and reads the stars, Philofopher, or hero, fighs in vain.
Account for this perogative in brutes.
No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot,
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 reverfion: Hope exults;
And though much bitter in our cup is thrown,
Predominates, and gives the taste of heaven.
O wherefore is the Deity fo kind ?
Aftonishing beyond aftonishment!
Heaven our reward-for heaven enjoy'd below.
Still unfubdued thy ftubborn heart?-For there
The traitor lurks who doubts the truth I fing.
Reafon is guiltlefs; will alone rebels.
What, in that ftubborn heart, if I fhould find 330
New, unexpected witnesses against thee?
Ambition, pleafure, and the love of gain!
Canft thou fufpect, that these, which make the foul
The flave of earth, fhould own her heir of heaven?
Canft thou fufpect what makes us difbelieve
Our immortality, should prove it fure?
First, then, ambition fummon to the bar.
Ambition's fame, extravagance, difguft,
And inextinguishable nature, fpeak.
Each much depofes; hear them in their turn.
Thy foul, how paffionately fond of fame !
How anxious, that fond paffion to conceal !
We blush, detected in designs on praise,
Though for beft deeds, and from the best of men ;
And why? Because immortal. Art divine
Has made the body tutor to the foul;
Heaven kindly gives our blood a moral flow;
Bids it afcend the glowing cheek, and there
Upbraid that little heart's inglorious aim,
Which stoops to court a character from man;
While o'er us in tremendous judgment fit
Far more than man, with endless praise, and blame.
Ambition's boundless appetite out-fpeaks
The verdict of its shame. When fouls take fire
At high prefumptions of their own defert,
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