That like the fabled, self-enamour'd boy,
Home contemplation her supreme delight:
She dreads an interruption from without,
Smit with her own condition, and the more
Intense she gazes, still it charms the more.
No man is happy till he thinks on earth
There breathes not a more happy than himself:
Then envy dies, and love o'erflows on all;
And love o'erflowing makes an angel here.
Such angels all, entitled to repose
On Him who governs fate. Though tempest frowns,
Though Nature shakes, how soft to lean on Heaven!
To lean on Him on whom archangels lean!
With inward eyes, and silent as the grave,
They stand collecting every beam of thought,
Till their hearts kindle with divine delight;
For all their thoughts, like angels, seen of old
In Israel's dream, come from, and go to heaven;
Hence are they studious of sequester'd scenes,
While noise and dissipation comfort thee.
Were all men happy, revellings would cease,
That opiate for inquietude within.
Lorenzo! never man was truly bless'd,
But it composed and gave him such a cast,
As Folly might mistake for want of joy :
A cast, unlike the triumph of the proud;
A modest aspect, and a smile at heart.
O for a joy from thy Philander's spring!
A spring perennial, rising in the breast,
And permanent as pure! no turbid stream
Of rapturous exultation, swelling high,
Which, like land-floods, impetuous pour a while,
Then sink at once, and leave us in the mire.
What does the man who transient joy prefers ?
What, but prefer the bubbles to the stream?
Vain are all sudden sallies of delight,
Convulsions of a weak distemper'd joy.
Joy's a fix'd state; a tenour, not a start.
Bliss there is none but unprecarious bliss:
-That is the gem: sell all, and purchase that.
Why go a-begging to contingencies,
Not gain'd with ease, nor safely loved, if gain'd?
At good fortuitous draw back, and pause;
Suspect it; what thou canst ensure, enjoy ;
And nought, but what thou givest thyself, is sure.
Reason perpetuates joy that Reason gives,
And makes it as immortal as herself:
To mortals, nought immortal, but their worth.
Worth, conscious Worth! should absolutely reign,
And other joys ask leave for their approach,
Nor, unexamined, ever leave obtain.
Thou art all anarchy; a mob of joys
Wage war, and perish in intestine broils;
Nor the least promise of internal peace!
No bosom-comfort! or unborrow'd bliss!
Thy thoughts are vagabonds; all outward-bound, 985
Mid sands, and rocks, and storms, to cruise for pleasure;
If gain'd, dear-bought; and better miss'd than gain'd.
Much pain must expiate what much pain procured,
Fancy and Sense, from an infected shore,
Thy cargo bring, and pestilence the prize,
Then such thy thirst, (insatiable thirst,
By fond indulgence but inflamed the more)
Fancy still cruises, when poor Sense is tired.
Imagination is the Paphian shop
Where feeble Happiness, like Vulcan, lame,
Bids foul ideas, in their dark recess,
And hot as hell (which kindled the black fires)
With wanton art, those fatal arrows form,
Which murder all thy time, health, wealth, and fame. Wouldst thou receive them, other thoughts there are On angel-wing, descending from above;
Which these, with art divine, would counter-work, And form celestial armour for thy peace.
In this is seen Imagination's guilt;
But who can count her follies? she betrays thee, 1005
To think in grandeur there is something great.
For works of curious art, and ancient fame,
Thy genius hungers, elegantly pain'd,
And foreign climes must cater for thy taste.
Hence, what disaster!-Though the price was paid, That persecuting priest, the Turk of Rome,
Whose foot, (ye gods!) though cloven, must be kiss'd,
Detain'd thy dinner on the Latian shore;
(Such is the fate of honest Protestants!)
And poor Magnificence is starved to death.
Hence just resentment, indignation, ire !—
Be pacified; if outward things are great,
'Tis magnanimity great things to scorn;
Pompous expenses, and parades august,
And courts, that insalubrious soil to peace.
True happiness ne'er enter'd at an eye;
True happiness resides in things unseen.
No smiles of Fortune ever bless'd the bad,
Nor can her frowns rob Innocence of joys;
That jewel wanting, triple crowns are poor :
So tell his Holiness, and be revenged.
Pleasure, we both agree, is man's chief good;
Our only contest, what deserves the name.
Give Pleasure's name to nought but what has pass'd The' authentic seal of Reason (which, like Yorke, 1030 Demurs on what it passes) and defies
The tooth of Time; when pass'd, a pleasure still ;
Dearer on trial, lovelier for its age,
And doubly to be prized, as it promotes
Our future, while it forms our present joy.
Some joys the future overcast, and some
Throw all their beams that way, and gild the tomb.
Some joys endear eternity; some give
Abhorr'd Annihilation dreadful charms.
Are rival joys contending for thy choice?
Consult thy whole existence, and be safe;
That oracle will put all doubt to flight.
Short is the lesson, though my lecture long;
'Be good' and let Heaven answer for the rest!
Yet, with a sigh o'er all mankind, I grant,
In this our day of proof, our land of hope,
The good man has his clouds that intervene ;
Clouds that obscure his sublunary day,
But never conquer: e'en the best must own,
Patience and Resignation are the pillars
Of human peace on earth: the pillars these,
But those of Seth not more remote from thee,
Till this heroic lesson thou hast learn'd,
To frown at pleasure, and to smile in pain.
Fired at the prospect of unclouded bliss,
Heaven in reversion, like the Sun, as yet
Beneath the horizon, cheers us in this world;
It sheds, on souls susceptible of light,
The glorious dawn of our eternal day.
This (says Lorenzo) is the fair harangue!
But can harangues blow back strong Nature's stream,
Or stem the tide Heaven pushes through our veins,
Which sweeps away man's impotent resolves,
And lays his labour level with the world?'
Themselves men make their comment on mankind, And think nought is, but what they find at home: 1066 Thus weakness to chimera turns the truth.
Nothing romantic has the Muse prescribed.
Above,* Lorenzo saw the man of earth,
The mortal man, and wretched was the sight.
To balance that, to comfort and exalt,
Now see the man immortal: him, I mean,
Who lives as such; whose heart, full bent on Heaven, Leans all that way, his bias to the stars.
The world's dark shades, in contrast set, shall raise His lustre more; though bright, without a foil: 1076 Observe his awful portrait, and admire;
Nor stop at wonder; imitate, and live.
Some angel guide my pencil, while I draw,
What nothing less than angel can exceed,
A man on earth devoted to the skies;
Like ships in seas, while in, above the world
With aspect mild, and elevated eye,
Behold him seated on a mount serene,
Above the fogs of Sense, and Passion's storm;
All the black cares and tumults of this life,
Like harmless thunders, breaking at his feet,
Excite his pity, not impair his peace.
Earth's genuine sons, the sceptred and the slave
A mingled mob! a wandering herd! he sees,
Bewilder'd in the vale; in all unlike !
His full reverse in all! what higher praise?
What stronger demonstration of the right ?
The present all their care, the future his.
When public welfare calls, or private want,
They give to Fame; his bounty he conceals.
Their virtues varnish Nature, his exalt.
Mankind's esteem they court, and he his own.
Theirs the wild chase of false felicities;
His, the composed possession of the true.
Alike throughout is his consistent peace,
All of one colour, and an even thread;
While party-colour'd shreds of happiness,
With hideous gaps between, patch up for them
A madman's robe; each puff of Fortune blows
The tatters by, and shows their nakedness.
He sees with other eyes than theirs where they Behold a sun, he spies a Deity.
What makes them only smile, makes him adore.
Where they see mountains, he but atoms sees.
An empire, in his balance, weighs a grain.
They things terrestrial worship as divine;
His hopes, immortal, blow them by as dust
That dims his sight, and shortens his survey,
Which longs, in infinite, to lose all bound.
Titles and honours (if they prove his fate)
|
