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And make colloquial happiness your care,
Preserve me from the thing I dread and hate,
A duel in the form of a debate.
The clash of arguments and jar of words,
Worse than the mortal blunt of rival swords,
Decide no question with their tedious length,
For opposition gives opinion strength.
Divert the champions prodigal of breath;
And put the peaceably disposed to death.
O, thwart me not, Sir Soph, at every turn,
Nor carp at every flaw you may discern!
Though syllogisms hang not on my tongue,
I am not surely always in the wrong;
"T is hard if all is false that I advance,
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
Not that all freedom of dissent I blame;
No, there I grant the privilege I claim.
A disputable point is no man's ground;
Rove where you please, 't is common all around.
Discourse may want an animated No,
To brush the surface, and to make it flow;
But still remember, if you mean to please,
To press your point with modesty and ease.
The mark at which my juster aim I take,
Is contradiction for its own dear sake.
Set your opinion at whatever pitch,
Asseveration blustering in your
Makes contradiction such a hopeless case;
In every tale they tell, or false or true,
Well known, or such as no man ever knew,
They fix attention, heedless of your pain,
With oaths like rivets forced into the brain;
And even when sober truth prevails throughou
They swear it, till affirmance breeds a doubt.
A Persian, humble servant of the sun,
Who, though devout, yet bigotry had none,
Hearing a lawyer, grave in his address,
With adjurations every word impress,
Supposed the man a bishop, or, at least,
God's name so much upon his lips, a priest;
Bowed at the close with all his graceful airs,
And begged an interest in his frequent prayers.
FROM THE "ESSAY ON MAN."
WHAT'S fame?-a fancied life in others' breath
A thing beyond us, e'en before our death.
Just what you hear, you have, and what 's un
known
The same (my lord) if Tully's, or your own.
All that we feel of it begins and ends
In the small circle of our foes or friends;
To all beside as much an empty shade
A Eugene living as a Cæsar dead;
Alike or when or where they shone or shine,
Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine.
A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod;
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
Fame but from death a villain's name can save,
As justice tears his body from the grave;
Knots and impediments make something hitch; When what to oblivion better were resigned
Adopt his own, 't is equally in vain,
Your thread of argument is snapped again.
The wrangler, rather than accord with you,
Will judge himself deceived and prove it too.
Vociferated logic kills me quite,
A noisy man is always in the right.
I twirl my thumbs, fall back into my chair,
Fix on the wainscot a distressful stare,
And, when I hope his blunders are all out,
Reply discreetly, - To be sure no doubt!
Is hung on high, to poison half mankind.
All fame is foreign, but of true desert;
Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart:
One self-approving hour whole years outweighs
Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas ;
And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels
Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels.
I'll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,
Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;
The rest is all but leather or prunella.
Stuck o'er with titles, and hung round with
That thou mayst be by kings, or whores of kings;
Boast the pure blood of an illustrious race,
In quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece;
But by your fathers' worth if yours you rate,
Count me those only who were good and great.
Go! if your ancient but ignoble blood
FROM THE ESSAY ON MAN."
WHETHER with reason or with instinct blest,
To bliss alike by that direction tend,
Know all enjoy that power which suits them best;
Say, where full instinct is the unerring guide,
Reason, however able, cool at best,
What pope or council can they need beside?
And find the means proportioned to their end.
Cares not for service, or but serves when prest,
Stays till we call, and then not often near;
But honest instinct comes a volunteer,
Sure never to o'ershoot, but just to hit ;
While still too wide or short is human wit,
Has crept through scoundrels ever since the Sure by quick nature happiness to gain,
Go! and pretend your family is young,
Nor own your fathers have been fools so long.
What can ennoble sots or slaves or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.
Look next on greatness! say where greatness
lies?
"Where, but among the heroes and the wise?"
Heroes are much the same, the point 's agreed,
From Macedonia's madman to the Swede;
The whole strange purpose of their lives, to find
Or make an enemy of all mankind!
Not one looks backward, onward still he goes,
Yet ne'er looks forward farther than his nose.
No less alike the politic and wise;
All sly slow things, with circumspective eyes :
Men in their loose unguarded hours they take,
Not that themselves are wise, but others weak.
But grant that those can conquer, these can
cheat;
'Tis phrase absurd to call a villain great :
Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave,
Is but the more a fool, the more a knave.
Who noble ends by noble means obtains,
Or, failing, smiles in exile or in chains,
Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed
Like Socrates, that man is great indeed.
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Which heavier reason labors at in vain.
This too serves always, reason never long;
One must go right, the other may go wrong.
See then the acting and comparing powers
One in their nature, which are two in ours;
And reason raise o'er instinct as you can,
In this 't is God directs, in that 't is man.
Who taught the nations of the field and wood
To shun their poison and to choose their food?
Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,
Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand?
Who made the spider parallels design,
Sure as De Moivre, without rule or line?
Who bid the stork, Columbus-like, explore
Heavens not his own, and worlds unknown before?
Who calls the council, states the certain day,
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way!
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.
"Waters flowed over mine head; then I said, I am cut off." -LAM. iii. 54
ONE day I wandered where the salt sea-tide
Backward had drawn its wave,
And found a spring as sweet as e'er hillside
To wild flowers gave.
Freshly it sparkled in the sun's bright look,
And 'mid its pebbles strayed,
As if it thought to join a happy brook
In some green glade.
But soon the heavy sea's resistless swell
Came rolling in once more;
Spreading its bitter o'er the clear sweet well
And pebbled shore.
Like a fair star thick buried in a cloud,
Or life in the grave's gloom,
The well, enwrapped in a deep watery shroud,
Sunk to its tomb.
As one who by the beach roams far and wide,
Remnant of wreck to save,
Again I wandered when the salt sea-tide
CURSED be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,
And there, unchanged, no taint in all its sweet, That tends to make one worthy man my foe,
Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,
Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear!
But he who hurts a harmless neighbor's peace,
Insults fallen worth, or beauty in distress,
Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about,
Who writes a libel, or who copies out;
That fop whose pride affects a patron's name,
Yet absent wounds an author's honest fame :
Who can your merit selfishly approve,
And show the sense of it without the love;
Who has the vanity to call you friend,
Yet wants the honor, injured, to defend ;
Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,
And, if he lie not, must at least betray;
Who to the Dean and silver bell can swear,
And sees at Canons what was never there;
Who reads but with a lust to misapply,
Make satire a lampoon, and fiction lie;
A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,
But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.
FROM "MORAL ESSAYS."
AT Timon's villa let us pass a day,
From secret wells let sweetness rise, nor change Where all cry out, "What sums are thrown
So proud, so grand; of that stupendous air,
Soft and agreeable come never there.
Greatness, with Timon, dwells in such a draught
As brings all Brobdingnag before your thought.
To compass this, his building is a town,
His pond an ocean, his parterre a down :
Who but must laugh, the master when he sees,
A puny insect, shivering at a breeze!
Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!
The whole, a labored quarry above ground.
Two Cupids squirt before: a lake behind
Improves the keenness of the northern wind.
His gardens next your admiration call,
On every side you look, behold the wall!
No pleasing intricacies intervene,
No artful wildness to perplex the scene;
Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
And half the platform just reflects the other.
The suffering eye inverted nature sees,
Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees;
With here a fountain, never to be played;
And there a summer-house, that knows no shade;
Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bowers;
There gladiators fight, or die in flowers;
Unwatered see the drooping sea-horse mourn,
And swallows roost in Nilus' dusty urn.
My lord advances with majestic mien,
Smit with the mighty pleasure, to be seen;
But soft-by regular approach -- not yet
First through the length of yon hot terrace sweat;
And when up ten steep slopes you've dragged
your thighs,
Just at his study door he 'll bless your eyes.
His study with what authors is it stored?
In books, not authors, curious is my lord;
To all their dated backs he turns you round;
These Aldus printed, those Du Sueil has bound!
Lo, some are vellum, and the rest as good
For all his lordship knows, but they are wood.
For Locke or Milton 't is in vain to look,
These shelves admit not any modern book.
And now the chapel's silver bell you hear,
That summons you to all the pride of prayer:
Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,
Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven.
On painted ceilings you devoutly stare,
Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,
On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie,
And bring all paradise before your eye.
To rest the cushion and soft dean invite,
Who never mentions hell to ears polite.
You drink by measure, and to minutes eat.
So quick retires each flying course, you'd swear
Sancho's dread doctor and his wand were there.
Between each act the trembling salvers ring,
From soup to sweet wine, and God bless the king.
In plenty starving, tantalized in state,
And complaisantly helped to all I hate,
Treated, caressed, and tired, I take my leave,
Sick of his civil pride from morn to eve;
I curse such lavish cost, and little skill,
And swear no day was ever passed so ill.
DUKE S. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should, in their own confines, with forkéd heads
Have their round haunches gored.
Indeed, my lord, The melancholy Jaques grieves at that; And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp Than doth your brother that hath banished you. To-day my lord of Amiens and myself, Did steal behind him, as he lay along Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this wood: To the which place a poor sequestered stag, That from the hunters' aim had ta'en a hurt, Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord, The wretched animal heaved forth such groans, That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat Almost to bursting; and the big round tears Coursed one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool, Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook, Augmenting it with tears.
DUKE S. But what said Jaques ? Did he not moralize this spectacle? 1 LORD. O yes, into a thousand similes. First, for his weeping into the needless stream; "Poor deer," quoth he, "thou mak`st a testament As wordlings do, giving thy sum of more
To that which had too much": then being there alone,
Left and abandoned of his velvet friends;
But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call;""Tis right," quoth he; "thus misery doth part
The flux of company anón, a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him,
And never stays to greet him; "Ay," quoth
"Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens; "T is just the fashion: wherefore do you look
And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes, A pensioner of land or air or sea that hath not
A visitor unwelcome, into scenes
Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove,
The chamber, or refectory, may die :
A necessary act incurs no blame.
Not so when, held within their proper bounds,
And guiltless of offence, they range the air,
Or take their pastime in the spacious field:
There they are privileged ; and he that hunts
Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong,
Disturbs the economy of Nature's realm,
Who, when she formed, designed them an abode
The sum is this: If man's convenience, health,
Or safety interfere, his rights and claims
Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs.
Else they are all - the meanest things that are-
As free to live, and to enjoy that life,
As God was free to form them at the first,
Who in his sovereign wisdom made them all.
Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons
To love it too.
OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. SHAME upon thee, savage monarch-man, proud monopolist of reason;
Shame upon creation's lord, the fierce ensanguined despot:
What, man! are there not enough, hunger and diseases and fatigue,
And yet must thy goad or thy thong add another sorrow to existence?
whereof it will accuse thee?
From the elephant toiling at a launch, to the
shrew-mouse in the harvest-field, From the whale which the harpooner hath stricken, to the minnow caught upon a pin, From the albatross wearied in its flight, to the wren in her covered nest, From the death-moth and lace-winged dragon-fly, to the lady-bird and the gnat,
The verdict of all things is unanimous, finding their master cruel :
The dog, thy humble friend, thy trusting, honest friend;
The ass, thine uncomplaining slave, drudging from morn to even;
The lamb, and the timorous hare, and the laboring ox at plough ;
The speckled trout basking in the shallow, and the partridge gleaming in the stubble, And the stag at bay, and the worm in thy path, and the wild bird pining in captivity, And all things that minister alike to thy life and thy comfort and thy pride, Testify with one sad voice that man is a cruel
Verily, they are all thine: freely mayst thou
They are thine by gift for thy needs, to be used in all gratitude and kindness; Gratitude to their God and thine, their Father and thy Father,
What! art thou not content thy sin hath dragged Kindness to them who toil for thee, and help
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