Page images
PDF
EPUB

The adultrefs! what a theme for angry verse'
What provocation to the indignant heart,
That feels for injured love! but I difdain
The naufeous task to paint her as she is,
Cruel, abandoned, glorying in her shame!
No-let her pass, and chariotted along
In guilty fplendour shake the public ways;
The frequency of crimes has washed them white,
And verfe of mine shall never brand the wretch,
Whom matrons now of character unfairched,
And chafte themselves, are not ashamed to own.
Virtue and vice had boundaries in old time

:

Not to be paffed and fhe, that had renounced
Her fex's honour, was renounced herself

By all that prized it; not for prudery's fake,
But dignity's, refentful of the wrong.

"Twas hard perhaps on here and there a waif,
Defirous to return, and not received:

But was an wholesome rigour in the main,
And taught the unblemished to preserve with care
That purity, whose lofs was lofs of all.

Men too were nice in honour in those days,

And judged offenders well. Then he that sharped, And pocketted a prize by fraud obtained,

Was marked and fhunned as odious. He that fold His country, or was flack when she required

His every nerve in action and at ftretch,

Paid with the blood, that he had bafely spared,
The price of his default. But now-yes, now
We are become fo candid and so fair,

So liberal in conftruction, and so rich
In chriftian charity, (good-natured age!)
That they are safe, finners of either fex,

Tranfgrefs what laws they may. Well dreffed, well bred,
Well equipaged, is ticket good enough

To pafs us readily through every door,
Hypocrify, deteft her as we may,

(And no man's hatred ever wronged her yet)
May claim this merit ftill-that fhe admits
The worth of what fhe mimics with fuch care,
And thus gives virtue indirect applause;
But fhe has burnt her mask not needed here,
Where vice has fuch allowance, that her shifts
And fpecious femblances have loft their use.

I was a ftricken deer, that left the herd
Long fince; with many an arrow deep infixt
My panting fide was charged, when I withdrew
To feek a tranquil death in diftant shades.
There was I found by one, who had himself
Been hurt by the archers. In his fide he bore,
And in his hands and feet, the cruel fcars.

With gentle force foliciting the darts,

He drew them forth, and healed, and bade me live.
Since then, with few affociates, in remote
And filent woods I wander, far from those
My former partners of the peopled scene;
With few affociates, and not wishing more.
Here much I ruminate, as much I may,
With other views of men and manners now
Than once, and others of a life to come.
I fee that all are wanderers, gone aftray
Each in his own delufions; they are loft
In chafe of fancied happiness, ftill wooed
And never won. Dream after dream enfues;
And still they dream that they shall ftill fucceed,
And ftill are difappointed. Rings the world
With the vain ftir. I fum up half mankind,
And add two thirds of the remaining half,

And find the total of their hopes and fears
Dreams, empty dreams. The million flit as gay
As if created only like the fly,

That spreads his motley wings in the eye of noon,
To fport their feafon, and be feen no more.
The reft are fober dreamers, grave and wife,
And pregnant with difcoveries new and rare.
Some write a narrative of wars, and feats
Of heices little known; and call the rant

An hiftory: defcribe the man, of whom
His own coevals took but little note,

And paint his person, character, and views,
As they had known him from his mother's womb.
They difentangle from the puzzled skein,
In which obfcurity has wrapped them up,
'The threads of politic and fhrewd defign,
That ran through all his purpofes, and charge
His mind with meanings that he never had,
Or having kept concealed. Some drill and bore
The folid earth, and from the ftrata there
Extract a register, by which we learn,
That he who made it, and revealed its date
To Mofes, was mistaken in its age.
Some, more acute, and more induftrious ftill,
Contrive creation; travel nature up

To the sharp peak of her fublimeft height,
And tell us whence the ftars; why fome are fixed,
And planetary fome; what gave them firft
Rotation, from what fountain flowed their light.
Great conteft follows, and much learned duft
Involves the combatants; each claiming truth,
And truth disclaiming both. And thus they spend
The little wick of life's poor fhallow lamp
In playing tricks with nature, giving laws
To diftant worlds, and trifling in their own.

Is't not a pity now, that tickling rheums
Should ever teafe the lungs, and blear the fight
Of oracles like thefe? Great pity too,

That having wielded the elements, and built
A thousand fyftems, each in his own way,
They should go out in fume, and be forgot?
Ah! what is life thus fpent? and what are they
But frantic, who thus fpend it? all for fmoke-
Eternity for bubbles proves at laft

A fenfelefs bargain. When I fee fuch games
Played by the creatures of a power, who fwears
That he will judge the earth, and call the fool
To a fharp reckoning, that has lived in vain;
And when I weigh this feeming wisdom well,
And prove it in the infallible refult

So hollow and fo falfe--I feel my heart
Diffolve in pity, and account the learned,
If this be learning, moft of all deceived.
Great crimes alarm the confcience, but it fleeps,
While thoughtful man is plaufibly amufed.
Defend me therefore common sense, say I,
From reveries fo airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up!

'Twere well, fays one fage erudite, profound,

« PreviousContinue »