There is, they say (and I believe there is),
A spark within us of th' immortal fire,
That animates and moulds the grosser frame;
And when the body sinks, escapes to heaven,
Its native seat, and mixes with the Gods.
Meanwhile this heavenly particle pervades
The mortal elements; in ev'ry nerve

It thrills with pleasure, or grows mad with pain:
And, in its secret conclave, as it feels
The body's woes and joys, this ruling pow'r
Wields at its will the dull material world,
And is the body's health or malady.

By its own toil the gross corporeal frame
Fatigues, extenuates, or destroys itself,
Nor less the labors of the mind corrode
The solid fabric; for by subtle parts,
And viewless atoms, secret Nature moves
The mighty wheels of this stupendous world.
By subtle fluids pour'd through subtle tubes,
The nat'ral, vital functions are perform'd:
By these the stubborn aliments are tam'd;
The toiling heart distributes life and strength;
These the still-crumbling frame rebuild, and
these

Are lost in thinking, and dissolve in air.

But 'tis not Thought (for still the soul's employ'd),

[day

'Tis painful thinking that corrodes our clay.
All day the vacant eye without fatigue
Strays o'er the heaven and earth; but long intent
On microscopic arts its vigor fails.
Just so the mind, with various thought amus'd,
Nor aches itself, nor gives the body pain.
But anxious study, discontent, and care,
Love without hope, and hate without revenge,
And fear, and jealousy, fatigue the soul,
Engross the subtle ministers of life,
And spoil the lab'ring functions of their share.
Hence the lean gloom that Melancholy wears,
The lover's paleness, and the sallow hue
Of Envy, Jealousy, the meagre stare
Of sore Revenge: the canker'd body hence
Betrays each fretful notion of the mind.
The strong-built peasant, who both night and
Feeds on the coarsest fare the schools bestow,
And crudely fattens at gross Burman's stall;
O'erwhelm'd with phlegm lies in a dropsy
Or sinks in lethargy before his time. [drown'd,
With youthful studies you, and arts that please,
Employ your mind; amuse, but not fatigue.
Peace to each drowsy metaphysic sage!
And ever may all heavy systems rest!
Yet some there are, e'en of elastic parts,
Whom strong and obstinate ambition leads
Through all the rugged roads of barren lore,
And gives to relish what their gen'rous taste
Would else refuse. But may nor thirst of fame,
Nor love of knowledge, urge you to fatigue
With constant drudgery the lib'ral soul.
Toy with your books: and, as the various fits
Of humor seize you, from philosophy
To fable shift, from serious Antonine
To Rabelais' ravings, and from prose to song.
While reading pleases, but no longer, read;

And read aloud resounding Homer's strain,
And wield the thunder of Demosthenes.
The chest so exercis'd improves its strength;
And quick vibrations through the bowels drive
The restless blood, which in unactive days
Would loiter else through unelastic tubes.
Deem it not trifling while I recommend
What posture suits: to stand and sit by turns,
As nature prompts, is best. But o'er your leaves
To lean for ever, cramps the vital parts,
And robs the fine machinery of its play.

'Tis the great art of life to manage well
The restless mind. For ever on pursuit
Of knowledge bent, it starves the grosser pow'rs:
Quite unemploy'd, against its own repose
It turns its fatal edge, and sharper pangs
Than what the body knows imbitter life.
Chiefly where Solitude, sad nurse of Care,
To sickly musing gives the pensive mind,
There Madness enters; and the dim-eyed fiend,
Sour Melancholy, night and day provokes
Her own eternal wound. The sun grows pale;
A mournful visionary light o'erspreads
The cheerful face of nature; earth becomes
A dreary desert, and heav'n frowns above.
Then various shapes of curs'd illusion rise:
Whate'er the wretched fears, creating Fear
Forms out of nothing; and with monsters teems
Unknown in hell. The prostrate soul beneath
A load of huge imagination heaves;

And all the horrors that the murd'rer feels With anxious flutt'rings wake the guiltless breast.

Such phantoms Pride in solitary scenes,
Or Fear, on delicate self-love creates.
From other cares absolv'd, the busy mind
Finds in yourself a theme to pore upon;
It finds you miserable, or makes you so.
For while yourself you anxiously explore,
Timorous Self-love, with sick'ning Fancy's aid
Presents the danger that you dread the most,
And ever galls you in your tender part.
Hence some for love, and some for jealousy,
For grim religion some, and some for pride,
Have lost their reason; some for fear of want,
Want all their lives; and others ev'ry day,
For fear of dying, suffer worse than death.
Ah! from your bosoms banish, if you can,
Those fatal guests; and first the demon Fear,
That trembles at impossible events,
Lest aged Atlas should resign his load,
And heaven's eternal battlements rush down.
Is there an evil worse than Fear itself?
And what avails it that indulgent Heaven
From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come,
If we, ingenious to torment ourselves,
Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own?
Enjoy the present; nor with needless cares
Of what may spring from blind misfortune's
womb,

Appal the surest hour that life bestows.
Serene, and master of yourself, prepare
For what may come, and leave the rest to Heaven.
Oft from the body, by long ails mistun'd,

[pain.

These evils spring, the most important health,
That of the mind, destroy; and when the mind
They first invade, the conscious body soon
In sympathetic languishment declines.
These chronic passions, while from real woes
They rise, and yet without the body's fault
Infest the soul, admit one only cure;
Diversion, hurry, and a restless life.
Vain are the consolations of the wise;
In vain your friends would reason down your
O ye, whose souls relentless love has tam'd'
To soft distress, or friends untimely slain,
Court not the luxury of tender thought!
Nor deem it impious to forget those pains
That hurt the living, nought avail the dead.
Go, soft enthusiast! quit the cypress groves,
Nor to the rivulet's lonely moanings tune
Your sad complaint. Go, seek the cheerful

haunts

Of men, and mingle with the bustling crowd; Lay schemes for wealth, or pow'r, or fame, the wish

Of noble minds, and push them night and day;
Or join the caravan in quest of scenes
New to your eyes, and shifting ev'ry hour,
Beyond the Alps, beyond the Apennines.
Or, more advent'rous, rush into the field
Where war grows hot; and, raging through the
sky,

The lofty trumpet swells the madd'ning soul;
And in the hardy camp and toilsome march
Forget all softer and less manly cares.

But most too passive, when the blood runs low, Too weakly indolent to strive with pain, And bravely by resisting conquer Fate, Try Circe's arts, and in the tempting bowl Of poison'd nectar sweet oblivion drink. Struck by the pow'rful charm, the gloom solves

dis

In empty air; Elysium opens round;
A pleasing phrensy buoys the lighten'd soul,
And sanguine hopes dispel your fleeting care;
And what was difficult and what was dire
Yields to your prowess and superior stars:
The happiest you of all that e'er were mad,
Or are, or shall be, could this folly last.
But soon your heaven is gone; a heavier gloom
Shuts o'er your head: and, as the thund'ring

stream,

Swoln o'er its banks with sudden mountain rain,
Sinks from its tumult to a silent brook;
So, when the frantic raptures in your breast
Subside, you languish into mortal man:
You sleep, and, waking, find yourself undone.
For, prodigal of life, in one rash night
You lavish'd more than might support three days.
A heavy morning comes; your cares return
With tenfold rage. An anxious stomach well
May be endur'd; so may the throbbing heart:
But such a dim delirium, such a dream,
Involves you; such a dastardly despair
Unmans your soul, as madd'ning Pentheus felt
When, baited round Citharon's cruel sides,
He saw two suns, and double Thebes, ascend.

You curse the sluggish Port; you curse the wretch,

The felon, with unnat'ral mixture first
Who dar'd to violate the virgin wine.
Or on the fugitive Champaigne you pour
A thousand curses; for to heaven it rapt
Your soul, to plunge you deeper in despair.
Perhaps you rue e'en that divinest gift,
The gay, serene, good-natur'd Burgundy,
Or the fresh fragrant vintage of the Rhine;
And wish that Heaven from mortals had with-
held

The grape, and all intoxicating bowls.

Besides, it wounds you sore to recollect What follies in your loose unguarded hour Escap'd. For one irrevocable word, Perhaps that meant no harm, you lose a friend; Or in the rage of wine your hasty hand Performs a deed to haunt you to your grave. Add, that your means, your health, your part

decay:

Your friends avoid you; brutishly transform'd,
They hardly know you; or, if one remains
To wish you well, he wishes you in heaven.
Despis'd, unwept, you fall: who might have left
A sacred, cherish'd, sadly-pleasing name;
A name still to be utter'd with a sigh.
Your last ungraceful scene has quite effac'd
All sense and mem'ry of your former worth.

How to live happiest; how avoid the pains, The disappointments, and disgusts of those Who would in pleasure all their hours employ, The precepts here of a divine old man

I could recite. Though old, he still retain'd
His manly sense and energy of mind.
Virtuous and wise he was, but not severe ;
He still remember'd that he once was young;
His easy presence check'd no decent joy.
Him e'en the dissolute admir'd; for he
A graceful looseness, when he pleas'd, put on,
And laughing could instruct. Much had he
read,

Much more had seen; he studied from the life,
And in th' original perus'd mankind.

Vers'd in the woes and vanities of life, He pitied Man and much he pitied those Whom falsely-smiling Fate has curs'd with

means

:

To dissipate their days in quest of joy.
Our aim is happiness: 'tis yours, 'tis mine,
He said; 'tis the pursuit of all that live:
Yet few attain it, if't was e'er attain'd.
But they the widest wander from the mark,
Who through the flow'ry paths of saunt'ring joy
Seck this coy goddess; that from stage to stage
Invites us still, but shifts as we pursue.
For, not to name the pains that pleasure bring.
To counterpoise itself, relentless Fate
Forbids that we through gay voluptuous wilds
Should ever roam¿ and were the fates more kind,

Our narrow luxuries would soon be stale.
Were these exhaustless, Nature would grow
sick;
[plain
And cloy'd with pleasure, squeamishly con

That all was vanity, and like a dream.
Let nature rest: be busy for yourself,
And for your friend; be busy e'en in vain,
Rather than tease her sated appetites.
Who never fasts, no banquets e'er enjoys;
Who never toils or watches, never sleeps.
Let nature rest: and when the taste of joy
Grows keen, indulge; but shun satiety.

'Tis not for mortals always to be blest.
But him the least the dull or painful hours
Of life oppress, whom sober Sense conducts,
And Virtue, through this labyrinth we tread.
Virtue and Sense I mean not to disjoin;
Virtue and Sense are one: and, trust me, still
A faithless heart betrays the head unsound.
Virtue (for mere good-nature is a fool)
Is Sense and Spirit, with Humanity:
'Tis sometimes angry, and its frown confounds;
'Tis e'en vindictive, but in vengeance just.
Knaves fain would laugh at it; some great ones
But at his heart the most undaunted son [dare;
Of fortune dreads its name and awful charms.
To noblest uses this determines wealth;
This is the solid pomp of prosp'rous days,
The peace and shelter of adversity.
And, if you pant for glory, build for fame
On this foundation, which the secret shock
Defies of Envy and all-sapping Time.
The gaudy gloss of Fortune only strikes
The vulgar eye; the suff'rage of the wise,
The praise that's worth ambition, is attain'd
By sense alone, and dignity of mind.

Virtue, the strength and beauty of the soul, Is the best gift of Heaven; a happiness That e'en above the smiles and frowns of fate Exalts great Nature's favorites; a wealth That ne'er encumbers, nor to baser hands Can be transferr'd: it is the only good Man justly boasts of, or can call his own. Riches are oft by guilt and baseness earn'd; Or dealt by chance, to shield a lucky knave, Or throw a cruel sunshine on a fool. But for one end, one much-neglected use, Are riches worth your care; for Nature's wants Are few, and without opulence supplied : This noble end is, to produce the soul; To show the virtues in the fairest light; To make humanity the minister

Of bounteous Providence; and teach the breast That gen'rous luxury the gods enjoy.

Thus, in his graver vem, the friendly sage Sometimes declaim'd. Of right and wrong he taught

Truths as refin'd as ever Athens heard; And (strange to tell!) he practis'd what he preach'd.

Skill'd in the passions, how to check their sway
He knew, as far as reason can control

The lawless pow'rs. But other cares are mine.
Form'd in the school of Pæan, I relate
What passions hurt the body, what improve:
Avoid them, or invite them, as you may.

Know then, whatever cheerful and serene
Supports the mind, supports the body too.

Hence, the most vital movement mortals feel
Is Hope, the balm and life-blood of the soul:
It pleases, and it lasts. Indulgent Heaven
Sent down the kind delusion, through the paths
Of rugged life to lead us patient on,

And make our happiest state no tedious thing.
Our greatest good, and what we least can spare
Is Hope; the last of all our evils, Fear.

[cares.

But there are passions grateful to the breast, And yet no friends to life: perhaps they please Or to excess, and dissipate the soul; [clown, Or while they please, torment. The stubborn The ill-tamed ruffian, and pale usurer, (If love's omnipotence such hearts could mould) May safely mellow into love; and grow Refin'd, humane, and gen'rous, if they can. Love in such bosoms never to a fault Or pains or pleases. But, ye finer souls, Form'd to soft luxury, and prompt to thrill With all the tumults, all the joys and pains That beauty gives; with caution and reserve Indulge the sweet destroyer of repose, Nor court too much the Queen of charming For, while the cherish'd poison in your breast Ferments and maddens; sick with jealousy, Absence, distrust, or e'en with anxious joy, The wholesome appetites and pow'rs of life Dissolve in languor. The coy stomach loaths The genial board; your cheerful days are gone; The gen'rous bloom that flush'd your cheeks is To sighs devoted, and to tender pains, [fled. Pensive you sit, or solitary stray, And waste your youth in musing. Musing first Toy'd into care your unsuspecting heart: It found a liking there, a sportful fire, And that fomented into serious love; Which musing daily strengthens and improves Through all the heights of fondness and ro

mance:

And you're undone, the fatal shaft has sped,
If once you doubt whether you love or no:
The body wastes away; th' infected mind,
Dissolv'd in female tenderness, forgets
Each manly virtue, and grows dead to fame.
Sweet Heaven! from such intoxicating charms
Defend all worthy breasts! Not that I deem
Love always dangerous, always to be shunn'd.
Love well repaid, and not too weakly sunk
In wanton and unmanly tenderness,
Adds bloom to health; o'er ev'ry virtue sheds
A gay, humane, and amiable grace,.
And brightens all the ornaments of man.
But fruitless, hopeless, disappointed, rack'd
With jealousy, fatigu'd with hope and fear,
Too serious, or too languishingly fond,
Unnerves the body, and unmans the soul,
And some have died for love, and some run mad;
And some with desp'rate hand themselves have

Some to extinguish, others to prevent, [slain.
A mad devotion to one dang'rous fair,
Court all they meet; in hopes to dissipate
The cares of love amongst a hundred brides.
Th' event is doubtful: for there are who find
A cure in this; there are who find it not.

Tis no relief, alas! it rather galls
The wound, to those who are sincerely sick :
For while from fev'rish and tumultuous joys
The nerves grow languid, and the soil subsides,
The tender fancy smarts with ev'ry sting,
And what was love before is madness now.
Is health your care, or luxury your aim?
Be temp'rate still: when Nature bids, obey;
Her wild impatient sallies bear no curb :
But when the prurient habit of delight,
Or loose imagination, spurs you on
To deeds above your strength, impute it not
To Nature; Nature all compulsion hates.
Ah! let not luxury nor vain renown
Urge you to feats you well might sleep without;
To make what should be rapture a fatigue,
A tedious task; nor in the wanton arms
Of twining Lais melt your manhood down.
For from the colliquation of soft joys [was!
How chang'd you rise! the ghost of what you
Languid and melancholy, gaunt and wan,
Your veins exhausted, and your nerves un-
strung;

Spoil'd of its balm and sprightly zest, the blood
Grows vapid phlegm along the tender nerves
(To each slight impulse tremblingly awake)
A subtle fiend that mimics all the plagues,
Rapid and restless, springs from part to part.
The blooming honors of your youth are fallen;
Your vigor pines; your vital pow'rs decay;
Diseases haunt you; and untimely age
Creeps on, unsocial, impotent, and lewd.
Infatuate, impious epicure! to waste
The stores of pleasure, cheerfulness, and health:
Infatuate all who make delight their trade,
And coy perdition ev'ry hour pursue.

Who pines with love, or in lascivious flames
Consumes, is with his own consent undone :
He chooses to be wretched, to be mad,
And warn'd proceeds and wilful to his fate.
But there's a passion, whose tempestuous sway
Tears up each virtue planted in the breast,
And shakes to ruin proud philosophy :
For pale and trembling Anger rushes in,
With faltering speech, and eyes that wildly stare
Fierce as the tiger, madder than the seas,
Desperate, and arm'd with more than human
strength.

How soon the calm, humane, and polish'd man
Forgets compunction, and starts up a fiend!
Who pines in love, or wastes with silent cares,
Envy, or ignominy, or tender grief,
Slowly descends, and ling'ring, to the shades.
But he whom anger stings, drops, if he dies,
At once, and rushes apoplectic down;
Or a fierce fever hurries him to hell.
For, as the body through unnumber'd strings
Reverberates each vibration of the soul;
As is the passion, such is still the pain
The body feels; or chronic, or acute.
And oft a sudden storm at once o'erpow'rs
The life, or gives your reason to the winds.
Such fates attend the rash alarm of fear,
And sudden grief, and rage, and sudden joy.

There are, meantime, to whom the boist'rous fit

Is health, and only fills the sails of life;
For where the mind a torpid winter leads,
Wrapt in a body corpulent and cold,
And each clogg'd function lazily moves on,
A generous sally spurns th' incumbent load,
Unlocks the breast, and gives a cordial glow.
But if your wrathful blood is apt to boil,
Or are your nerves too irritably strung,
Wave all dispute; be cautious if you joke,
Keep Lent for ever, and forswear the bowl;
For one rash moment sends you to the shades,
Or shatters ev'ry hopeful scheme of life,
And gives to horror all your days to come.
Fate, arm'd with thunder, fire, and ev'ry plague
That ruins, tortures, or distracts mankind,
And makes the happy wretched, in an hour
O'erwhelms you not with woes so horrible
As your own wrath, nor gives more sudden blows.
While choler works, good friend, you may be

wrong;

Distrust yourself, and sleep before you fight.
'Tis not too late to-morrow to be brave;
If honor bids, to-morrow kill or die.
But calm advice against a raging fit
Avails too little; and it braves the pow'r
Of all that ever taught in prose or song,
To tame the fiend that sleeps a gentle lamb,
And wakes a lion. Unprovok'd and calm,
You reason well, see as you ought to see,
And wonder at the madness of mankind;
Seiz'd with the common rage, you soon forget
The speculation of your wiser hours.
Beset with furies of all deadly shapes,
Fierce and insidious, violent and slow,
With all that urge or lure us on to fate,
What refuge shall we seek, what arms prepare?
Where reason proves too weak, or void of wiles,
To cope with subtle or impetuous pow'rs,
I would invoke new passions to your aid;
With indignation would extinguish fear,
With fear or generous pity vanquish rage,
And love with pride; and force to force op
pose.
[breast,

There is a charm, a pow'r that sways the
Bids every passion revel or be still;
Inspires with rage, or all your cares dissolves;
Can'soothe distraction, and almost despair;
That pow'r is Music: far beyond the stretch
Of those unmeaning warblers on the stage;
Those clumsy heroes, those fat-headed gods,
Who move no passion justly but contempt;
Who, like our dancers (light indeed and strong!
Do wondrous feats, but never heard of grace.
The fault is ours; we bear those monstros
[pen
Good Heaven! we praise them; we with loudes
Applaud the fool that highest lifts his heels,
And with insipid show of rapture die
Of idiot notes impertinently long.
But he the Muse's laurel justly shares,
A poet he, and touch'd with Heaven's own fit,
Who with bold rage, or solemn pomp of sound

arts:

Inflames, exalts, and ravishes the soul;
Now tender, plaintive, sweet almost to pain,
In love dissolves you; now in sprightly strains
Breathes a gay rapture through your thrilling
breast,

Or melts the heart with airs divinely sad,
Or wakes to horror the tremendous strings.
Such was the bard whose heavenly strains of old
Appeas'd the fiend of melancholy Saul.
Such was, if old and heathen fame say true,
The man who bade the Theban domes ascend,
And tam'd the savage nations with his song;
And such the Thracian whose harmonious lyre,
Tun'd to soft woe, made all the mountains weep;
Sooth'd e'en th' inexorable pow'rs of Hell,
And half redeem'd his lost Eurydice.
Music exalts each joy, allays each grief,
Expels diseases, softens every pain,
Subdues the rage of poison, and the plague;
And hence the wise of ancient days ador'd
One pow'r of physic, melody, and song.

§ 67. Ode on the Spring. GRAY.

Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd Hours,
Fair Venus' train, appear;
Disclose the long-expected flow'rs,
And wake the purple year!
The Attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,
The untaught harmony of spring;
While, whisp'ring pleasure as they fly,
Cool Zephyrs through the clear blue sky
Their gather'd fragrance fling.

Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch A broader, browner shade;

Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech
O'er-canopies the glade;

Beside some water's rushy brink
With me the Muse shall sit, and think
(At ease reclin'd in rustic state)
How vain the ardor of the crowd,
How low, how little are the proud,
How indigent the great!

Still is the toiling hand of Care;
The panting herds repose;

Yet, hark, how through the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!
The insect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honey'd spring,
And float amid the liquid noon:
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some show their gaily gilded trim
Quick-glancing to the sun.

To Contemplation's sober eye
Such is the race of man;

And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began.
Alike the busy and the gay
But flutter through life's little day,

In fortune's varying colors drest:
Brush'd by the hand of rough mischance,
Or chill'd by age, their airy dance
They leave, in dust to rest.

Methinks I hear, in accents low,
The sportive kind reply:
Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!

Thy joys no glitt'ring female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display;
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone--
We frolic while 'tis May.

§ 68. Ode on the Death of a favorite Cat, drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes. GRAY.

'Twas on a lofty vase's side, Where China's gayest art had dy'd

The azure flow'rs that blow; Demurest of the tabby kind, The pensive Selima, reclin'd, Gaz'd on the lake below.

Her conscious tail her joy declar'd;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, her em'rald eyes,
She saw, and purr'd applause.

Still had she gaz'd; but 'midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,

The Genii of the stream:
Their scaly armor's Tyrian hue,
Through richest purple, to the view
Betray'd a golden gleam.

The hapless nymph with wonder saw:
A whisker first, and then a claw,

With many an ardent wish, She stretch'd in vain to reach the prize: What female heart can gold despise? What cat's averse to fish?

Presumptuous maid! with looks intent
Again she stretch'd, again she bent,

Nor knew the gulph between :
(Malignant Fate sat by and smil'd ;)
The slipp'ry verge her feet beguil'd,
She tumbled headlong in.

Eight times emerging from the flood,
She mew'd to ev'ry wat'ry god,
Some speedy aid to send.
No Dolphin came, no Nereid stirr'd;
Nor cruel Tom nor Susan heard:-
A fav'rite has no friend!

From hence, ye beauties, undeceiv'd, Know, one false step is ne'er retriev'd,