My proselytes are struck with awful dread;
Your bloody comet-laws hang blazing o'er their head;
The respite they enjoy but only lent,
The best they have to hope protracted punishment.
Be judge yourself, if int'rest may prevail,
Which motives, your's or mine, will turn the scale.
While pride and pomp allure, and plenteous ease,
That is, 'till man's predom'nant passions cease,
Admire no longer at my slow increase.
By education most have be. n misied;
So they believe, because they so were bred;
The priest continues what the nurse began,
And thus the child imposes on the man.
The rest I nam'd before, nor need repeat;
But int'rest is the most prevailing cheat,
The sly seducer both of age and youth,
They study that, and think they study truth.
When int'rest fortifies an argument,
Weak reason serves to gain the will's assent:
For souls, already warpt, receive an easy bent.
Add long prescription of establish'd laws,
And pique of honour to maintain a cause;
And shame of change, and fear of future ill,
And zeal, the blind conductor of the will;
And, chief among the still-mistaking crowd,
The fame of teachers obstinate and proud,
And more than all, the private judge allow'd;
Disdain of Fathers, which the dance began;
And last, uncertain whose the narrower span,
The clown unread, and half-read gentleman.
To this the Panther, with a scornful smile;
Yet still you travel with unwearied toil,
And range around the realm without control,
Among my sons for proselytes to prowl,
And here and there you snap some silly soul,
You hinted fears of future change in state!
Pray Heav'n you did not prophesy your fate.
Perhaps you think your time of triumph near,
But may mistake the season of the year;
The Swallow's fortune gives you cause to fear.
For charity, reply'd the Matron, tell
What sad mischance those pretty birds befel.
Nay, no mischance, the savage Dame reply'd,
But want of wit in their unerring guide,
And eager haste, and gaudy hopes, and giddy pride.
Yet, wishing timely warning may prevail,
Mark you the moral, and I'll tell the tale.
The Swallow, privileg'd above the rest
Of all the birds as man's familiar guest,
Pursues the sun, in summer, brisk and bold,
But wisely shuns the persecuting cold:
Is well to chancels and to chimnies known,
Though 'tis not thought she feeds on smoke alone.
From hence she has been held of heav'nly line,
Endu'd with particles of soul divine:
This merry chorister had long possess'd
Her summer-seat, and feather'd well her nest,
Till frowning skies began to change their cheer,
And Time turn'd up the wrong side of the year;
The shedding trees began the ground to strow
With yellow leaves, and bitter blasts to blow:
Sad auguries of winter thence she drew,
Which by instinct, or prophecy, she knew;
When prudence warn'd her to remove betimes,
And seek a better heav'n, and warmer climes.
Her sons were summon'd on a steeple's height,
And, call'd in common council, vote a flight;
The day was nam'd, the next that should be fair,
All to the general rendezvous repair.
[in air;
They try their flutt'ring wings, and thrust themselves
But whether upward to the moon they go,
Or dream the winter out in caves below,
Or hawks at flies elsewhere, concerns us not to know.
Southwards, you may be sure, they bent their flight,
And harbour'd in a hollow rock at night;
Next morn they rose, and set up ev'ry sail;
The wind was fair, but blew a mackrel gale:
The sickly young sat shiv'ring on the shore,
Abhorr'd salt water, never seen before,
And pray'd their tender mothers to delay
The passage, and expect a fairer day.
With these the Martin readily concurr'd,
A church-begot and church-believing bird;
Of little body, but of lofty mind,
Round belly'd, for a dignity design'd,
And much a dunce, as Martins are by kind:
Yet often quoted canon-laws and code,
And Fathers which he never understood:
But little learning needs in noble blood:
For sooth to say, the Swallow brought him in
Her household-chaplain, and her next of kin;
In superstition silly to excess,
And casting schemes by planetary guess;
In fine, short-wing'd, unfit himself to fly,
His fear foretold foul weather in the sky.
Besides, a Raven from a wither'd oak,
Left of their lodging, was observ'd to croak.
That omen lik'd him not; so his advice
Was present safety bought at any price;
A seeming pious care, that cover'd cowardice.
To strengthen this, he told a boding dream
Of rising waters, and a troubled stream,
Sure signs of anguish, dangers, and distress,
With something more, not lawful to express,
By which he slily seem'd to intimate
Some secret revelation of their fate;
For he concluded once upon a time,
He found a leaf inscrib'd with sacred rhyme,
Whose antique characters did well denote
The Sibyl's hand of the Cumæan grot;
The mad divineress had plainly writ,
A time should come (but many ages yet)
In which sinister destinies ordain,
A dame should drown with all her feather'd train,
And seas from thence be call'd the Chelidonian
At this some shook for fear, the more devout
Arose, and bless'd themselves from head to foot.
'Tis true some stagers of the wiser sort
Made all these idle wonderments their sport:
They said, their only danger was delay,
And he who heard what ev'ry fool could say, 500
Wou'd never fix his thought, but trim his time away
The passage yet was good; the wind, 'tis true,
Was somewhat high, but that was nothing new,
No more than usual equinoxes blew,
The sun, already from the scales declin'd,
Gave little hopes of better days behind, [wind.
But change from bad to worse of weather and of
Nor need they fear the dampness of the sky
Should flag their wings, and hinder them to fly,
'Twas only water thrown on sails too dry.
But least of all philosophy presumes
Of truth in dreams, from melancholy fumes;
Perhaps the Martin, hous'd in holy ground,
Might think of ghosts that walk their midnight rounds, Till grosser atoms, tumbling in the stream
Of fancy, madly met, and clubb'd into a dream:
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