O HAPPINESS! our being’s end and aim! | |
| Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content! whate’er thy name, | |
| That something still which prompts th’ eternal sigh, | |
| For which we bear to live, or dare to die; | |
| Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies, | 5 |
| O’erlook’d, seen double, by the fool and wise: | |
| Plant of celestial seed! if dropt below, | |
| Say in what mortal soil thou deign’st to grow? | |
| Fair opening to some court’s propitious shine, | |
| Or deep with diamonds in the flaming mine? | 10 |
| Twin’d with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield, | |
| Or reap’d in iron harvests of the field? | |
| Where grows?—where grows it not? If vain our toil, | |
| We ought to blame the culture, not the soil: | |
| Fix’d to no spot is Happiness sincere; | 15 |
| ’T is nowhere to be found, or ev’rywhere: | |
| ’T is never to be bought, but always free, | |
| And fled from monarchs, ST. JOHN! dwells with thee. | |
| I. Ask of the Learn’d the way? the Learn’d are blind, | |
| This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind: | 20 |
| Some place the bliss in Action, some in Ease, | |
| Those call it Pleasure, and Contentment these; | |
| Some sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in Pain; | |
| Some swell’d to Gods, confess ev’n Virtue vain; | |
| Or indolent, to each extreme they fall, | 25 |
| To trust in everything, or doubt of all. | |
| Who thus define it, say they more or less | |
| Than this, that happiness is happiness? | |
| II. Take Nature’s path and mad Opinion’s leave; | |
| All states can reach it, and all heads conceive; | 30 |
| Obvious her goods, in no extreme they dwell; | |
| There needs but thinking right and meaning well: | |
| And, mourn our various portions as we please, | |
| Equal is common sense and common ease. | |
| Remember, Man, ‘the Universal Cause | 35 |
| Acts not by partial but by gen’ral laws,’ | |
| And makes what Happiness we justly call | |
| Subsist not in the good of one, but all. | |
| There ’s not a blessing individuals find, | |
| But some way leans and hearkens to the kind; | 40 |
| No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride, | |
| No cavern’d hermit, rests self-satisfied; | |
| Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend, | |
| Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend. | |
| Abstract what others feel, what others think, | 45 |
| All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink: | |
| Each has his share; and who would more obtain, | |
| Shall find the pleasure pays not half the pain. | |
| Order is Heav’n’s first law; and, this confest, | |
| Some are and must be greater than the rest, | 50 |
| More rich, more wise: but who infers from hence | |
| That such are happier, shocks all common sense. | |
| Heav’n to mankind impartial we confess, | |
| If all are equal in their happiness: | |
| But mutual wants this happiness increase; | 55 |
| All Nature’s diff’rence keeps all Nature’s peace. | |
| Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; | |
| Bliss is the same in subject or in king, | |
| In who obtain defence, or who defend, | |
| In him who is, or him who finds a friend: | 60 |
| Heav’n breathes thro’ every member of the whole | |
| One common blessing, as one common soul. | |
| But Fortune’s gifts, if each alike possest, | |
| And each were equal, must not all contest? | |
| If then to all men happiness was meant, | 65 |
| God in externals could not place content. | |
| Fortune her gifts may variously dispose, | |
| And these be happy call’d, unhappy those; | |
| But Heav’n’s just balance equal will appear, | |
| While those are placed in hope and these in fear: | 70 |
| Not present good or ill the joy or curse, | |
| But future views of better or of worse. | |
| O sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise | |
| By mountains piled on mountains to the skies? | |
| Heav’n still with laughter the vain toil surveys, | 75 |
| And buries madmen in the heaps they raise. | |
| Know all the good that individuals find, | |
| Or God and Nature meant to mere mankind, | |
| Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, | |
| Lie in three words—Health, Peace, and Competence. | 80 |
| But health consists with temperance alone, | |
| And peace, O Virtue! peace is all thy own. | |
| The good or bad the gifts of fortune gain; | |
| But these less taste them as they worse obtain. | |
| Say, in pursuit of profit or delight, | 85 |
| Who risk the most, that take wrong means or right? | |
| Of vice or virtue, whether blest or curst, | |
| Which meets contempt, or which compassion first? | |
| Count all th’ advantage prosp’rous vice attains, | |
| ’T is but what virtue flies from and disdains: | 90 |
| And grant the bad what happiness they would, | |
| One they must want, which is, to pass for good. | |
| O blind to truth and God’s whole scheme below, | |
| Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe! | |
| Who sees and follows that great scheme the best, | 95 |
| Best knows the blessing, and will most be blest. | |
| But fools the good alone unhappy call, | |
| For ills or accidents that chance to all. | |
| See Falkland dies, the virtuous and the just! | |
| See Godlike Turenne prostrate on the dust! | 100 |
| See Sidney bleeds amid the martial strife!— | |
| Was this their virtue, or contempt of life? | |
| Say, was it virtue, more tho’ Heav’n ne’er gave, | |
| Lamented Digby! sunk thee to the grave? | |
| Tell me, if virtue made the son expire, | 105 |
| Why full of days and honour lives the sire? | |
| Why drew Marseilles’ good bishop purer breath | |
| When Nature sicken’d, and each gale was death? | |
| Or why so long (in life if long can be) | |
| Lent Heav’n a parent to the poor and me? | 110 |
| What makes all physical or moral ill? | |
| There deviates Nature, and here wanders Will. | |
| God sends not ill, if rightly understood, | |
| Or partial ill is universal good, | |
| Or change admits, or Nature lets it fall, | 115 |
| Short and but rare till man improv’d it all. | |
| We just as wisely might of Heav’n complain | |
| That Righteous Abel was destroy’d by Cain, | |
| As that the virtuous son is ill at ease | |
| When his lewd father gave the dire disease. | 120 |
| Think we, like some weak prince, th’ Eternal Cause | |
| Prone for his fav’rites to reverse his laws? | |
| IV. Shall burning Ætna, if a sage requires, | |
| Forget to thunder, and recall her fires? | |
| On air or sea new motions be imprest, | 125 |
| O blameless Bethel! to relieve thy breast? | |
| When the loose mountain trembles from on high, | |
| Shall gravitation cease if you go by? | |
| Or some old temple, nodding to its fall, | |
| For Chartres’ head reserve the hanging wall? | 130 |
| V. But still this world, so fitted for the knave, | |
| Contents us not.—A better shall we have? | |
| A kingdom of the just then let it be; | |
| But first consider how those just agree. | |
| The good must merit God’s peculiar care; | 135 |
| But who but God can tell us who they are? | |
| One thinks on Calvin Heav’n’s own spirit fell; | |
| Another deems him instrument of Hell: | |
| If Calvin feel Heav’n’s blessing or its rod, | |
| This cries there is, and that, there is no God. | 140 |
| What shocks one part will edify the rest; | |
| Nor with one system can they all be blest. | |
| The very best will variously incline, | |
| And what rewards your virtue punish mine. | |
| Whatever is, is right.—This world, ’t is true, | 145 |
| Was made for Cæsar—but for Titus too: | |
| And which more bless’d? who chain’d his country, say, | |
| Or he whose virtue sigh’d to lose a day? | |
| VI. ‘But sometimes Virtue starves while Vice is fed.’ | |
| What then? is the reward of virtue bread? | 150 |
| That vice may merit; ’t is the price of toil; | |
| The knave deserves it when he tills the soil, | |
| The knave deserves it when he tempts the main, | |
| Where Folly fights for kings or dives for gain. | |
| The good man may be weak, be indolent; | 155 |
| Nor is his claim to plenty but content. | |
| But grant him riches, your demand is o’er. | |
| ‘No: shall the good want health, the good want power?’ | |
| Add health and power, and every earthly thing. | |
| ‘Why bounded power? why private? why no king? | 160 |
| Nay, why external for internal giv’n? | |
| Why is not man a God, and earth a Heav’n?’ | |
| Who ask and reason thus will scarce conceive | |
| God gives enough while he has more to give: | |
| Immense the power, immense were the demand; | 165 |
| Say at what part of Nature will they stand? | |
| What nothing earthly gives or can destroy, | |
| The soul’s calm sunshine and the heartfelt joy, | |
| Is Virtue’s prize. A better would you fix? | |
| Then give humility a coach and six, | 170 |
| Justice a conqueror’s sword, or truth a gown, | |
| Or public spirit its great cure, a crown. | |
| Weak, foolish man! will Heav’n reward us there | |
| With the same trash mad mortals wish for here? | |
| The boy and man an individual makes, | 175 |
| Yet sigh’st thou now for apples and for cakes? | |
| Go, like the Indian, in another life | |
| Expect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife; | |
| As well as dream such trifles are assign’d, | |
| As toys and empires, for a godlike mind: | 180 |
| Rewards, that either would to Virtue bring | |
| No joy, or be destructive of the thing: | |
| How oft by these at sixty are undone | |
| The virtues of a saint at twenty-one! | |
| To whom can Riches give repute or trust, | 185 |
| Content or pleasure, but the good and just? | |
| Judges and senates have been bought for gold, | |
| Esteem and Love were never to be sold. | |
| O fool! to think God hates the worthy mind, | |
| The lover and the love of humankind, | 190 |
| Whose life is healthful, and whose conscience clear, | |
| Because he wants a thousand pounds a year. | |
| Honour and shame from no condition rise; | |
| Act well your part: there all the honour lies. | |
| Fortune in men has some small diff’rence made; | 195 |
| One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade, | |
| The cobbler apron’d, and the parson gown’d; | |
| The friar hooded, and the monarch crown’d. | |
| ‘What differ more,’ you cry, ‘than crown and cowl?’ | |
| I ’ll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool. | 200 |
| 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 strings, | 205 |
| 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. | 210 |
| Go! if your ancient but ignoble blood | |
| Has crept thro’ scoundrels ever since the flood, | |
| Go! and pretend your family is young, | |
| Nor own your fathers have been fools so long. | |
| What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards? | 215 |
| 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; | 220 |
| 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 further than his nose. | |
| No less alike the politic and wise; | 225 |
| 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: | |
| ’T is phrase absurd to call a villain great. | 230 |
| 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 | 235 |
| Like Socrates:—that man is great indeed! | |
| What ’s fame? a fancied life in others’ breath; | |
| A thing beyond us, ev’n before our death. | |
| Just what you hear you have; and what ’s unknown | |
| The same, my lord, if Tully’s or your own. | 240 |
| 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, | |
| An Eugene living as a Cæsar dead; | |
| Alike or when or where, they shone or shine, | 245 |
| 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; | 250 |
| When what t’ oblivion better were resign’d | |
| 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 | 255 |
| Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas: | |
| And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels | |
| Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels. | |
| In Parts superior what advantage lies? | |
| Tell (for you can) what is it to be wise? | 260 |
| ’T is but to know how little can be known, | |
| To see all others’ faults, and feel our own: | |
| Condemn’d in bus’ness or in arts to drudge, | |
| Without a second, or without a judge. | |
| Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land? | 265 |
| All fear, none aid you, and few understand. | |
| Painful preëminence! yourself to view | |
| Above life’s weakness, and its comforts too. | |
| Bring then these blessings to a strict account; | |
| Make fair deductions; see to what they mount; | 270 |
| How much of other each is sure to cost; | |
| How each for other oft is wholly lost; | |
| How inconsistent greater goods with these; | |
| How sometimes life is risk’d, and always ease. | |
| Think, and if still the things thy envy call, | 275 |
| Say, wouldst thou be the man to whom they fall? | |
| To sigh for ribands if thou art so silly, | |
| Mark how they grace Lord Umbra or Sir Billy. | |
| Is yellow dirt the passion of thy life? | |
| Look but on Gripus or on Gripus’ wife. | 280 |
| If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined, | |
| The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind! | |
| Or, ravish’d with the whistling of a name, | |
| See Cromwell damn’d to everlasting fame! | |
| If all united thy ambition call, | 285 |
| From ancient story learn to scorn them all: | |
| There in the rich, the honour’d, famed, and great, | |
| See the false scale of Happiness complete! | |
| In hearts of Kings or arms of Queens who lay, | |
| How happy those to ruin, these betray. | 290 |
| Mark by what wretched steps their glory grows, | |
| From dirt and sea-weed, as proud Venice rose; | |
| In each how guilt and greatness equal ran, | |
| And all that rais’d the Hero sunk the Man: | |
| Now Europe’s laurels on their brows behold, | 295 |
| But stain’d with blood, or ill-exchanged for gold; | |
| Then see them broke with toils, or sunk in ease, | |
| Or infamous for plunder’d provinces. | |
| O wealth ill-fated! which no act of fame | |
| E’er taught to shine, or sanctified from shame! | 300 |
| What greater bliss attends their close of life? | |
| Some greedy minion, or imperious wife, | |
| The trophied arches, storied halls invade, | |
| And haunt their slumbers in the pompous shade. | |
| Alas! not dazzled with their noontide ray, | 305 |
| Compute the morn and ev’ning to the day; | |
| The whole amount of that enormous fame, | |
| A tale that blends their glory with their shame! | |
| VII. Know then this truth (enough for man to know), | |
| ‘Virtue alone is happiness below;’ | 310 |
| The only point where human bliss stands still, | |
| And tastes the good without the fall to ill; | |
| Where only merit constant pay receives, | |
| Is bless’d in what it takes and what it gives; | |
| The joy unequall’d if its end it gain, | 315 |
| And, if it lose, attended with no pain; | |
| Without satiety, tho’ e’er so bless’d, | |
| And but more relish’d as the more distress’d: | |
| The broadest mirth unfeeling Folly wears, | |
| Less pleasing far than Virtue’s very tears: | 320 |
| Good from each object, from each place acquired, | |
| For ever exercised, yet never tired; | |
| Never elated while one man’s oppress’d; | |
| Never dejected while another’s bless’d: | |
| And where no wants, no wishes can remain, | 325 |
| Since but to wish more virtue is to gain. | |
| See the sole bliss Heav’n could on all bestow! | |
| Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know: | |
| Yet poor with fortune, and with learning blind, | |
| The bad must miss, the good untaught will find: | 330 |
| Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, | |
| But looks thro’ Nature up to Nature’s God; | |
| Pursues that chain which links th’ immense design, | |
| Joins Heav’n and earth, and mortal and divine; | |
| Sees that no being any bliss can know, | 335 |
| But touches some above and some below; | |
| Learns from this union of the rising whole | |
| The first, last purpose of the human soul; | |
| And knows where faith, law, morals, all began, | |
| All end, in love of God and love of Man. | 340 |
| For him alone Hope leads from goal to goal, | |
| And opens still and opens on his soul, | |
| Till lengthen’d on to faith, and unconfin’d, | |
| It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind. | |
| He sees why Nature plants in man alone | 345 |
| Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown | |
| (Nature, whose dictates to no other kind | |
| And giv’n in vain, but what they seek they find): | |
| Wise is her present; she connects in this | |
| His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss; | 350 |
| At once his own bright prospect to be blest, | |
| And strongest motive to assist the rest. | |
| Self-love thus push’d to social, to Divine, | |
| Gives thee to make thy neighbour’s blessing thine. | |
| Is this too little for the boundless heart? | 355 |
| Extend it, let thy enemies have part: | |
| Grasp the whole world of reason, life, and sense, | |
| In one close system of benevolence: | |
| Happier as kinder, in whate’er degree, | |
| And height of Bliss but height of Charity. | 360 |
| God loves from whole to parts: but human soul | |
| Must rise from individual to the whole. | |
| Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, | |
| As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake; | |
| The centre mov’d, a circle straight succeeds, | 365 |
| Another still, and still another spreads; | |
| Friends, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace; | |
| His country next; and next all human race; | |
| Wide and more wide, th’ o’erflowings of the mind | |
| Take ev’ry creature in of ev’ry kind: | 370 |
| Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest, | |
| And Heav’n beholds its image in his breast. | |
| Come then, my Friend! my Genius! come along, | |
| O master of the poet and the song! | |
| And while the Muse now stoops, or now ascends, | 375 |
| To man’s low passions, or their glorious ends, | |
| Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise, | |
| To fall with dignity, with temper rise: | |
| Form’d by thy converse, happily to steer | |
| From grave to gay, from lively to severe; | 380 |
| Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease, | |
| Intent to reason, or polite to please. | |
| O! while along the stream of time thy name | |
| Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame, | |
| Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, | 385 |
| Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale? | |
| When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose, | |
| Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes, | |
| Shall then this verse to future age pretend | |
| Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend? | 390 |
| That, urged by thee, I turn’d the tuneful art | |
| From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart: | |
| For Wit’s false mirror held up Nature’s light, | |
| Show’d erring pride, Whatever is, is right; | |
| That Reason, Passion, answer one great aim; | 395 |
| That true Self-love and Social are the same; | |
| That Virtue only makes our bliss below, | |
| And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know. | |
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