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To Lord Bolingbroke
ST. JOHN, whose love indulged my labours past, | |
| Matures my present, and shall bound my last, | |
| Why will you break the Sabbath of my days? | |
| Now sick alike of envy and of praise. | |
| Public too long, ah! let me hide my Age: | 5 |
| See modest Cibber now has left the Stage: | |
| Our gen’rals now, retired to their estates, | |
| Hang their old trophies o’er the garden gates; | |
| In life’s cool ev’ning satiate of applause, | |
| Nor fond of bleeding ev’n in BRUNSWICK’S cause. | 10 |
| A voice there is, that whispers in my ear | |
| (’T is Reason’s voice, which sometimes one can hear), | |
| ‘Friend Pope! be prudent, let your Muse take breath, | |
| And never gallop Pegasus to death; | |
| Lest stiff and stately, void of fire or force, | 15 |
| You limp, like Blackmore, on a lord mayor’s horse.’ | |
| Farewell then Verse, and Love, and ev’ry toy, | |
| The rhymes and rattles of the Man or Boy; | |
| What right, what true, what fit, we justly call, | |
| Let this be all my care—for this is all; | 20 |
| To lay this harvest up, and hoard with haste | |
| What ev’ry day will want, and most the last. | |
| But ask not to what Doctors I apply; | |
| Sworn to no master, of no sect am I: | |
| As drives the storm, at any door I knock, | 25 |
| And house with Montaigne now, or now with Locke. | |
| Sometimes a patriot, active in debate, | |
| Mix with the world, and battle for the state; | |
| Free as young Lyttleton, her cause pursue, | |
| Still true to Virtue, and as warm as true: | 30 |
| Sometimes with Aristippus or St. Paul, | |
| Indulge my candour, and grow all to all; | |
| Back to my native Moderation slide, | |
| And win my way by yielding to the tide. | |
| Long as to him who works for debt the day, | 35 |
| Long as the night to her whose love’s away, | |
| Long as the year’s dull circle seems to run | |
| When the brisk minor pants for twenty-one; | |
| So slow th’ unprofitable moments roll | |
| That lock up all the functions of my soul, | 40 |
| That keep me from myself, and still delay | |
| Life’s instant business to a future day; | |
| That task which as we follow or despise, | |
| The eldest is a fool, the youngest wise; | |
| Which done, the poorest can no wants endure; | 45 |
| And which not done, the richest must be poor. | |
| Late as it is, I put myself to school, | |
| And feel some comfort not to be a fool. | |
| Weak tho’ I am of limb, and short of sight, | |
| Far from a lynx, and not a giant quite, | 50 |
| I ’ll do what Mead and Cheselden advise, | |
| To keep these limbs, and to preserve these eyes. | |
| Not to go back is somewhat to advance, | |
| And men must walk, at least, before they dance. | |
| Say, does thy blood rebel, thy bosom move | 55 |
| With wretched Av’rice, or as wretched Love? | |
| Know there are words and spells which can control, | |
| Between the fits, this fever of the soul; | |
| Know there are rhymes which, fresh and fresh applied, | |
| Will cure the arrant’st puppy of his pride. | 60 |
| Be furious, envious, slothful, mad, or drunk, | |
| Slave to a wife, or vassal to a punk, | |
| A Switz, a High-Dutch or a Low-Dutch bear; | |
| All that we ask is but a patient ear. | |
| ’T is the first virtue vices to abhor, | 65 |
| And the first wisdom to be fool no more: | |
| But to the world no bugbear is so great | |
| As want of figure and a small Estate. | |
| To either India see the merchant fly, | |
| Scared at the spectre of pale Poverty! | 70 |
| See him with pains of body, pangs of soul, | |
| Burn thro’ the Tropics, freeze beneath the Pole! | |
| Wilt thou do nothing for a nobler end, | |
| Nothing to make Philosophy thy friend? | |
| To stop thy foolish views, thy long desires, | 75 |
| And ease thy heart of all that it admires? | |
| Here Wisdom calls, ‘Seek Virtue first, be bold! | |
| As gold to silver, Virtue is to gold.’ | |
| There London’s voice, ‘Get money, money still! | |
| And then let Virtue follow if she will.’ | 80 |
| This, this the saving doctrine preach’d to all, | |
| From low St. James’s up to high St. Paul; | |
| From him whose quills stand quiver’d at his ear, | |
| To him who notches sticks at Westminster. | |
| Barnard in spirit, sense, and truth abounds; | 85 |
| ‘Pray then what wants he?’ Fourscore thousand pounds; | |
| A pension, or such harness for a slave | |
| As Bug now has, and Dorimant would have. | |
| Barnard, thou art a cit, with all thy worth; | |
| But Bug and D—l their Honours! and so forth. | 90 |
| Yet ev’ry child another song will sing, | |
| ‘Virtue, brave boys! ’t is Virtue makes a King.’ | |
| True, conscious Honour is to feel no sin; | |
| He’s arm’d without that ’s innocent within: | |
| Be this thy screen, and this thy wall of brass; | 95 |
| Compared to this a Minister’s an Ass. | |
| And say, to which shall our applause belong, | |
| This new Court jargon, or the good old song? | |
| The modern language of corrupted peers, | |
| Or what was spoke at Cressy and Poictiers? | 100 |
| Who counsels best? who whispers, ‘Be but great, | |
| With praise or infamy—leave that to Fate; | |
| Get Place and Wealth, if possible with grace; | |
| If not, by any means get Wealth and Place:’ | |
| (For what? to have a Box where eunuchs sing, | 105 |
| And foremost in the circle eye a King?) | |
| Or he who bids thee face with steady view | |
| Proud Fortune, and look shallow Greatness thro’, | |
| And, while he bids thee, sets th’ example too? | |
| If such a doctrine, in St. James’s air, | 110 |
| Should chance to make the well-drest rabble stare; | |
| If honest S[chut]z take scandal at a spark | |
| That less admires the Palace than the Park; | |
| Faith, I shall give the answer Reynard gave: | |
| ‘I cannot like, dread Sir! your royal cave; | 115 |
| Because I see, by all the tracks about, | |
| Full many a beast goes in, but none come out.’ | |
| Adieu to Virtue, if you ’re once a slave: | |
| Send her to Court, you send her to her grave. | |
| Well, if a King ’s a lion, at the least | 120 |
| The people are a many-headed beast; | |
| Can they direct what measures to pursue, | |
| Who know themselves so little what to do? | |
| Alike in nothing but one lust of gold, | |
| Just half the land would buy, and half be sold: | 125 |
| Their country’s wealth our mightier misers drain, | |
| Or cross, to plunder provinces, the main; | |
| The rest, some farm the Poor-box, some the Pews; | |
| Some keep Assemblies, and would keep the Stews; | |
| Some with fat bucks on childless dotards fawn; | 130 |
| Some win rich widows by their chine and brawn; | |
| While with the silent growth of ten percent., | |
| In dirt and darkness, hundreds stink content. | |
| Of all these ways, if each pursues his own, | |
| Satire, be kind, and let the wretch alone; | 135 |
| But show me one who has it in his power | |
| To act consistent with himself an hour. | |
| Sir Job sail’d forth, the ev’ning bright and still, | |
| ‘No place on earth (he cried) like Greenwich hill!’ | |
| Up starts a palace: lo, th’ obedient base | 140 |
| Slopes at its foot, the woods its sides embrace, | |
| The silver Thames reflects its marble face. | |
| Now let some whimsy, or that Devil within | |
| Which guides all those who know not what they mean, | |
| But give the Knight (or give his Lady) spleen; | 145 |
| ‘Away, away! take all your scaffolds down, | |
| For snug’s the word: My dear! we ’ll live in town.’ | |
| At am’rous Flavio is the stocking thrown? | |
| That very night he longs to lie alone. | |
| The fool whose wife elopes some thrice a quarter, | 150 |
| For matrimonial solace dies a martyr. | |
| Did ever Proteus, Merlin, any witch, | |
| Transform themselves so strangely as the Rich? | |
| Well, but the Poor—the Poor have the same itch; | |
| They change their weekly barber, weekly news, | 155 |
| Prefer a new japanner to their shoes, | |
| Discharge their garrets, move their beds, and run | |
| (They know not whither) in a chaise and one; | |
| They hire their sculler, and when once aboard | |
| Grow sick, and damn the climate—like a Lord. | 160 |
| You laugh, half Beau, half Sloven if I stand, | |
| My wig all powder, and all snuff my band; | |
| You laugh if coat and breeches strangely vary, | |
| White gloves, and linen worthy Lady Mary! | |
| But when no prelate’s lawn, with hair-shirt lin’d, | 165 |
| Is half so incoherent as my mind, | |
| When (each opinion with the next at strife, | |
| One ebb and flow of follies all my life) | |
| I plant, root up, I build, and then confound; | |
| Turn round to square, and square again to round; | 170 |
| You never change one muscle of your face, | |
| You think this madness but a common case; | |
| Nor once to Chancery nor to Hale apply, | |
| Yet hang your lip to see a seam awry! | |
| Careless how ill I with myself agree, | 175 |
| Kind to my dress, my figure,—not to me. | |
| Is this my Guide, Philosopher, and Friend? | |
| This he who loves me, and who ought to mend? | |
| Who ought to make me (what he can, or none) | |
| That man divine whom Wisdom calls her own; | 180 |
| Great without Title, without Fortune bless’d; | |
| Rich ev’n when plunder’d, honour’d while oppress’d; | |
| Lov’d without youth, and follow’d without power; | |
| At home tho’ exiled, free tho’ in the Tower; | |
| In short, that reas’ning, high, immortal thing, | 185 |
| Just less than Jove, and much above a King; | |
| Nay, half in Heav’n—except (what ’s mighty odd) | |
| A fit of Vapours clouds this Demigod. | |
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