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Suave Mari magno, &c.
’TIS pleasant, safely to behold from shore | |
| The rowling Ship, and hear the Tempest roar: | |
| Not that anothers pain is our delight; | |
| But pains unfelt produce the pleasing sight. | |
| ’Tis pleasant also to behold from far | 5 |
| The moving Legions mingled in the War: | |
| But much more sweet thy lab’ring steps to guide | |
| To Vertues heights, with wisdom well supply’d, | |
| And all the Magazins of Learning fortifi’d: | |
| From thence to look below on humane kind, | 10 |
| Bewilder’d in the Maze of Life, and blind: | |
| To see vain fools ambitiously contend | |
| For Wit and Pow’r; their last endeavours bend | |
| T’ outshine each other, waste their time and health | |
| In search of honour, and pursuit of wealth. | 15 |
| O wretched man! in what a mist of Life, | |
| Inclos’d with dangers and with noisie strife, | |
| He spends his little Span; And overfeeds | |
| His cramm’d desires with more than nature needs! | |
| For Nature wisely stints our appetite, | 20 |
| And craves no more than undisturb’d delight: | |
| Which minds unmix’d with cares, and fears, obtain; | |
| A Soul serene, a body void of pain. | |
| So little this corporeal frame requires; | |
| So bounded are our natural desires, | 25 |
| That wanting all, and setting pain aside, | |
| With bare privation sence is satisfied. | |
| If Golden Sconces hang not on the Walls, | |
| To light the costly Suppers and the Balls; | |
| If the proud Palace shines not with the state | 30 |
| Of burnish’d Bowls, and of reflected Plate; | |
| If well tun’d Harps, nor the more pleasing sound | |
| Of Voices, from the vaulted roofs rebound; | |
| Yet on the grass, beneath a poplar shade, | |
| By the cool stream our careless limbs are lay’d; | 35 |
| With cheaper pleasures innocently bless’d, | |
| When the warm Spring with gaudy flow’rs is dress’d. | |
| Nor will the rageing Feavours fire abate, | |
| With Golden Canopies and Beds of State: | |
| But the poor Patient will as soon be sound | 40 |
| On the hard mattrass, or the Mother ground. | |
| Then since our Bodies are not eas’d the more | |
| By Birth, or Pow’r, or Fortunes wealthy store, | |
| ’Tis plain, these useless toyes of every kind | |
| As little can relieve the lab’ring mind: | 45 |
| Unless we could suppose the dreadful sight | |
| Of marshall’d Legions moving to the fight, | |
| Cou’d, with their sound and terrible array, | |
| Expel our fears, and drive the thoughts of death away; | |
| But, since the supposition vain appears, | 50 |
| Since clinging cares, and trains of inbred fears, | |
| Are not with sounds to be affrighted thence, | |
| But in the midst of Pomp pursue the Prince, | |
| Not aw’d by arms, but in the presence bold, | |
| Without respect to Purple, or to Gold; | 55 |
| Why shou’d not we these pageantries despise; | |
| Whose worth but in our want of reason lies? | |
| For life is all in wandring errours led; | |
| And just as Children are surpriz’d with dread, | |
| And tremble in the dark, so riper years | 60 |
| Ev’n in broad daylight are possest with fears; | |
| And shake at shadows fanciful and vain, | |
| As those which in the breasts of Children reign. | |
| These bugbears of the mind, this inward Hell, | |
| No rayes of outward sunshine can dispel; | 65 |
| But nature and right reason must display | |
| Their beames abroad, and bring the darksome soul to day. | |
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