| |
| OH 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’er-look’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 op’ning to some court’s propitious shine, | |
| Or deep with di’monds 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 |
| ’Tis nowhere to be found, or ev’rywhere: | |
| ’Tis never to be bought, but always free, | |
| And fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with thee. | |
| 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 e’en virtue vain; | |
| Or indolent, to each extreme they fall, | 25 |
| To trust in ev’ry thing, or doubt of all. | |
| Who thus define it, say they more or less | |
| Than this, that happiness is happiness? | |
| 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-satisfy’d: | |
| Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend, | |
| Seek an admirer, or who 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’ ev’ry 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 plac’d in hope, and these in fear: | 70 |
| Not present good or ill, the joy or curse, | |
| But future views of better, or of worse. | |
| Oh sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise, | |
| By mountains pil’d 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, oh 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, | |
| ’Tis 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. | |
| Oh 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 god-like 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? | |
| Shall burning Ætna, if a sage requires, | |
| Forget to thunder, and recall her fires? | |
| On air or sea new motions be imprest, | 125 |
| Oh 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 |
| 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, ’tis true, | 145 |
| Was made for Cæsar—but for Titus too; | |
| And which more blest, who chain’d his country, say, | |
| Or he whose virtue sigh’d to lose a day? | |
| ‘But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed.’ | |
| What then? is the reward of virtue bread? | 150 |
| That vice may merit, ’tis 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 pow’r?’ | |
| Add health and pow’r, and ev’ry earthly thing, | |
| ‘Why bounded pow’r? 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 pow’r, 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 heart-felt joy, | |
| Is virtue’s prize: a better would you fix? | |
| Then give humility a coach and six, | 170 |
| Justice a conq’ror’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 god-like 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. | |
| Oh fool! to think God hates the worthy mind, | |
| The lover and the love of human-kind, | 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 mad’ | 195 |
| One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade; | |
| The cobler apron’d, and the parson gown’d, | |
| The frier 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, cobler-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 may’st 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 your’s 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 farther 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; | |
| ’Tis 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 fancy’d 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 out-weighs | 255 |
| Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas; | |
| And more true joy Marcellus exil’d 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 |
| ’Tis but to know how little can be known; | |
| To see all others’ faults, and feel your 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 risqu’d, and always ease: | |
| Think, and if still the things thy envy call, | 275 |
| Say, would’st thou be the man to whom they fall? | |
| To sigh for ribbands 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 shin’d, | |
| 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, fam’d 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-exchang’d for gold: | |
| Then see them broke with toils, or sunk in ease, | |
| Or infamous for plunder’d provinces. | |
| Oh, wealth ill-fated! which no act of fame | |
| E’er taught to shine, or sanctify’d from shame! | 300 |
| What greater bliss attends their close of life? | |
| Some greedy minion, or imperious wife, | |
| The trophy’d arches, story’d halls invade, | |
| And haunt their slumbers in the pompous shade. | |
| Alas! not dazzled with their noon-tide 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! | |
| 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 blest in what it takes, and what it gives; | |
| The joy unequal’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 acquir’d, | |
| For ever exercis’d, yet never tir’d; | |
| 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 through 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 | |
| Are 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 worlds 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 strait succeeds, | 365 |
| Another still, and still another spreads; | |
| Friend, 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; | |
| Oh 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. | |
| Oh! 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, urg’d 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; | |
| Shew’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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