hypocrisy; and that of the worst sort, 1319. His | On thrones; and thou congratulate the sigh:
obligation to Christians, 1337. What danger he
incurs by virtue, 1345. Vice recommended to him,
1364. His high pretences to virtue and benevolence,
exploded, 1375. The conclusion, on the nature
of faith, 1427; reason, 1439; and hope, 1443;
with an apology for this attempt, 1470.

NIGHT VII.

HEAVEN gives the needful, but neglected, call.
What day, what hour, but knocks at human hearts,
To wake the soul to sense of future scenes?
Deaths stand, like Mereuries, in every way,
And kindly point us to our journey's end.
Pope, who couldst make immortals! art thou dead?
I give thee joy: nor will I take my leave;
So soon to follow. Man but dives in death;
Dives from the Sun, in fairer day to rise;
The grave, his subterranean road to bliss.
Yes, infinite indulgence plann'd it so;
Through various parts our glorious story runs ;
Time gives the preface, endless age unrolls
The volume (ne'er unroil'd !) of human fate.

10

Man's misery declares him born for bliss;
His anxious heart asserts the truth I sing,
And gives the sceptic in his head the he.
Our beads, our hearts, our passions, and our powers,
Speak the same language; call us to the skies;
Unripen'd these in this inclement clime,
Scarce rise above conjecture and mistake;
And for this land of trifles those too strong
Tumultuous rise, and tempest human life:
What prize on Earth can pay us for the storm?
Meet objects for our passions, Heaven ordain'd, 70
Objects that challenge all their fire, and leave
No fault, but in defect. Blest Heaven! avert
A bounded ardour for unbounded bliss!
O for a bliss unbounded! far beneath
A soul immortal, is a mortal joy.
Nor are our powers to perish immature;
But, after feeble effort here, beneath
A brighter sun, and in a nobler soil,
Transplanted from this sublunary bed,
Shall flourish fair, and put forth all their bloom.
Reason progressive, instinct is complete;
Swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs.
Brutes soon their zenith reach; their little all
Flows in at once; in ages they no more

ould know, or do, or covet, or enjoy.
Were man to live coeval with the Sun,
The patriarch-pupil would be learning still;
20 Yet, dying, leave his lesson half unlearnt.
Men perish in advance, as if the Sun

This, Earth and skies already have proclaim'd.
The world's a prophecy of worlds to come;
And who, what God foretels (who speaks in things,
Still louder than in words) shall dare deay?
If Nature's arguments appear too weak,
Turn a new leaf, and stronger read in man.
If man sleeps on, untaught by what he sees,
Can he prove infided to what he feels?
He, whose blind thought futurity denies,
Unconscious bears, Bellerophon! like thee,
His own indictment; he condemus himself;
Who reads his bosom, reads immortal life;
Or, Nature, there, imposing on her sons,
Has written fables; man was made a lie.

Why discontent for ever harbour'd there?
Incurable consumption of our peace!
Resolve me, why the cottager and king,
He whom sea-sever'd realms obey, and he
Who steals his whole dominion from the waste,
Repelling winter blasts with mud and straw,
Disquieted alike, draw sigh for sigh,
In fate so distant, in complaint so near?

Is it, that things terrestrial can't content?
Deep in rich pasture, will thy flocks complain?
Not so; but to their master is denied

80

Should set ere noon, in eastern oceans drown'd; 90
If fit, with dim, illustrious to compare,
The Sun's meridian with the soul of man.
To man, why, step-dame Nature! so severe?
Why thrown aside thy master-piece half-wrought,
While meaner efforts thy last hand enjoy?
Or, if abortively poor man must die,

Nor reach, what reach he might, why die in dread ?
30 Why curst with foresight? Wise to misery ?
Why of his proud prerogative the prey?
Why less pre-eminent in rank, than pain?
His immortality alone can tell;

To share their sweet serene. Man, ill at ease, 40
In this, not his own place, this foreign field,
Where Nature fodders him with other food
Than was ordain'd his cravings to suffice,
Poor in abundance, famish'd at a feast,
Sighs on for something more, when most enjoy'd.
Is Heaven then kinder to thy flocks than thee?
Not so; thy pasture richer, but remote;
In part, remote; for that remoter part
Man bleats from instinct, tho' perhaps, debauch'd
By sense, his reason sleeps, nor dreams the canse. 50
The cause how obvious, when his reason wakes!
His grief is but his grandeur in disguise;
And discontent is immortality.

Shall sons of ether, shall the blood of Heaven,
Set up their hopes on Earth, and stable here
With brutal acquiescence in the mire?
Lorenzo! no! they shall be nobly pain'd;
The glorious foreigners, distress'd, sha'l sigh

'Night the Sixth.

100

Full ample fund to balance all amiss,
And turn the scale in favour of the just!
His immortality alone can solve
The darkest of enigmas, human hope;
Of all the darkest, if at death we die.
Hope, cager hope, th' assassin of our joy,
All present blessings treading under foot,
Is scarce a milder tyrant than despair.
With no past toils content, still planning new, 110
Hope turns us o'er to death alone for ease.
Possession, why more tasteless than pursuit ?
Why is a wish far dearer than a crown?
That wish accomplish'd, why, the grave of bliss?
Because, in the great future buried deep,
Beyond our plans of empire, and renown,
Lies all that man with ardour should pursue;
And he who made him, bent him to the right.
Man's heart th' Almighty to the future sets,
By secret and inviolable springs;
And makes his hope his sublunary joy.
Man's heart eats all things, and is hungry still;
More, more!" the glutton cries, for something
So rages appetite, if man can't mount,
He will descend. He starves on the possest.
Hence, the world's master, from ambition's spire,
In Caprea plung'd; and div'd beneath the brute.
In that rank sty why wallow'd empire's son

120

[new ¡

Supreme? Because he could no higher fly;
His riot was ambition in despair.

130

140

Old Rome consulted birds; Lorenzo! thou,
With more success, the flight of hope survey;
Of restless hope, for ever on the wing.
High-perch'd o'er every thought that falcon sits,
To fly at all that rises in her sight;
And, never stooping, but to mount again
Next moment, she betrays her aim's mistake,
And owns her quarry lodg'd beyond the grave.
There should it fail us (it must fail us there,
If being fails) m re mournful riddles rise,
And virtue vies with hope in mystery.
Why virtue? Where its praise, its being, fled?
Virtue is true self-interest pursued:
What true self-interest of quite-mortal man?
To close with all that makes him happy here.
If vice (as sonetimes) is our friend on Earth,
Then vice is virtue; 'tis our sovereign good.
In self-applause is virtue's golden prize;
No self-applause attends it on thy scheme: [right.
Whence self-applause? From conscience of the
And what is right, but means of happiness?
No means of happiness when virtue yields;
That basis failing, falls the building too,
And lays in ruin every virtuous joy.

The rigid guardian of a blameless heart,

So long rever'd, so long reputed wise,

151

161

Of all Earth's madmen, most deserves a chain.
When to the grave we follow the renown'd
For valour, virtue, science, all we love,

And all we praise; for worth, whose noon-tide beam,
Enabling us to think in higher style,
Mends our ideas of ethereal powers;

210

220

230

Dream we, that lustre of the moral world
Goes out in stench, and rottenness the close?
Why was he wise to know, and warm to praise,
And strenuous to transcribe, in human life,
The Mind Almighty? Could it be, that Fate,
Just when the lineaments began to shine,
And dawn the Deity, should snatch the draught,
With night eternal blot it out, and give
The skies alarm, lest angels too might die?
If human souls, why not angelic too
Extinguish'd? and a solitary God,
O'er ghastly ruin, frowning from his throne!
Shall we this moment gaze on God in man?
The next, lose man for ever in the dust?
From dust we disengage, or man mistakes;
And there, where least his judgment fears a flaw,
Wisdom and worth how boldly he commends!
Wisdom and worth are sacred names; rever'd,
Where not embrac'd; applauded! deified!
Why not compassion'd too? If spirits die,
Both are calainities, inflicted both,
To make us but more wretched. Wisdom's eye
Acute, for what? To spy more miseries;
And worth, so recompens'd, new-points their stings.
Or man surmounts the grave, or gain is loss,
And worth exalted humbles us the more.
Thon wilt not patronise a scheme that makes
Weakness and vice, the refuge of mankind.
"Has virtue, then, no joys?"-Yes, joys dear-bought.
Talk ne'er so long, in this imperfect state,
Virtue and vice are at eternal war.
Virtue's a combat; and who fights for nought?
Or for precarious, or for small reward?
Who virtue's self-reward so loud resound,
Would take degrees angelic here below,
And virtue, while they compliment, betray,
By feeble motives, and unfaithful guards.
The crown, th' unfading crown, her soul inspires:
'Tis that, and that alone, can countervail
The body's treacheries, and the world's assaults:
On Earth's poor pay our famish'd virtue dies. 250
180 Truth incontestable! In spite of all

Is weak; with rank knight-errantries o'er-run.
Why beats thy bosom with illustrious dreams
Of self-exposure, laudable, and great?
Of gallant enterprise, and glorious death?
Die for thy country?-Thou romantic fool!
Seize, seize the plank thyself, and let her sink :
Thy country! what to thee?-The Godhead, what?
(I speak with awe!) though he should bid thee
If, with thy blood, thy final hope is spilt, [bleed!
Nor can Omnipotence reward the blow,
Be deaf; preserve thy being; disobey.

171

Nor is it disobedience: know, Lorenzo!
Whate'er th' Amighty's subsequent command,
His first command is this-" Man, love thyself."
In this alone, free-agents are not free.
Existence is the basis, bliss the prize;
If virtue costs existence, 't is a crime;
Bold violation of our law supreme,

Black suicide; though nations, which consult
Thir gain, at thy expense, resound applause.
Since virtue's recompense is doubtful, here,
If man dies wholly, well may we demand,
Why is man suffer'd to be good in vain ?
Why to be good in vain, man enjoin'd?
Why to be good in vain, is man betray'd?
Betray'd by traitors lodg'd in his own breast,
By sweet complacencies from virtue felt?
Why whispers Nature lies on virtue's part?
Or if blind instinct (which assumes the name
Of sacred conscience) plays the fool in man,
Why reason made accomplice in the cheat?
Why are the wisest loudest in her praise?
Can man by reason's beam be led astray?
Or, at his peril, imitate his God?

240

A Bayle has preach'd, or a Voltaire believ'd.
In man the more we dive, the more we see
Heaven's signet stamping an immortal make.
Dive to the bottom of his soul, the base
Sustaining all; what find we? Knowledge, love.
As light and heat, essential to the Sun,
These to the soul. And why, if souls expire?
How little lovely here? How little known?
190 Small knowledge we dig up with endless toil; 260
And love unfeign'd may purchase perfect hate.
Why starv'd, on Earth, our angel appetites;
While brutal are indulg'd their fulsome fill?
Were then capacities divine conferr'd,
As a mock-diadem, in savage sport,
Rank insult of our pompous poverty,
Which reaps

Since virtue sometimes ruins us on Earth,
Or both are true; or man survives the grave.
Or man survives the grave; or own, Lorenzo,
Thy boast supreme, a wild absurdity.
Dauntless thy spirit; cowards are thy scorn.
Grant man immortal, and thy scorn is just.
The man immortal, rationally brave,
Dares rush on death-because he cannot die

but pain, from seeming claims so fair? In future age lics no redress? And shuts

And inextinguishable nature, speak.

Each much deposes; hear them in their turn. 940
Thy soul, how passionately fond of fame !
How anxious, that fond passion to conceal !
We blush, detected in designs on praise,
Though for best deeds, and from the best of meu;
And why? Because immortal. Art divine
Has made the body tutor to the soul;
Heaven kindly gives our blood a moral flow;
Bids it ascend the glowing check, and there
Upbraid that little heart's inglorious aim,

280 Which stoops to court a character from man; 350 While o'er us in tremendous judgment sit

520 Than reason, his ambition. Man must soar. An obstinate activity within,

The love of praise is planted to protect,
And propagate the glories of the mind.

410

What is it, but the love of praise, inspires,
Matures, refines, embellishes, exalts,
Farth's happiness? From that, the delicate,
The grand, the marvellous, of civil life,
Want and convenience, under-workers, lay
The basis, on which love of glory builds.
Nor is thy life, O virtue! less in debt
To praise, thy secret stimulating friend.
Were men not proud, what merit should we miss!
Pride made the virtues of the pagan world.
Praise is the salt that seasons right to man,
And whets his appetite for moral good.
Thirst of applause is virtue's second guard;
Reason, her first; but reason wants an aid;
Our private reason is a flatterer;

Thirst of applause calls public judgment in,
To poise our own, to keep an even scale,
And give endanger'd virtue fairer play.

Here a fifth proof arises, stronger still:
Why this so nice construction of our hearts?
These delicate moralities of sense;
This constitutional reserve of aid

To succour virtue, when our reason fails;

If virtue, kept alive by care and toil,

420

430

And, oft, the mark of injuries on Earth,
When labour'd to maturity (its bill
Of disciplines, and pains, unpaid) must die?
Why freighted-rich, to dash against a rock ?
Were man to perish when most fit to live,
O how mis-spent were all these stratagems,
By skill divine inwoven in our frame !
Where are Heaven's holiness and mercy fled?
Laughs Heaven, at once, at virtue, and at man ?
If not, why that discourag'd, this destroy'd?

440

Thus far ambition. What says avarice?
This her chief maxin, which has long been thine :
"The wise and wealthy are the same,"-I graut it.
To store up treasure, with incessant toil,
This is man's province, this his highest praise.
To this great end keen instinct stings hiin on.
To guide that instinct, reason! is thy charge; 450
"I is thine to tell us where true treasure lies:
But, reason failing to discharge her trust,
Or to the deaf discharging it in vain,

A blunder follows; and blind industry,
Gall'd by the spur, but stranger to the course,

(The course where stakes of more than gold are won)
O'er-loading, with the cares of distant age,
The jaded spirits of the present hour,
Provides for an eternity below.

480

490

And falsely promises an Eden here:
Truth she shall speak for once, though prone to lie,
A common cheat, and pleasure is her name,
To pleasure never was Lorenzo deaf;
Then hear her now, now first thy real friend.
Since Nature made us not more fond than proud
Of happiness (whence hypocrites in joy!
Makers of mirth! artificers of smiles!)
Why should the joy most poignant sense affords
Burn us with blushes, and rebuke our pride ?—
Those heaven-born blushes tell us man descends,
E'en in the zenith of his earthly bliss:
Should reason take her infidel repose,
This honest instinct speaks our lineage high;
This instinct calls on darkness to conceal
Our rapturous relation to the stalls.
Our glory covers us with noble shame,
And he that's unconfounded, is unmann'd.
The man that blushes is not quite a brute.
Thus far with thee, Lorenzo! will I close,
Pleasure is good, and man for pleasure made;
But pleasure full of glory, as of joy ;
Pleasure, which neither blushes, nor expires. 500
The witnesses are heard; the cause is o'er;
Let conscience file the sentence in her court,
Dearer than deeds that half a realm convey:
Thus seal'd by truth, th' authentic record runs.
"Know, all; know, infidels,-unapt to know!
'Tis immortality your nature solves;
'Tis immortality decyphers man,
And opens all the mysteries of his make.
Without it, half his instincts are a riddle;
Without it, all his virtues are a dream.
His very crimes attest his dignity;
His sateless thirst of pleasure, gold, and fame,
Declares him born for blessings infinite:
What less than infinite makes un-absurd
Passions, which all on Earth but more inflames?
Fierce passions, so inis-measur'd to this scene,
Stretch'd out, like cagles' wings, beyond our nest,
Far, far beyond the worth of all below,
For Earth too large, presage a nobler flight,
And evidence our title to the skies."

Ye gentle theologues, of calmer kind!
Whose constitution dictates to your pen,

510

520

Who, cold yourselves, think ardour comes from Hell!
Think not our passions from corruption sprung,
Though to corruption now they lend their wings;
That is their mistress, not their mother. All
(And justly) reason deems divine: I see,
I feel a grandeur, in the passions too,
Which speaks their high descent, and glorious end;

"Thou shall not covet," is a wise command; 460 | Which speaks them rays of an eternal fire.

But bounded to the wealth the Sun surveys:
Look farther, the command stands quite revers'd,
And avarice is a virtue most divine.

Is faith a refuge for our happiness?
Most sure and is it not for reason too?

530

In Paradise itself they burnt as strong,
Ere Adam fell, though wiser in their aim.
Like the proud Eastern, struck by Providence,
What though our passions are run mad, and stoop
With low, terrestrial appetite, to graze
On trash, on toys, dethron'd from high desire?
Yet still through their disgrace, no feeble ray
Of greatness shines, and tells us whence they fell:
But these (like that fall'n monarch when reclaim'd),
When reason moderates the rein aright,
Shall re-ascend, remount their former sphere,
Where once they soar'd illustrious; ere seduc'd
By wanton Eve's debauch, to stroll on Earth,
And set the sublunary world on fire.

540

But grant their phrensy lasts; their phrensy fails
To disappoint one providential end,
For which Heaven blew up ardour in our hearts: