Thou art the nurse of virtue. In thine arms She smiles, appearing, as in truth she is, Heaven-born, and destined to the skies again.
Thou art not known where Pleasure is adored, That reeling goddess with the zoneless waist And wandering eyes, still leaning on the arm Of Novelty, her fickle frail support;For thou art meek and constant, hating change, And finding in the calm of truth-tried love Joys that her stormy raptures never yield.
Forsaking thee, what shipwreck have we made Of honour, dignity, and fair renown, Till prostitution elbows us aside In all our crowded streets, and senates seem Convened for purposes of empire less, Than to release the adult'ress from her bond.
The adult'ress! what a theme for angry verse, What provocation to the indignant heart That feels for injured love! but I disdain The nauseous task to paint her as she is, Cruel, abandoned, glorying in her shame.
No; let her pass, and charioted along In guilty splendour shake the public ways;The frequency of crimes has washed them white, And verse of mine shall never brand the wretch Whom matrons now of character unsmirched And chaste themselves, are not ashamed to own.
Virtue and vice had boundaries in old time Not to be passed; and she that had renounced Her sex's honour, was renounced herself By all that prized it; not for prudery's sake, But dignity's, resentful of the wrong.
'Twas hard, perhaps, on here and there a waif Desirous to return, and not received;But was a wholesome rigour in the main, And taught the unblemished to preserve with care That purity, whose loss was loss of all.
Men, too, were nice in honour in those days, And judged offenders well. Then he that sharped, And pocketed a prize by fraud obtained, Was marked and shunned as odious. He that sold His country, or was slack when she required His every nerve in action and at stretch, Paid with the blood that he had basely spared The price of his default. But now,--yes, now, We are become so candid and so fair, So liberal in construction, and so rich In Christian charity (good-natured age!)
That they are safe, sinners of either sex, Transgress what laws they may. Well dressed, well bred, Well equipaged, is ticket good enough To pass us readily through every door.
Hypocrisy, detest her as we may (And no man's hatred ever wronged her yet), May claim this merit still--that she admits The worth of what she mimics with such care, And thus gives virtue indirect applause;But she has burnt her mask, not needed here, Where vice has such allowance, that her shifts And specious semblances have lost their use.
I was a stricken deer that left the herd Long since; with many an arrow deep infixt My panting side was charged, when I withdrew To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.
There was I found by one who had himself Been hurt by the archers. In his side he bore, And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars.
With gentle force soliciting the darts He drew them forth, and healed and bade me live.
Since then, with few associates, in remote And silent woods I wander, far from those My former partners of the peopled scene, With few associates, and not wishing more.
Here much I ruminate, as much I may, With other views of men and manners now Than once, and others of a life to come.
I see that all are wanderers, gone astray Each in his own delusions; they are lost In chase of fancied happiness, still woo'd And never won. Dream after dream ensues, And still they dream that they shall still succeed, And still are disappointed: rings the world With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind, And add two-thirds of the remaining half, And find the total of their hopes and fears Dreams, empty dreams. The million flit as gay As if created only, like the fly That spreads his motley wings in the eye of noon, To sport their season and be seen no more.
The rest are sober dreamers, grave and wise, And pregnant with discoveries new and rare.
Some write a narrative of wars, and feats Of heroes little known, and call the rant A history; describe the man, of whom His own coevals took but little note, And paint his person, character, and views, As they had known him from his mother's womb;They disentangle from the puzzled skein, In which obscurity has wrapped them up, The threads of politic and shrewd design That ran through all his purposes, and charge His mind with meanings that he never had, Or, having, kept concealed. Some drill and bore The solid earth, and from the strata there Extract a register, by which we learn That He who made it and revealed its date To Moses, was mistaken in its age.
Some, more acute and more industrious still, Contrive creation; travel nature up To the sharp peak of her sublimest height, And tell us whence the stars; why some are fixt, And planetary some; what gave them first Rotation, from what fountain flowed their light.
Great contest follows, and much learned dust Involves the combatants, each claiming truth, And truth disclaiming both. And thus they spend The little wick of life's poor shallow lamp In playing tricks with nature, giving laws To distant worlds, and trifling in their own.
Is't not a pity now, that tickling rheums Should ever tease the lungs and blear the sight Of oracles like these? Great pity, too, That having wielded the elements, and built A thousand systems, each in his own way, They should go out in fume and be forgot?
Ah, what is life thus spent? and what are they But frantic who thus spend it? all for smoke--Eternity for bubbles proves at last A senseless bargain. When I see such games Played by the creatures of a Power who swears That He will judge the earth, and call the fool To a sharp reckoning that has lived in vain, And when I weigh this seeming wisdom well, And prove it in the infallible result So hollow and so false--I feel my heart Dissolve in pity, and account the learned, If this be learning, most of all deceived.
Great crimes alarm the conscience, but it sleeps While thoughtful man is plausibly amused.
