Thy country! what to Thee?—The Godhead, what?
(I speak with awe!) tho' He should bid thee bleed?
If, with thy blood, thy final hope is fpilt,
Nor can Omnipotence reward the blow,
Be deaf; preferve thy being; difobey.
Nor is it disobedience: Know, LORENZO!
Whate'er th' ALMIGHTY's fubfequent command,
His first command is this :-" Man, love thyself.”
In this alone, free-agents are not free.
Existence is the bafis, bliss the prize;
If virtue cofts existence, 'tis a crime;
Bold violation of our law fupreme,
Black fuicide; tho' nations, which confult
Their gain, at thy expence, refound applause.
Since virtue's recompence is doubtful, here,
If man dies wholly, well may we demand,
Why is man fuffer'd to be good in vain ?
Why to be good in vain, is man injoin'd?
Why to be good in vain, is man betray'd?
Betray'd by traitors lodg'd in his own breaft,
By sweet complacencies from virtue felt?
Why whispers nature lyes on virtue's part?
Or if blind instinct (which affumes the name
Of facred confcience) plays the fool in man,
Why reafon made accomplice in the cheat?
Why are the wifeft loudeft in her praise ?
Can man by reafon's beam be led aftray?
Or, at his peril, imitate his God?
Since virtue fometimes ruins us on earth,
Or both are true; or, man furvives the grave.
Or man survives the grave, or own, LORENZO,
Thy boast fupreme, a wild abfurdity.
Dauntless thy fpirit; cowards are thy fcorn.
Grant man immortal, and thy fcorn is just.
The man immortal, rationally brave,
Dares rush on death-because he cannot die.
But if man lofes All, when life is loft,
He lives a coward, or a fool expires.
A daring infidel (and fuch there are,
From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge,
Or pure heroical defect of thought),
Of all earth's madmen, most deserves a chain.
When to the grave we follow the renown'd
For valour, virtue, fcience, 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;
Dream we, that luftre of the moral world
Goes out in ftench, and rottennefs the clofe?
Why was he wife to know, and warm to praise,
And strenuous to transcribe, in human life,
'The Mind ALMIGHTY? Could it be, that fate,
Juft when the lineaments began to shine,
And dawn the DEITY, fhould fnatch the draught,
With night eternal blot it out, and give
The skies alarm, left angels too might die?
If human fouls, why not angelic too
Extinguish'd and a folitary GoD,
O'er ghaftly ruin, frowning from his thone?
Shall we this moment gaze on God in man?
The next, lofe man for ever in the duft?
From duft we difengage, or man mistakes;
And there, where least his judgment fears a flaw.
Wisdom and worth, how boldly he commends!
Wisdom and worth, are facred names; rever'd,
Where not embrac'd; applauded! deify'd!
Why not compaffion'd too? If fpirits die,
Both are calamities, inflicted both,
To make us but more wretched: Wisdom's eye
Acute, for what? To spy more miseries;
And worth, fo recompens'd, new-points their stings.
Or man furmounts the grave, or gain is loss,
And worth exalted bumbles us the more.
Thou wilt not patronize a scheme that makes
Weakness, and vice, the refuge of mankind.
"Has virtue, then, no joys ?"-Yes, joys dear-bought. Talk ne'er fo 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 felf-reward fo loud refound,
Would take degrees angelic here below,
And virtue, while they compliment, betray,
By feeble motives, and unfaithful guards.
The crown, th' unfading crown, her foul inspires:
'Tis That, and That alone, can countervail
The body's treacheries, and the world's affaults:
On earth's poor pay our famisht virtue dies.
Truth incontestable! In fpite of all
A BAYLE has preach'd, or a VE believ❜d.
In man the more we dive, the more we fee
Heav'ns fignet stamping an immortal make.
Dive to the bottom of his foul, the base
Sustaining all; what find we? Knowledge, Love.
As light and heat, effential to the fun,
These to the foul. And why, if fouls expire?
How little lovely here? How little known?
Small knowledge we dig up with endless toil;
And love unfeign'd may purchase perfect hate.
Why ftarv'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 favage sport,
Rank insult of our pompous poverty,
Which reaps but pain, from seeming claims fo fair?
In future age lies no redrefs? And shuts
Eternity the door on our complaint?
If so, for what strange ends were mortals made!
The worst to wallow, and the best to weep;
The man who merits moft, must most complain:
Can we conceive a disregard in heav'n,
What the worst perpetrate, or best endure?
This cannot be. To love, and know, in man
Is boundless appetite, and boundless pow'r;
And these demonstrate boundlesfs objects too.
Objects, pow'rs, appetites, heav'n fuits in All;
Nor, nature thro', e'er violates this fweet,
Eternal concord, on her tuneful string.
Is man the fole exception from her laws?
Eternity ftruck off from human hope,
(I speak with truth, but veneration too)
Man is a monster, the reproach of heav'n,
A ftain, a dark impenetrable cloud
On nature's beauteous afpect; and deforms,
(Amazing blot!) deforms her with her lord.
If fuch is man's allotment, what is heav'n?
Or own the foul immortal, or blaspheme.
Or own the foul immortal, or invert
All order. Go, mock-majesty! go, man!
And bow to thy fuperiors of the fstall;
Thro' ev'ry feene of fenfe fuperior far:
They graze the turf untill'd; they drink the stream
Unbrew'd, and ever full, and un-embitter'd
With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despairs;
Mankind's peculiar! reafon's precious dower!
No foreign clime they ranfack for their robes;
Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar;
Their good is good intire, unmixt, unmarr'd;
They find a paradife in ev'ry field,
On boughs forbidden where no curfes hang:
Their ill no more than strikes the sense; unftretcht
By previous dread, or murmur in the rear:
When the worst comes, it comes unfear'd; one stroke
Begins, and ends, their woe: They die but once;
Bleft, incommunicable privilege! for which
Proud man, who rules the globe, and reads the stars,
Philofopher, or hero, fighs in vain.
Account for this prerogative in brutes.
No day, no glimpse of day to folve the knot,
But what beams on it from eternity.
O fole, and sweet solution! That unties
The difficult, and foftens the severe ;
The cloud on nature's beauteous face difpels;
Reftores bright order; cafts the brute beneath;
And re-inthrones us in fupremacy
Of joy, ev'n here: Admit immortal life,
And virtue is knight-errantry no more ;
Each virtue brings in hand a golden dower,
Far richer in reverfion: Hope exults;
And tho' much bitter in our cup is thrown,
Predominates, and gives the taste of heaven.
O wherefore is the DEITY fo kind?
Aftonishing beyond astonishment!
Heav'n our reward-for heav'n enjoy'd below.
Still unfubdu'd thy stubborn heart ?—For there
The traitor lurks who doubts the truth I fing.
Reafon is guiltlefs; will alone rebels.
What, in that stubborn heart, if I should find
New, unexpected witneffes against thee?
Ambition, pleasure, and the love of gain!
|