Not present good or ill, the joy or curse,
But future views of better or of worse.

O sons of Earth! attempt ye still to rise,
By mountains piled on mountains, to the skies?
Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.

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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.

POPE.

ELEGY.

TO THE MEMORY OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY.

WHAT beckoning ghost, along the moonlight shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade ?

"T is she!-But why that bleeding bosom gored?
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
O ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell,
Is it, in Heaven, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender, or too firm a heart,
To act a lover's or a Roman's part?

Is there no bright reversion in the sky,

For those who greatly think, or bravely die?

Why bade ye else, ye powers! her soul aspire
Above the vulgar flight of low desire?
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;
The glorious fault of angels and of gods:
Thence to their images on earth it flows,
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows.

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Most souls, 't is true, but peep out once an age,
Dull sullen prisoners in the body's cage;
Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years
Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres;
Like eastern kings a lazy state they keep,
And, close confined to their own palace, sleep.
From these perhaps (ere Nature bade her die,)
Fate snatch'd her early to the pitying sky.
As into air the purer spirits flow,

And separate from their kindred dregs below;
So flew the soul to its congenial place,
Nor left one virtue to redeem her race.

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But thou, false guardian of a charge too good, Thou mean deserter of thy brother's blood! See on these ruby lips the trembling breath, These cheeks now fading at the blast of Death; Cold is that breast which warm'd the world before, And those love-darting eyes must roll no more. Thus, if eternal Justice rules the ball, Thus shall your wives, and thus your children fall: On all the line a sudden vengeance waits, And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates; There passengers shall stand, and pointing say, (While the long funerals blacken all the way,) "Lo! these were they, whose souls the Furies steel'd, And cursed with hearts unknowing how to yield.” Thus unlamented pass the proud away,

The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day!

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So perish all, whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow 45
For others' good, or melt at others' woe.
What can atone, O ever-injured shade!
Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid?

No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear
Pleased thy pale ghost, or graced thy mournful bier. 50

By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,

By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,

By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd!
What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances and the public show;
What though no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polish'd marble emulate thy face;
What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallow'd dirge be mutter'd o'er thy tomb;
Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be drest,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground, now sacred by thy relics made.

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So peaceful rest, without a stone, a name, What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame. 70 How loved, how honour'd once, avails thee not,

To whom related, or by whom begot;

A heap of dust alone remains of thee,

'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!

Poets themselves must fall like those they sung, 75 Deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue. Ev'n he, whose soul now melts in mournful lays, Shall shortly want the generous tear he pays; Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part, And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart, 80

M

122 PRESENT CONDITION OF MAN VINDICATED.

Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er,

The Muse forgot, and thou beloved no more!

POPE.

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF
MAN VINDICATED.

HEAVEN from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know;
Or who could suffer Being here below?

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,

And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
O, blindness to the future! kindly given,

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That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heaven; 10 Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; 15 Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore. What future bliss, he gives not thee to know, But gives that hope to be thy blessing now. Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always TO BE blest. The soul, uneasy and confined, from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;

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His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, a humbler Heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
TO BE, contents his natural desire,

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense,
Weigh thy opinion against Providence ;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,
Say, here he gives too little, there too much:
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet cry, if man 's unhappy, God's unjust;
If man alone engross not Heaven's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his justice, be the god of God.
In Pride, in reasoning Pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel:
And who but wishes to invert the laws
Of ORDER, sins against the Eternal Cause.

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POPE.