The young dismiss'd to wander earth or air,
There stops the instinct, and there ends the care.
18 A longer care man's helpless kind demands;
That longer care contracts more lasting bands:
Reflection, reason, still the ties improve,
At once extend the int'rest and the love;
With choice we fix, with sympathy we burn;
Each virtue in each passion takes its turn;
And still new needs, new helps, new habits rise,
That graft benevolence on charities.
19 Still as one brood, and as another rose,
These nat❜ral love maintain'd, habitual those:
The last, scarce ripen'd into perfect man,
Saw helpless him from whom their life began:
Mem'ry and forecast just returns engage,
That pointed back to youth, this on to age;
While pleasure, gratitude, and hope combin'd,
Still spread the int'rest, and preserv'd the kind.
20 Nor think, in nature's state they blindly trod;
The state of nature was the reign of God:
Self-love and social at her birth began,
Union the bond of all things, and of man.
Pride then was not; nor arts, that pride to aid:
Man walk'd with beast, joint tenant of the shade;
The same his table, and the same his bed;
No murder cloth'd him, and no murder fed.
21 In the same temple, the resounding wood,
All vocal beings hymn'd their equal God:
The shrine with gore unstain'd, with gold undrest,
Unbrib'd, unbloody, stood the blameless priest:
Heav'n's attribute was universal care,
And man's prerogative, to rule, but spare.
Ah! how unlike the man of times to come!
Of half that live, the butcher, and the tomb;
Who, foe to nature, hears the gen'ral groan,
Murders their species, and betrays his own.
22 But just disease to luxury succeeds,
And every death its own avenger breeds;
The fury passions from that blood began,
And turn'd on man a fiercer savage, man.
23 Converse and love, mankind might strongly draw, When love was liberty, and nature law.
Love all the faith, and all th' allegiance then;
For nature knew no right divine in men:
No ill could fear in God; and understood
A sovereign being, but a sovereign good.
True faith, true policy, united ran,
That was but love of God, and this of man.
24 Who first taught souls enslav'd, and realms undone, Th' enormous faith of many made for one;
That proud exception to all nature's laws,
T' invert the world, and counterwork its cause?
Force first made conquest, and that conquest, law;
Till superstition taught the tyrant awe.
Then shar'd the tyranny, then lent it aid,
And gods of conqu❜rors, slaves of subjects made:
She, 'midst the lightning's blaze, and thunder's sound,
When rock'd the mountains, and when groan'd the ground, She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray,
To power unseen, and mightier far than they:
25 She, from the rending earth, and bursting skies,
Saw gods descend, and fiends infernal rise:
Here fix'd the dreadful, there the blest abodes;
Fear made her devils, and weak hope her gods;
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were rage, revenge or lust;
Such as the souls of cowards might conceive,
And, form'd like tyrants, tyrants would believe.
26 Zeal then, not charity, became the guide,
And hell was built on spite, and heav'n on pride.
Then sacred seem'd th' ethereal vault no more;
Altars grew marble then, and reek'd with gore:
Then first the Flamen tasted living food;
Next his grim idol smear'd with human blood.
27 So drives self-love, through just, and through unjust,
To one man's power, ambition, lucre, lust:
The same self-love, in all, becomes the cause
Of what restrains him, government and laws.
28 For, what one likes, if others like as well,
What serves one will, when many wills rebel,
How shall he keep, what, sleeping or awake,
A weaker may surprise, a stronger take?
His safety must his liberty restrain:
All join'd to guard what each desires to gain.
Fore'd into virtue thus, by self-defence,
E'en kings learn'd justice and benevolence:
Self-love forsook the path it first pursu'd,
And found the private in the public good.
29 Such is the world's great harmony, that springs From order, union, full consent of things:
Where small and great, where weak and mighty, made
To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade;
More powerful each as needful to the rest,
And, in proportion as it blesses, blest.
30 For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right:
In faith and hope the world will disagree,
But all mankind's concern is charity:
All must be false that thwarts this one great end,
And all of God, that bless mankind, or mend.
31 Man, like the gen'rous vine, supported lives; The strength he gains is from th' embrace he gives. On their own axis as the planets run,
Yet make at once their circle round the sun;
So two consistent motions acts the soul;
And one regards itself, and one the whole.
Thus God and nature link'd the general frame,
And bade self-love and social be the same.
Of the Nature and State of Man, with respect to
Happiness.
1 O 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,
O'erlook'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?
2 Fair op'ning to some court's propitious shrine, Or deep with di'monds in the flaming mine? 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,
'Tis no where to be found, or ev'ry where:
'Tis never to be bought, but always free,
And, fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with thee.
3 Ask of the learn'd the way? The learn'd are blind: This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind;
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,
To trust in every thing, or doubt of all.
Who thus define it, say they more or less
Than this, That happiness is happiness?
4 Take Nature's path, and mad Opinion's leave; All states can reach it, and all heads conceive; 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.
5 Remember, man, the Universal Cause
"Acts not by partial, but by general 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:
No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride,
No cavern'd hermit, rests self-satisfied:
6 Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend,
Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend:
Abstract what others feel, what others think,
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.
7 ORDER is Heaven's first law; and this confest,
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest,
More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense.
Heaven to mankind impartial we confess,
If all are equal in their happiness;
But mutual wants this happiness increase;
All nature's diff'rence keeps all nature's peace,
8 Condition, circumstance is not the thing;
Bliss is the same in subject or in king.
In who obtain defence, ór who defend,
In him who is, or him who finds a friend:
Heaven breathes through 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,
God in externals could not place content,
9 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:
Not present good or ill, the joy or curse,
But future views of better, or of worse.
10 O sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,
By mountains pil'd on mountains, to the skies?
Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
11 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.
But health consists with temperance alone;
And peace, O virtue! peace is all thy own.
The good or bad the gifts of fortune gain;
But these less taste them, as they worse obtain.
12 Say, in pursuit of profit or delight,
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:
And grant the bad what happiness they would,
One they must want, which is, to pass for good.
13 O blind to truth, and God's whole scheme below, Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue wo!
Who sees and follows that great scheme the best,
Best knows the blessing, and will most be blest,
But fools, the good alone, unhappy call,
For ills or accidents that chance to all,
14 See Falkland dies, the virtuous and the just!
See godlike Turenne prostrate on the dust!
See Sidney bleeds amid the martial strife!
Was this their virtue, or contempt of life?
Say, was it virtue, more though Heav'n ne'er gave,
Lamented Digby! sunk thee to the grave?
15 Tell me, if virtue made the son expire,
Why, full of days and honor, lives the sire?
Why drew Marseilles' good bishop purer breath,
When nature sicken'd, and each gale was death?
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