Book III — Argument — The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside by Mark Akenside

Book III Argument

Pleasure in observing the tempers and manners of men, even where vicious or absurd. The origin of Vice, from false representations of the fancy, producing false opinions concerning good and evil. Inquiry into ridicule. The general sources of ridicule in the minds and characters of men, enumerated. Final cause of the sense of ridicule. The resemblance of certain aspects of inanimate things to the sensations and properties of the mind. The operations of the mind in the production of the works of Imagination, described. The secondary pleasure from Imitation. The benevolent order of the world illustrated in the arbitrary connexion of these pleasures with the objects which excite them. The nature and conduct of taste. Concluding with an account of the natural and moral advantages resulting from a sensible and well formed imagination.

What wonder therefore, since the endearing ties
  Of passion link the universal kind
  Of man so close, what wonder if to search
  This common nature through the various change
  Of sex, and age, and fortune, and the frame
  Of each peculiar, draw the busy mind
  With unresisted charms? The spacious west,
  And all the teeming regions of the south,
  Hold not a quarry, to the curious flight
  Of Knowledge, half so tempting or so fair,
  As man to man. Nor only where the smiles
  Of Love invite; nor only where the applause
  Of cordial Honour turns the attentive eye
  On Virtue’s graceful deeds. For, since the course
  Of things external acts in different ways
  On human apprehensions, as the hand
  Of Nature temper’d to a different frame
  Peculiar minds; so haply where the powers
  Of Fancy [Endnote X] neither lessen nor enlarge
  The images of things, but paint in all
  Their genuine hues, the features which they wore
  In Nature; there Opinion will be true,
  And Action right. For Action treads the path
  In which Opinion says he follows good,
  Or flies from evil; and Opinion gives
  Report of good or evil, as the scene
  Was drawn by Fancy, lovely or deform’d:
  Thus her report can never there be true
  Where Fancy cheats the intellectual eye,
  With glaring colours and distorted lines.
  Is there a man, who, at the sound of death,
  Sees ghastly shapes of terror conjured up,
  And black before him; nought but death-bed groans
  And fearful prayers, and plunging from the brink
  Of light and being, down the gloomy air,
  An unknown depth? Alas! in such a mind,
  If no bright forms of excellence attend
  The image of his country; nor the pomp
  Of sacred senates, nor the guardian voice
  Of Justice on her throne, nor aught that wakes
  The conscious bosom with a patriot’s flame;
  Will not Opinion tell him, that to die,
  Or stand the hazard, is a greater ill
  Than to betray his country? And in act
  Will he not choose to be a wretch and live?
  Here vice begins then. From the enchanting cup
  Which Fancy holds to all, the unwary thirst
  Of youth oft swallows a Circaean draught,
  That sheds a baleful tincture o’er the eye
  Of Reason, till no longer he discerns,
  And only guides to err. Then revel forth
  A furious band that spurn him from the throne,
  And all is uproar. Thus Ambition grasps
  The empire of the soul; thus pale Revenge
  Unsheaths her murderous dagger; and the hands
  Of Lust and Rapine, with unholy arts,
  Watch to o’erturn the barrier of the laws
  That keeps them from their prey; thus all the plagues
  The wicked bear, or o’er the trembling scone
  The tragic Muse discloses, under shapes
  Of honour, safety, pleasure, ease, or pomp,
  Stole first into the mind. Yet not by all
  Those lying forms, which Fancy in the brain
  Engenders, are the kindling passions driven
  To guilty deeds; nor Reason bound in chains,
  That Vice alone may lord it: oft adorn’d
  With solemn pageants, Folly mounts the throne,
  And plays her idiot antics, like a queen.
  A thousand garbs she wears; a thousand ways
  She wheels her giddy empire.—Lo! thus far
  With bold adventure, to the Mantuan lyre
  I sing of Nature’s charms, and touch well pleased
  A stricter note: now haply must my song
  Unbend her serious measure, and reveal
  In lighter strains, how Folly’s awkward arts [Endnote Y]
  Excite impetuous Laughter’s gay rebuke;
  The sportive province of the comic Muse.

See! in what crowds the uncouth forms advance:
  Each would outstrip the other, each prevent
  Our careful search, and offer to your gaze,
  Unask’d, his motley features. Wait awhile,
  My curious friends! and let us first arrange
  In proper order your promiscuous throng.

Behold the foremost band; [Endnote Z] of slender thought,
  And easy faith; whom flattering Fancy soothes
  With lying spectres, in themselves to view
  Illustrious forms of excellence and good,
  That scorn the mansion. With exulting hearts
  They spread their spurious treasures to the sun,
  And bid the world admire! But chief the glance
  Of wishful Envy draws their joy-bright eyes,
  And lifts with self-applause each lordly brow.
  In number boundless as the blooms of Spring,
  Behold their glaring idols, empty shades
  By Fancy gilded o’er, and then set up
  For adoration. Some in Learning’s garb,
  With formal band, and sable-cinctured gown,
  And rags of mouldy volumes. Some elate
  With martial splendour, steely pikes and swords
  Of costly frame, and gay Phoenician robes
  Inwrought with flowery gold, assume the port
  Of stately Valour: listening by his side
  There stands a female form; to her, with looks
  Of earnest import, pregnant with amaze,
  He talks of deadly deeds, of breaches, storms,
  And sulphurous mines, and ambush: then at once
  Breaks off, and smiles to see her look so pale,
  And asks some wondering question of her fears.
  Others of graver mien; behold, adorn’d
  With holy ensigns, how sublime they move,
  And bending oft their sanctimonious eyes
  Take homage of the simple-minded throng;
  Ambassadors of Heaven! Nor much unlike
  Is he, whose visage in the lazy mist
  That mantles every feature, hides a brood
  Of politic conceits, of whispers, nods,
  And hints deep omen’d with unwieldy schemes,
  And dark portents of state. Ten thousand more,
  Prodigious habits and tumultuous tongues,
  Pour dauntless in and swell the boastful band.

Then comes the second order; [Endnote AA] all who seek
  The debt of praise, where watchful Unbelief
  Darts through the thin pretence her squinting eye
  On some retired appearance which belies
  The boasted virtue, or annuls the applause
  That Justice else would pay. Here side by side
  I see two leaders of the solemn train
  Approaching: one a female old and gray,
  With eyes demure, and wrinkle-furrow’d brow,
  Pale as the cheeks of death; yet still she stuns
  The sickening audience with a nauseous tale,
  How many youths her myrtle chains have worn,
  How many virgins at her triumphs pined!
  Yet how resolved she guards her cautious heart;
  Such is her terror at the risks of love,
  And man’s seducing tongue! The other seems
  A bearded sage, ungentle in his mien,
  And sordid all his habit; peevish Want
  Grins at his heels, while down the gazing throng
  He stalks, resounding in magnific praise
  The vanity of riches, the contempt
  Of pomp and power. Be prudent in your zeal,
  Ye grave associates! let the silent grace
  Of her who blushes at the fond regard
  Her charms inspire, more eloquent unfold
  The praise of spotless honour: let the man,
  Whose eye regards not his illustrious pomp
  And ample store, but as indulgent streams
  To cheer the barren soil and spread the fruits
  Of joy, let him by juster measures fix
  The price of riches and the end of power.

Another tribe succeeds; [Endnote BB] deluded long
  By Fancy’s dazzling optics, these behold
  The images of some peculiar things
  With brighter hues resplendent, and portray’d
  With features nobler far than e’er adorn’d
  Their genuine objects. Hence the fever’d heart
  Pants with delirious hope for tinsel charms;
  Hence oft obtrusive on the eye of scorn,
  Untimely zeal her witless pride betrays!
  And serious manhood from the towering aim
  Of wisdom, stoops to emulate the boast
  Of childish toil. Behold yon mystic form
  Bedeck’d with feathers, insects, weeds, and shells!
  Not with intenser view the Samian sage
  Bent his fix’d eye on heaven’s intenser fires,
  When first the order of that radiant scene
  Swell’d his exulting thought, than this surveys
  A muckworm’s entrails, or a spider’s fang.
  Next him a youth, with flowers and myrtles crown’d,
  Attends that virgin form, and blushing kneels,
  With fondest gesture and a suppliant’s tongue,
  To win her coy regard: adieu, for him,
  The dull engagements of the bustling world!
  Adieu the sick impertinence of praise!
  And hope, and action! for with her alone,
  By streams and shades, to steal these sighing hours,
  Is all he asks, and all that fate can give!
  Thee too, facetious Momion, wandering here,
  Thee, dreaded censor, oft have I beheld
  Bewilder’d unawares: alas! too long
  Flush’d with thy comic triumphs and the spoils
  Of sly derision! till on every side
  Hurling thy random bolts, offended Truth
  Assign’d thee here thy station with the slaves
  Of Folly. Thy once formidable name
  Shall grace her humble records, and be heard
  In scoffs and mockery bandied from the lips
  Of all the vengeful brotherhood around,
  So oft the patient victims of thy scorn.

But now, ye gay! [Endnote CC] to whom indulgent fate,
  Of all the Muse’s empire hath assign’d
  The fields of folly, hither each advance
  Your sickles; here the teeming soil affords
  Its richest growth. A favourite brood appears,
  In whom the demon, with a mother’s joy,
  Views all her charms reflected, all her cares
  At full repaid. Ye most illustrious band!
  Who, scorning Reason’s tame, pedantic rules,
  And Order’s vulgar bondage, never meant
  For souls sublime as yours, with generous zeal
  Pay Vice the reverence Virtue long usurp’d,
  And yield Deformity the fond applause
  Which Beauty wont to claim, forgive my song,
  That for the blushing diffidence of youth,
  It shuns the unequal province of your praise.

Thus far triumphant [Endnote DD] in the pleasing guile
  Of bland Imagination, Folly’s train
  Have dared our search: but now a dastard kind
  Advance reluctant, and with faltering feet
  Shrink from the gazer’s eye: enfeebled hearts
  Whom Fancy chills with visionary fears,
  Or bends to servile tameness with conceits
  Of shame, of evil, or of base defect,
  Fantastic and delusive. Here the slave
  Who droops abash’d when sullen Pomp surveys
  His humbler habit; here the trembling wretch
  Unnerved and struck with Terror’s icy bolts,
  Spent in weak wailings, drown’d in shameful tears,
  At every dream of danger: here, subdued
  By frontless laughter and the hardy scorn
  Of old, unfeeling vice, the abject soul,
  Who, blushing, half resigns the candid praise
  Of Temperance and Honour; half disowns
  A freeman’s hatred of tyrannic pride;
  And hears with sickly smiles the venal mouth
  With foulest licence mock the patriot’s name.

Last of the motley bands [Endnote EE] on whom the power
  Of gay Derision bends her hostile aim,
  Is that where shameful Ignorance presides.
  Beneath her sordid banners, lo! they march
  Like blind and lame. Whate’er their doubtful hands
  Attempt, Confusion straight appears behind,
  And troubles all the work. Through many a maze,
  Perplex’d they struggle, changing every path,
  O’erturning every purpose; then at last
  Sit down dismay’d, and leave the entangled scene
  For Scorn to sport with. Such then is the abode
  Of Folly in the mind; and such the shapes
  In which she governs her obsequious train.

Through every scene of ridicule in things
  To lead the tenor of my devious lay;
  Through every swift occasion, which the hand
  Of Laughter points at, when the mirthful sting
  Distends her sallying nerves and chokes her tongue;
  What were it but to count each crystal drop
  Which Morning’s dewy fingers on the blooms
  Of May distil? Suffice it to have said, [Endnote FF]
  Where’er the power of Ridicule displays
  Her quaint-eyed visage, some incongruous form,
  Some stubborn dissonance of things combined,
  Strikes on the quick observer: whether Pomp,
  Or Praise, or Beauty, mix their partial claim
  Where sordid fashions, where ignoble deeds,
  Where foul Deformity are wont to dwell;
  Or whether these with violation loathed,
  Invade resplendent Pomp’s imperious mien,
  The charms of Beauty, or the boast of Praise.

Ask we for what fair end, [Endnote GG] the Almighty Sire
  In mortal bosoms wakes this gay contempt,
  These grateful stings of laughter, from disgust
  Educing pleasure? Wherefore, but to aid
  The tardy steps of Reason, and at once
  By this prompt impulse urge us to depress
  The giddy aims of Folly? Though the light
  Of Truth slow dawning on the inquiring mind,
  At length unfolds, through many a subtile tie,
  How these uncouth disorders end at last
  In public evil! yet benignant Heaven,
  Conscious how dim the dawn of truth appears
  To thousands; conscious what a scanty pause
  From labours and from care, the wider lot
  Of humble life affords for studious thought
  To scan the maze of Nature; therefore stamp’d
  The glaring scenes with characters of scorn,
  As broad, as obvious, to the passing clown,
  As to the letter’d sage’s curious eye.

Such are the various aspects of the mind—
  Some heavenly genius, whose unclouded thoughts
  Attain that secret harmony which blends
  The etherial spirit with its mould of clay,
  Oh! teach me to reveal the grateful charm
  That searchless Nature o’er the sense of man
  Diffuses, to behold, in lifeless things,
  The inexpressive semblance [Endnote HH] of himself,
  Of thought and passion. Mark the sable woods
  That shade sublime yon mountain’s nodding brow:
  With what religious awe the solemn scene
  Commands your steps! as if the reverend form
  Of Minos or of Numa should forsake
  The Elysian seats, and down the embowering glade
  Move to your pausing eye! Behold the expanse
  Of yon gay landscape, where the silver clouds
  Flit o’er the heavens before the sprightly breeze:
  Now their gray cincture skirts the doubtful sun;
  Now streams of splendour, through their opening veil
  Effulgent, sweep from off the gilded lawn
  The aërial shadows, on the curling brook,
  And on the shady margin’s quivering leaves
  With quickest lustre glancing; while you view
  The prospect, say, within your cheerful breast
  Plays not the lively sense of winning mirth
  With clouds and sunshine chequer’d, while the round
  Of social converse, to the inspiring tongue
  Of some gay nymph amid her subject train,
  Moves all obsequious? Whence is this effect,
  This kindred power of such discordant things?
  Or flows their semblance from that mystic tone
  To which the new-born mind’s harmonious powers
  At first were strung? Or rather from the links
  Which artful custom twines around her frame?

For when the different images of things,
  By chance combined, have struck the attentive soul
  With deeper impulse, or, connected long,
  Have drawn her frequent eye; howe’er distinct
  The external scenes, yet oft the ideas gain
  From that conjunction an eternal tie,
  And sympathy unbroken. Let the mind
  Recall one partner of the various league,
  Immediate, lo! the firm confederates rise,
  And each his former station straight resumes:
  One movement governs the consenting throng,
  And all at once with rosy pleasure shine,
  Or all are sadden’d with the glooms of care.
  ’Twas thus, if ancient fame the truth unfold,
  Two faithful needles, [Endnote II] from the informing touch
  Of the same parent stone, together drew
  Its mystic virtue, and at first conspired
  With fatal impulse quivering to the pole:
  Then, though disjoin’d by kingdoms, though the main
  Roll’d its broad surge betwixt, and different stars
  Beheld their wakeful motions, yet preserved
  The former friendship, and remember’d still
  The alliance of their birth: whate’er the line
  Which one possess’d, nor pause, nor quiet knew
  The sure associate, ere with trembling speed
  He found its path and fix’d unerring there.
  Such is the secret union, when we feel
  A song, a flower, a name, at once restore
  Those long-connected scenes where first they moved
  The attention, backward through her mazy walks
  Guiding the wanton fancy to her scope,
  To temples, courts, or fields, with all the band
  Of painted forms, of passions and designs
  Attendant; whence, if pleasing in itself,
  The prospect from that sweet accession gains
  Redoubled influence o’er the listening mind.

By these mysterious ties, [Endnote JJ] the busy power
  Of Memory her ideal train preserves
  Entire; or when they would elude her watch,
  Reclaims their fleeting footsteps from the waste
  Of dark oblivion; thus collecting all
  The various forms of being to present,
  Before the curious aim of mimic art,
  Their largest choice; like Spring’s unfolded blooms
  Exhaling sweetness, that the skilful bee
  May taste at will, from their selected spoils
  To work her dulcet food. For not the expanse
  Of living lakes in Summer’s noontide calm,
  Reflects the bordering shade, and sun-bright heavens,
  With fairer semblance; not the sculptured gold
  More faithful keeps the graver’s lively trace,
  Than he whose birth the sister powers of Art
  Propitious view’d, and from his genial star
  Shed influence to the seeds of fancy kind,
  Than his attemper’d bosom must preserve
  The seal of Nature. There alone unchanged,
  Her form remains. The balmy walks of May
  There breathe perennial sweets; the trembling chord
  Resounds for ever in the abstracted ear,
  Melodious; and the virgin’s radiant eye,
  Superior to disease, to grief, and time,
  Shines with unbating lustre. Thus at length
  Endow’d with all that nature can bestow,
  The child of Fancy oft in silence bends
  O’er these mix’d treasures of his pregnant breast
  With conscious pride. From them he oft resolves
  To frame he knows not what excelling things,
  And win he knows not what sublime reward
  Of praise and wonder. By degrees, the mind
  Feels her young nerves dilate: the plastic powers
  Labour for action: blind emotions heave
  His bosom; and with loveliest frenzy caught,
  From earth to heaven he rolls his daring eye,
  From heaven to earth. Anon ten thousand shapes,
  Like spectres trooping to the wizard’s call,
  Flit swift before him. From the womb of earth,
  From ocean’s bed they come: the eternal heavens
  Disclose their splendours, and the dark abyss
  Pours out her births unknown. With fixed gaze
  He marks the rising phantoms. Now compares
  Their different forms; now blends them, now divides,
  Enlarges and extenuates by turns;
  Opposes, ranges in fantastic bands,
  And infinitely varies. Hither now,
  Now thither fluctuates his inconstant aim,
  With endless choice perplex’d. At length his plan
  Begins to open. Lucid order dawns;
  And as from Chaos old the jarring seeds
  Of Nature at the voice divine repair’d
  Each to its place, till rosy earth unveil’d
  Her fragrant bosom, and the joyful sun
  Sprung up the blue serene; by swift degrees
  Thus disentangled, his entire design
  Emerges. Colours mingle, features join,
  And lines converge: the fainter parts retire;
  The fairer eminent in light advance;
  And every image on its neighbour smiles.
  Awhile he stands, and with a father’s joy
  Contemplates. Then with Promethéan art,
  Into its proper vehicle [Endnote KK] he breathes
  The fair conception; which, embodied thus,
  And permanent, becomes to eyes or ears
  An object ascertain’d: while thus inform’d,
  The various organs of his mimic skill,
  The consonance of sounds, the featured rock,
  The shadowy picture and impassion’d verse,
  Beyond their proper powers attract the soul
  By that expressive semblance, while in sight
  Of Nature’s great original we scan
  The lively child of Art; while line by line,
  And feature after feature we refer
  To that sublime exemplar whence it stole
  Those animating charms. Thus Beauty’s palm
  Betwixt them wavering hangs: applauding Love
  Doubts where to choose; and mortal man aspires
  To tempt creative praise. As when a cloud
  Of gathering hail, with limpid crusts of ice
  Enclosed and obvious to the beaming sun,
  Collects his large effulgence; straight the heavens
  With equal flames present on either hand
  The radiant visage; Persia stands at gaze,
  Appall’d; and on the brink of Ganges doubts
  The snowy-vested seer, in Mithra’s name,
  To which the fragrance of the south shall burn,
  To which his warbled orisons ascend.

Such various bliss the well-tuned heart enjoys,
  Favour’d of Heaven! while, plunged in sordid cares,
  The unfeeling vulgar mocks the boon divine;
  And harsh Austerity, from whose rebuke
  Young Love and smiling Wonder shrink away
  Abash’d and chill of heart, with sager frowns
  Condemns the fair enchantment. On my strain,
  Perhaps even now, some cold, fastidious judge
  Casts a disdainful eye; and calls my toil,
  And calls the love and beauty which I sing,
  The dream of folly. Thou, grave censor! say,
  Is Beauty then a dream, because the glooms
  Of dulness hang too heavy on thy sense,
  To let her shine upon thee? So the man
  Whose eye ne’er open’d on the light of heaven,
  Might smile with scorn while raptured vision tells
  Of the gay-colour’d radiance flushing bright
  O’er all creation. From the wise be far
  Such gross unhallow’d pride; nor needs my song
  Descend so low; but rather now unfold,
  If human thought could reach, or words unfold,
  By what mysterious fabric of the mind,
  The deep-felt joys and harmony of sound
  Result from airy motion; and from shape
  The lovely phantoms of sublime and fair.
  By what fine ties hath God connected things
  When present in the mind, which in themselves
  Have no connexion? Sure the rising sun
  O’er the cerulean convex of the sea,
  With equal brightness and with equal warmth
  Might roll his fiery orb, nor yet the soul
  Thus feel her frame expanded, and her powers
  Exulting in the splendour she beholds,
  Like a young conqueror moving through the pomp
  Of some triumphal day. When join’d at eve,
  Soft murmuring streams and gales of gentlest breath
  Melodious Philomela’s wakeful strain
  Attemper, could not man’s discerning ear
  Through all its tones the sympathy pursue,
  Nor yet this breath divine of nameless joy
  Steal through his veins and fan the awaken’d heart,
  Mild as the breeze, yet rapturous as the song?

But were not Nature still endow’d at large
  With all that life requires, though unadorn’d
  With such enchantment? Wherefore then her form
  So exquisitely fair? her breath perfumed
  With such ethereal sweetness? whence her voice
  Inform’d at will to raise or to depress
  The impassion’d soul? and whence the robes of light
  Which thus invest her with more lovely pomp
  Than Fancy can describe? Whence but from Thee,
  O source divine of ever-flowing love!
  And Thy unmeasured goodness? Not content
  With every food of life to nourish man,
  By kind illusions of the wondering sense
  Thou mak’st all Nature beauty to his eye,
  Or music to his ear; well pleased he scans
  The goodly prospect, and with inward smiles
  Treads the gay verdure of the painted plain,
  Beholds the azure canopy of heaven,
  And living lamps that over-arch his head
  With more than regal splendour; bends his ears
  To the full choir of water, air, and earth;
  Nor heeds the pleasing error of his thought,
  Nor doubts the painted green or azure arch,
  Nor questions more the music’s mingling sounds,
  Than space, or motion, or eternal time;
  So sweet he feels their influence to attract
  The fixed soul, to brighten the dull glooms
  Of care, and make the destined road of life
  Delightful to his feet. So fables tell,
  The adventurous hero, bound on hard exploits,
  Beholds with glad surprise, by secret spells
  Of some kind sage, the patron of his toils,
  A visionary paradise disclosed
  Amid the dubious wild; with streams, and shades,
  And airy songs, the enchanted landscape smiles,
  Cheers his long labours and renews his frame.

What then is taste, but these internal powers
  Active, and strong, and feelingly alive
  To each fine impulse,—a discerning sense
  Of decent and sublime, with quick disgust
  From things deform’d, or disarranged, or gross
  In species? This, nor gems, nor stores of gold,
  Nor purple state, nor culture can bestow;
  But God alone, when first His active hand
  Imprints the secret bias of the soul.
  He, mighty Parent! wise and just in all,
  Free as the vital breeze or light of heaven,
  Reveals the charms of Nature. Ask the swain
  Who journeys homeward from a summer day’s
  Long labour, why, forgetful of his toils
  And due repose, he loiters to behold
  The sunshine gleaming as through amber clouds,
  O’er all the western sky; full soon, I ween,
  His rude expression and untutor’d airs,
  Beyond the power of language, will unfold
  The form of beauty, smiling at his heart,
  How lovely! how commanding! But though Heaven
  In every breast hath sown these early seeds
  Of love and admiration, yet in vain,
  Without fair culture’s kind parental aid,
  Without enlivening suns, and genial showers,
  And shelter from the blast, in vain we hope
  The tender plant should rear its blooming head,
  Or yield the harvest promised in its spring.
  Nor yet will every soul with equal stores
  Repay the tiller’s labour, or attend
  His will, obsequious, whether to produce
  The olive or the laurel. Different minds
  Incline to different objects; one pursues
  The vast alone, [Endnote LL] the wonderful, the wild;
  Another sighs for harmony, and grace,
  And gentlest beauty. Hence, when lightning fires
  The arch of heaven, and thunders rock the ground,
  When furious whirlwinds rend the howling air,
  And ocean, groaning from his lowest bed,
  Heaves his tempestuous billows to the sky;
  Amid the mighty uproar, while below
  The nations tremble, Shakspeare looks abroad
  Prom some high cliff, superior, and enjoys
  The elemental war. But Waller longs, [Endnote MM]
  All on the margin of some flowery stream
  To spread his careless limbs amid the cool
  Of plantane shades, and to the listening deer
  The tale of slighted vows and love’s disdain
  Resound soft-warbling all the livelong day;
  Consenting Zephyr sighs; the weeping rill
  Joins in his plaint, melodious; mute the groves;
  And hill and dale with all their echoes mourn.
  Such and so various are the tastes of men.

Oh! bless’d of Heaven, whom not the languid songs
  Of Luxury, the siren! not the bribes
  Of sordid Wealth, nor all the gaudy spoils
  Of pageant Honour, can seduce to leave
  Those ever-blooming sweets, which from the store
  Of Nature fair Imagination culls
  To charm the enliven’d soul! What though not all
  Of mortal offspring can attain the heights
  Of envied life; though only few possess
  Patrician treasures or imperial state;
  Yet Nature’s care, to all her children just,
  With richer treasures and an ampler state,
  Endows at large whatever happy man
  Will deign to use them. His the city’s pomp,
  The rural honours his. Whate’er adorns
  The princely dome, the column, and the arch,
  The breathing marbles and the sculptured gold,
  Beyond the proud possessor’s narrow claim,
  His tuneful breast enjoys. For him, the Spring
  Distils her dews, and from the silken gem
  Its lucid leaves unfolds; for him, the hand
  Of Autumn tinges every fertile branch
  With blooming gold and blushes like the morn.
  Each passing Hour sheds tribute from her wings;
  And still new beauties meet his lonely walk,
  And loves unfelt attract him. Not a breeze [Endnote NN]
  Flies o’er the meadow, not a cloud imbibes
  The setting sun’s effulgence, not a strain
  From all the tenants of the warbling shade
  Ascends, but whence his bosom can partake
  Fresh pleasure, unreproved. Nor thence partakes
  Fresh pleasure only; for the attentive mind,
  By this harmonious action on her powers
  Becomes herself harmonious; wont so oft
  In outward things to meditate the charm
  Of sacred order, soon she seeks at home
  To find a kindred order, to exert
  Within herself this elegance of love,
  This fair-inspired delight; her temper’d powers
  Refine at length, and every passion wears
  A chaster, milder, more attractive mien.
  But if to ampler prospects, if to gaze
  On Nature’s form, where, negligent of all
  These lesser graces, she assumes the port
  Of that Eternal Majesty that weigh’d
  The world’s foundations, if to these the mind
  Exalts her daring eye, then mightier far
  Will be the change, and nobler. Would the forms
  Of servile custom cramp her generous powers?
  Would sordid policies, the barbarous growth
  Of ignorance and rapine, bow her down
  To tame pursuits, to indolence and fear?
  Lo! she appeals to Nature, to the winds
  And rolling waves, the sun’s unwearied course,
  The elements and seasons; all declare
  For what the Eternal Maker has ordain’d
  The powers of man; we feel within ourselves
  His energy divine; he tells the heart,
  He meant, he made us to behold and love
  What he beholds and loves, the general orb
  Of life and being; to be great like him,
  Beneficent and active. Thus the men
  Whom Nature’s works can charm, with God himself
  Hold converse; grow familiar, day by day,
  With his conceptions, act upon his plan;
  And form to his, the relish of their souls.

Book First

Endnote A.

‘Say why was man’, etc.

—P.8.

In apologising for the frequent negligences of the sublimest authors of Greece, ‘Those godlike geniuses,’ says Longinus, ‘were well assured, that Nature had not intended man for a low-spirited or ignoble being: but bringing us into life and the midst of this wide universe, as before a multitude assembled at some heroic solemnity, that we might be spectators of all her magnificence, and candidates high in emulation for the prize of glory; she has therefore implanted in our souls an inextinguishable love of everything great and exalted, of everything which appears divine beyond our comprehension. Whence it comes to pass, that even the whole world is not an object sufficient for the depth and rapidity of human imagination, which often sallies forth beyond the limits of all that surrounds us. Let any man cast his eye through the whole circle of our existence, and consider how especially it abounds in excellent and grand objects, he will soon acknowledge for what enjoyments and pursuits we were destined. Thus by the very propensity of nature we are led to admire, not little springs or shallow rivulets, however clear and delicious, but the Nile, the Rhine, the Danube, and, much more than all, the Ocean,’ etc. —Dionys. Longin. de Sublim. ss. xxiv.

Endnote B.

‘The empyreal waste’.

—P. 9.

‘Ne se peut-il point qu’il y a un grand espace au-delà de la région des étoiles? Que ce soit le ciel empyrée, ou non, toujours cet espace immense quî environne toute cette region, pourra être rempli de bonheur et de gloire. Il pourra être conçu comme l’océan, òu se rendent les fleuves de toutes les créatures bienheureuses, quand elles seront venues à leur perfection dans le système des étoiles.’ —Leibnitz dans la Theodicée, part i. par. 19.

Endnote C.

‘Whose unfading light’, etc.

—P. 9.

It was a notion of the great Mr. Huygens, that there may be fixed stars at such a distance from our solar system, as that their light should not have had time to reach us, even from the creation of the world to this day.

Endnote D.

‘The neglect Of all familiar prospects’, etc.

—P. 10.

It is here said, that in consequence of the love of novelty, objects which at first were highly delightful to the mind, lose that effect by repeated attention to them. But the instance of habit is opposed to this observation; for there, objects at first distasteful are in time rendered entirely agreeable by repeated attention.

The difficulty in this case will be removed if we consider, that, when objects at first agreeable, lose that influence by frequently recurring, the mind is wholly passive, and the perception involuntary; but habit, on the other hand, generally supposes choice and activity accompanying it: so that the pleasure arises here not from the object, but from the mind’s conscious determination of its own activity; and consequently increases in proportion to the frequency of that determination.

It will still be urged perhaps, that a familiarity with disagreeable objects renders them at length acceptable, even when there is no room for the mind to resolve or act at all. In this case, the appearance must be accounted for one of these ways.

The pleasure from habit may be merely negative. The object at first gave uneasiness: this uneasiness gradually wears off as the object grows familiar: and the mind, finding it at last entirely removed, reckons its situation really pleasurable, compared with what it had experienced before.

The dislike conceived of the object at first, might be owing to prejudice or want of attention. Consequently the mind being necessitated to review it often, may at length perceive its own mistake, and be reconciled to what it had looked on with aversion. In which case, a sort of instinctive justice naturally leads it to make amends for the injury, by running toward the other extreme of fondness and attachment.

Or lastly, though the object itself should always continue disagreeable, yet circumstances of pleasure or good fortune may occur along with it. Thus an association may arise in the mind, and the object never be remembered without those pleasing circumstances attending it; by which means the disagreeable impression which it at first occasioned will in time be quite obliterated.

Endnote E.

‘This desire Of objects new and strange’.

—P. 10.

These two ideas are oft confounded; though it is evident the mere novelty of an object makes it agreeable, even where the mind is not affected with the least degree of wonder: whereas wonder indeed always implies novelty, being never excited by common or well-known appearances. But the pleasure in both cases is explicable from the same final cause, the acquisition of knowledge and enlargement of our views of nature: on this account it is natural to treat of them together.

Endnote F.

‘Truth and Good are one, And Beauty dwells in them’, etc.

—P. 14.

‘Do you imagine,’ says Socrates to Aristippus, ‘that what is good is not beautiful? Have you not observed that these appearances always coincide? Virtue, for instance, in the same respect as to which we call it good, is ever acknowledged to be beautiful also. In the characters of men we always [1] join the two denominations together. The beauty of human bodies corresponds, in like manner, with that economy of parts which constitutes them good; and in every circumstance of life, the same object is constantly accounted both beautiful and good, inasmuch as it answers the purposes for which it was designed.’ —Xenophont. Memorab. Socrat. 1.iii.c.8.

This excellent observation has been illustrated and extended by the noble restorer of ancient philosophy. (See the Characteristics, vol. ii., pp. 339 and 422, and vol. iii., p. 181.) And another ingenious author has particularly shewn, that it holds in the general laws of nature, in the works of art, and the conduct of the sciences (Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, treat, i. Section 8). As to the connexion between beauty and truth, there are two opinions concerning it. Some philosophers assert an independent and invariable law in nature, in consequence of which all rational beings must alike perceive beauty in some certain proportions, and deformity in the contrary. And this necessity being supposed the same with that which commands the assent or dissent of the understanding, it follows, of course, that beauty is founded on the universal and unchangeable law of truth.

But others there are who believe beauty to be merely a relative and arbitrary thing; that, indeed, it was a benevolent provision in nature to annex so delightful a sensation to those objects which are best and most perfect in themselves, that so we might be engaged to the choice of them at once, and without staying to infer their usefulness from their structure and effects; but that it is not impossible, in a physical sense, that two beings, of equal capacities for truth, should perceive, one of them beauty, and the other deformity, in the same proportions. And upon this supposition, by that truth which is always connected with beauty, nothing more can be meant than the conformity of any object to those proportions upon which, after careful examination, the beauty of that species is found to depend. Polycletus, for instance, a famous ancient sculptor, from an accurate mensuration of the several parts of the most perfect human bodies, deduced a canon or system of proportions, which was the rule of all succeeding artists. Suppose a statue modelled according to this: a man of mere natural taste, upon looking at it, without entering into its proportions, confesses and admires its beauty; whereas a professor of the art applies his measures to the head, the neck, or the hand, and, without attending to its beauty, pronounces the workmanship to be just and true.

Endnote G.

‘As when Brutus rose,’ etc.

—P. 18.

Cicero himself describes this fact—‘Cassare interfecto—statim cruentum alte extollens M. Brutus pugionem, Ciceronem nominatim exclamavit, atque ei recuperatam libertatem est gratulatus.’ —Cic. Philipp. ii. 12.

Endnote H.

‘Where Virtue rising from the awful depth Of Truth’s mysterious bosom,’ etc.

—P. 20.

According to the opinion of those who assert moral obligation to be founded on an immutable and universal law; and that which is usually called the moral sense, to be determined by the peculiar temper of the imagination and the earliest associations of ideas.

Endnote I.

‘Lycéum.’

—P. 21.

The school of Aristotle.

Endnote J.

‘Academus.’

—P. 21.

The school of Plato.

Endnote K.

‘Ilissus.’

—P. 21.

One of the rivers on which Athens was situated. Plato, in some of his finest dialogues, lays the scene of the conversation with Socrates on its banks.

Book Second

Endnote L

‘At last the Muses rose,’ etc.

—P. 22.

About the age of Hugh Capet, founder of the third race of French kings, the poets of Provence were in high reputation; a sort of strolling bards or rhapsodists, who went about the courts of princes and noblemen, entertaining them at festivals with music and poetry. They attempted both the epic, ode, and satire; and abounded in a wild and fantastic vein of fable, partly allegorical, and partly founded on traditionary legends of the Saracen wars. These were the rudiments of Italian poetry. But their taste and composition must have been extremely barbarous, as we may judge by those who followed the turn of their fable in much politer times; such as Boiardo, Bernardo, Tasso, Ariosto, etc.

Endnote M.

‘Valclusa.’

—P. 22.

The famous retreat of Francisco Petrarcha, the father of Italian poetry, and his mistress, Laura, a lady of Avignon.

Endnote N.

‘Arno.’

—P. 22.

The river which runs by Florence, the birth-place of Dante and Boccaccio.

Endnote O.

‘Parthenopé.’

—P. 23.

Or Naples, the birth-place of Sannazaro. The great Torquato Tasso was born at Sorrento in the kingdom of Naples.

Endnote P.

‘The rage Of dire ambition,’ etc.

—P. 23.

This relates to the cruel wars among the republics of Italy, and abominable politics of its little princes, about the fifteenth century. These, at last, in conjunction with the papal power, entirely extinguished the spirit of liberty in that country, and established that abuse of the fine arts which has been since propagated over all Europe.

Endnote Q.

‘Thus from their guardians torn, the tender arts,’ etc.

—P. 23.

Nor were they only losers by the separation. For philosophy itself, to use the words of a noble philosopher, ‘being thus severed from the sprightly arts and sciences, must consequently grow dronish, insipid, pedantic, useless, and directly opposite to the real knowledge and practice of the world.’ Insomuch that ‘a gentleman,’ says another excellent writer, ‘cannot easily bring himself to like so austere and ungainly a form: so greatly is it changed from what was once the delight of the finest gentlemen of antiquity, and their recreation after the hurry of public affairs! From this condition it cannot be recovered but by uniting it once more with the works of imagination; and we have had the pleasure of observing a very great progress made towards their union in England within these few years. It is hardly possible to conceive them at a greater distance from each other than at the Revolution, when Locke stood at the head of one party, and Dryden of the other. But the general spirit of liberty, which has ever since been growing, naturally invited our men of wit and genius to improve that influence which the arts of persuasion gave them with the people, by applying them to subjects of importance to society. Thus poetry and eloquence became considerable; and philosophy is now, of course, obliged to borrow of their embellishments, in order even to gain audience with the public.

Endnote R.

‘From passion’s power alone,’ etc.

—P. 26.

This very mysterious kind of pleasure, which is often found in the exercise of passions generally counted painful, has been taken notice of by several authors. Lucretius resolves it into self-love:—

‘Suave mari magno,’ etc., lib. ii. 1.

As if a man was never pleased in being moved at the distress of a tragedy, without a cool reflection that though these fictitious personages were so unhappy, yet he himself was perfectly at ease and in safety. The ingenious author of the Reflections Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture accounts for it by the general delight which the mind takes in its own activity, and the abhorrence it feels of an indolent and inattentive state: and this, joined with the moral approbation of its own temper, which attends these emotions when natural and just, is certainly the true foundation of the pleasure, which, as it is the origin and basis of tragedy and epic, deserved a very particular consideration in this poem.

Endnote S.

‘Inhabitant of earth,’ etc.

—P. 31.

The account of the economy of Providence here introduced, as the most proper to calm and satisfy the mind when under the compunction of private evils, seems to have come originally from the Pythagorean school: but of the ancient philosophers, Plato has most largely insisted upon it, has established it with all the strength of his capacious understanding, and ennobled it with all the magnificence of his divine imagination. He has one passage so full and clear on this head, that I am persuaded the reader will be pleased to see it here, though somewhat long. Addressing himself to such as are not satisfied concerning divine Providence: ‘The Being who presides over the whole,’ says he, ‘has disposed and complicated all things for the happiness and virtue of the whole, every part of which, according to the extent of its influence, does and suffers what is fit and proper. One of these parts is yours, O unhappy man, which though in itself most inconsiderable and minute, yet being connected with the universe, ever seeks to co-operate with that supreme order. You in the meantime are ignorant of the very end for which all particular natures are brought into existence, that the all-comprehending nature of the whole may be perfect and happy; existing, as it does, not for your sake, but the cause and reason of your existence, which, as in the symmetry of every artificial work, must of necessity concur with the general design of the artist, and be subservient to the whole of which it is a part. Your complaint therefore is ignorant and groundless; since, according to the various energy of creation, and the common laws of nature, there is a constant provision of that which is best at the same time for you and for the whole.—For the governing intelligence clearly beholding all the actions of animated and self-moving creatures, and that mixture of good and evil which diversifies them, considered first of all by what disposition of things, and by what situation of each individual in the general system, vice might be depressed and subdued, and virtue made secure of victory and happiness with the greatest facility and in the highest degree possible. In this manner he ordered through the entire circle of being, the internal constitution of every mind, where should be its station in the universal fabric, and through what variety of circumstances it should proceed in the whole tenor of its existence.’ He goes on in his sublime manner to assert a future state of retribution, ‘as well for those who, by the exercise of good dispositions being harmonised and assimilated into the divine virtue, are consequently removed to a place of unblemished sanctity and happiness; as of those who by the most flagitious arts have risen from contemptible beginnings to the greatest affluence and power, and whom you therefore look upon as unanswerable instances of negligence in the gods, because you are ignorant of the purposes to which they are subservient, and in what manner they contribute to that supreme intention of good to the whole.’ —Plato de Leg. x. 16.

This theory has been delivered of late, especially abroad, in a manner which subverts the freedom of human actions; whereas Plato appears very careful to preserve it, and has been in that respect imitated by the best of his followers.

Endnote T.

‘One might rise, One order,’ etc.

—P. 31.

See the Meditations of Antoninus and the Characteristics, passim.

Endnote U.

‘The best and fairest,’ etc.

—P. 32.

This opinion is so old, that Timaeus Locrus calls the Supreme Being [Greek: demiourgos tou beltionos], the artificer of that which is best; and represents him as resolving in the beginning to produce the most excellent work, and as copying the world most exactly from his own intelligible and essential idea; ‘so that it yet remains, as it was at first, perfect in beauty, and will never stand in need of any correction or improvement.’ There can be no room for a caution here, to understand the expressions, not of any particular circumstances of human life separately considered, but of the sum or universal system of life and being. See also the vision at the end of the Theodicée of Leibnitz.

Endnote V.

‘As flame ascends,’ etc.

—P. 32.

This opinion, though not held by Plato nor any of the ancients, is yet a very natural consequence of his principles. But the disquisition is too complex and extensive to be entered upon here.

Endnote W.

‘Philip.’

—P. 44.

The Macedonian.

Book Third

Endnote X.

‘Where the powers Of Fancy,’ etc.

—P. 46.

The influence of the imagination on the conduct of life is one of the most important points in moral philosophy. It were easy, by an induction of facts, to prove that the imagination directs almost all the passions, and mixes with almost every circumstance of action or pleasure. Let any man, even of the coldest head and soberest industry, analyse the idea of what he calls his interest; he will find that it consists chiefly of certain degrees of decency, beauty, and order, variously combined into one system, the idol which he seeks to enjoy by labour, hazard, and self-denial. It is, on this account, of the last consequence to regulate these images by the standard of nature and the general good; otherwise the imagination, by heightening some objects beyond their real excellence and beauty, or by representing others in a more odions or terrible shape than they deserve, may, of course, engage us in pursuits utterly inconsistent with the moral order of things.

If it be objected that this account of things supposes the passions to be merely accidental, whereas there appears in some a natural and hereditary disposition to certain passions prior to all circumstances of education or fortune, it may be answered, that though no man is born ambitious or a miser, yet he may inherit from his parents a peculiar temper or complexion of mind, which shall render his imagination more liable to be struck with some particular objects, consequently dispose him to form opinions of good and ill, and entertain passions of a particular turn. Some men, for instance, by the original frame of their minds, are more delighted with the vast and magnificent, others, on the contrary, with the elegant and gentle aspects of nature. And it is very remarkable, that the disposition of the moral powers is always similar to this of the imagination; that those who are most inclined to admire prodigious and sublime objects in the physical world, are also most inclined to applaud examples of fortitude and heroic virtue in the moral. While those who are charmed rather with the delicacy and sweetness of colours, and forms, and sounds, never fail in like manner to yield the preference to the softer scenes of virtue and the sympathies of a domestic life. And this is sufficient to account for the objection.

Among the ancient philosophers, though we have several hints concerning this influence of the imagination upon morals among the remains of the Socratic school, yet the Stoics were the first who paid it a due attention. Zeno, their founder, thought it impossible to preserve any tolerable regularity in life, without frequently inspecting those pictures or appearances of things, which the imagination offers to the mind (Diog. Laërt. I. vii.) The meditations of M. Aurelius, and the discourses of Epictetus, are full of the same sentiment; insomuch that the latter makes the [Greek: Chresis oia dei, fantasion], or right management of the fancies, the only thing for which we are accountable to Providence, and without which a man is no other than stupid or frantic (Arrian. I. i. c. 12. and I. ii. c. 22). See also the Characteristics, vol. i. from p. 313 to 321, where this Stoical doctrine is embellished with all the elegance and graces of Plato.

Endnote Y.

‘How Folly’s awkward arts,’ etc.

—P. 47.

Notwithstanding the general influence of ridicule on private and civil life, as well as on learning and the sciences, it has been almost constantly neglected or misrepresented, by divines especially. The manner of treating these subjects in the science of human nature, should be precisely the same as in natural philosophy; from particular facts to investigate the stated order in which they appear, and then apply the general law, thus discovered, to the explication of other appearances and the improvement of useful arts.

Endnote Z.

‘Behold the foremost band,’ etc.

—P. 48.

The first and most general source of ridicule in the characters of men, is vanity or self-applause for some desirable quality or possession which evidently does not belong to those who assume it.

Endnote Aa

‘Then comes the second order,’ etc.—P, 49.

Ridicule from the same vanity, where, though the possession be real, yet no merit can arise from it, because of some particular circumstances, which, though obvious to the spectator, are yet overlooked by the ridiculous character.

Endnote Bb

‘Another tribe succeeds,’ etc.

—P. 50.

Ridicule from a notion of excellence in particular objects disproportioned to their intrinsic value, and inconsistent with the order of nature.

Endnote CC

‘But now, ye gay,’ etc.

—P. 51.

Ridicule from a notion of excellence, when the object is absolutely odious or contemptible. This is the highest degree of the ridiculous; as in the affectation of diseases or vices.

Endnote Dd

‘Thus far triumphant,’ etc.

—P. 51

Ridicule from false shame or groundless fear.

Endnote Ee

‘Last of the motley bands,’ etc.

—P. 52.

Ridicule from the ignorance of such things as our circumstances require us to know.

Endnote Ff

‘Suffice it to have said,’ etc.

—P. 52.

By comparing these general sources of ridicule with each other, and examining the ridiculous in other objects, we may obtain a general definition of it, equally applicable to every species. The most important circumstance of this definition is laid down in the lines referred to; but others more minute we shall subjoin here. Aristotle’s account of the matter seems both imperfect and false. [Greek: To ghar geloion], says he, [Greek: estin hamartaema ti kai aischos]: ‘The ridiculous is some certain fault or turpitude without pain, and not destructive to its subject’ (Poet. c. 5). For allowing it to be true, as it is not, that the ridiculous is never accompanied with pain, yet we might produce many instances of such a fault or turpitude which cannot with any tolerable propriety be called ridiculous. So that the definition does not distinguish the thing designed. Nay, further, even when we perceive the turpitude tending to the destruction of its subject, we may still be sensible of a ridiculous appearance, till the ruin become imminent, and the keener sensations of pity or terror banish the ludicrous apprehension from our minds; for the sensation of ridicule is not a bare perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, but a passion or emotion of the mind consequential to that perception; so that the mind may perceive the agreement or disagreement, and yet not feel the ridiculous, because it is engrossed by a more violent emotion. Thus it happens that some men think those objects ridiculous, to which others cannot endure to apply the name, because in them they excite a much intenser and more important feeling. And this difference, among other causes, has brought a good deal of confusion into this question.

‘That which makes objects ridiculous is some ground of admiration or esteem connected with other more general circumstances comparatively worthless or deformed; or it is some circumstance of turpitude or deformity connected with what is in general excellent or beautiful: the inconsistent properties existing either in the objects themselves, or in the apprehension of the person to whom they relate, belonging always to the same order or class of being, implying sentiment or design, and exciting no acute or vehement emotion of the heart.’

To prove the several parts of this definition: ‘The appearance of excellence or beauty connected with a general condition comparatively sordid or deformed’ is ridiculous; for instance, pompous pretensions of wisdom joined with ignorance or folly in the Socrates of Aristophanes, and the ostentations of military glory with cowardice and stupidity in the Thraso of Terence.

‘The appearance of deformity or turpitude in conjunction with what is in general excellent or venerable,’ is also ridiculous: for instance, the personal weaknesses of a magistrate appearing in the solemn and public functions of his station.

‘The incongruous properties may either exist in the objects themselves, or in the apprehension of the person to whom they relate:’ in the last—mentioned instance, they both exist in the objects; in the instances from Aristophanes and Terence, one of them is objective and real, the other only founded in the apprehension of the ridiculous character.

‘The inconsistent properties must belong to the same order or class of being.’ A coxcomb in fine clothes, bedaubed by accident in foul weather, is a ridiculous object, because his general apprehension of excellence and esteem is referred to the splendour and expense of his dress. A man of sense and merit, in the same circumstances, is not counted ridiculous, because the general ground of excellence and esteem in him is, both in fact and in his own apprehension, of a very different species.

‘Every ridiculous object implies sentiment or design.’ A column placed by an architect without a capital or base is laughed at: the same column in a ruin causes a very different sensation.

And lastly, ‘the occurrence must excite no acute or vehement emotion of the heart,’ such as terror, pity, or indignation; for in that case, as was observed above, the mind is not at leisure to contemplate the ridiculous. Whether any appearance not ridiculous be involved in this description, and whether it comprehend every species and form of the ridiculous, must be determined by repeated applications of it to particular instances.

Endnote Gg

‘Ask we for what fair end’, etc.

—P. 53.

Since it is beyond all contradiction evident that we have a natural sense or feeling of the ridiculous, and since so good a reason may be assigned to justify the supreme Being for bestowing it, one cannot, without astonishment, reflect on the conduct of those men who imagine it is for the service of true religion to vilify and blacken it without distinction, and endeavour to persuade us that it is never applied but in a bad cause. Ridicule is not concerned with mere speculative truth or falsehood. It is not in abstract propositions or theorems, but in actions and passions, good and evil, beauty and deformity, that we find materials for it; and all these terms are relative, implying approbation or blame. To ask them whether ridicule be a test of truth, is, in other words, to ask whether that which is ridiculous can be morally true, can be just and becoming; or whether that which is just and becoming can be ridiculous?—a question that does not deserve a serious answer. For it is most evident, that, as in a metaphysical proposition offered to the understanding for its assent, the faculty of reason examines the terms of the proposition, and finding one idea, which was supposed equal to another, to be in fact unequal, of consequence rejects the proposition as a falsehood; so, in objects offered to the mind for its esteem or applause, the faculty of ridicule, finding an incongruity in the claim, urges the mind to reject it with laughter and contempt. When, therefore, we observe such a claim obtruded upon mankind, and the inconsistent circumstances carefully concealed from the eye of the public, it is our business, if the matter be of importance to society, to drag out those latent circumstances, and, by setting them in full view, to convince the world how ridiculous the claim is: and thus a double advantage is gained; for we both detect the moral falsehood sooner than in the way of speculative inquiry, and impress the minds of men with a stronger sense of the vanity and error of its authors. And this, and no more, is meant by the application of ridicule.

But it is said, the practice is dangerous, and may be inconsistent with the regard we owe to objects of real dignity and excellence. I answer, the practice fairly managed can never be dangerous; men may be dishonest in obtruding circumstances foreign to the object, and we may be inadvertent in allowing those circumstances to impose upon us: but the sense of ridicule always judges right. The Socrates of Aristophanes is as truly ridiculous a character as ever was drawn: —true; but it is not the character of Socrates, the divine moralist and father of ancient wisdom. What then? did the ridicule of the poet hinder the philosopher from detecting and disclaiming those foreign circumstances which he had falsely introduced into his character, and thus rendered the satirist doubly ridiculous in his turn? No; but it nevertheless had an ill influence on the minds of the people. And so has the reasoning of Spinoza made many atheists: he has founded it, indeed, on suppositions utterly false; but allow him these, and his conclusions are unavoidably true. And if we must reject the use of ridicule, because, by the imposition of false circumstances, things may be made to seem ridiculous, which are not so in themselves; why we ought not in the same manner to reject the use of reason, because, by proceeding on false principles, conclusions will appear true which are impossible in nature, let the vehement and obstinate declaimers against ridicule determine.

Endnote Hh

‘The inexpressive semblance’, etc.

—P. 53.

This similitude is the foundation of almost all the ornaments of poetic diction.

Endnote II

‘Two faithful needles’, etc.

—P. 55.

See the elegant poem recited by Cardinal Bembo in the character of Lucretius.-Strada Prolus. vi. Academ. 2. c. v.

Endnote Jj

‘By these mysterious ties’, etc.

—P. 55.

The act of remembering seems almost wholly to depend on the association of ideas.

Endnote Kk

‘Into its proper vehicle’, etc.

—P. 57.

This relates to the different sorts of corporeal mediums, by which the ideas of the artists are rendered palpable to the senses: as by sounds, in music; by lines and shadows, in painting; by diction, in poetry, etc.

Endnote Ll

‘One pursues The vast alone’, etc.

—P. 61.

See the note to ver. 18 of this book.

Endnote MM

‘Waller longs’, etc.

—P. 61.

Oh! how I long my careless limbs to lay
Under the plantane shade; and all the day
With amorous airs my fancy entertain, etc.
WALLER, Battle of the Summer-Islands, Canto I.

And again,
          While in the park I sing, the list’ning deer
          Attend my passion, and forget to fear, etc.
          At Pens-hurst.

Endnote Nn

‘Not a breeze’, etc.

—P. 63.

That this account may not appear rather poetically extravagant than just in philosophy, it may be proper to produce the sentiment of one of the greatest, wisest, and best of men on this head; one so little to be suspected of partiality in the case, that he reckons it among those favours for which he was especially thankful to the gods, that they had not suffered him to make any great proficiency in the arts of eloquence and poetry, lest by that means he should have been diverted from pursuits of more importance to his high station. Speaking of the beauty of universal nature, he observes, that there ‘is a pleasing and graceful aspect in every object we perceive,’ when once we consider its connexion with that general order. He instances in many things which at first sight would be thought rather deformities; and then adds, ‘that a man who enjoys a sensibility of temper with a just comprehension of the universal order—will discern many amiable things, not credible to every mind, but to those alone who have entered into an honourable familiarity with nature and her works.’ —M. Antonin. iii. 2.

The Pleasures of the Imagination

A Poem

General Argument

The pleasures of the imagination proceed either from natural objects, as from a flourishing grove, a clear and murmuring fountain, a calm sea by moonlight; or from works of art, such as a noble edifice, a musical tune, a statue, a picture, a poem. In treating of these pleasures, we must begin with the former class; they being original to the other; and nothing more being necessary, in order to explain them, than a view of our natural inclination toward greatness and beauty, and of those appearances, in the world around us, to which that inclination is adapted. This is the subject of the first book of the following poem.

But the pleasures which we receive from the elegant arts, from music, sculpture, painting, and poetry, are much more various and complicated. In them (besides greatness and beauty, or forms proper to the imagination) we find interwoven frequent representations of truth, of virtue and vice, of circumstances proper to move us with laughter, or to excite in us pity, fear, and the other passions. These moral and intellectual objects are described in the second book; to which the third properly belongs as an episode, though too large to have been included in it.

With the above-mentioned causes of pleasure, which are universal in the course of human life, and appertain to our higher faculties, many others do generally occur, more limited in their operation, or of an inferior origin: such are the novelty of objects, the association of ideas, affections of the bodily senses, influences of education, national habits, and the like. To illustrate these, and from the whole to determine the character of a perfect taste, is the argument of the fourth book.

Hitherto the pleasures of the imagination belong to the human species in general. But there are certain particular men whose imagination is endowed with powers, and susceptible of pleasures, which the generality of mankind never participate. These are the men of genius, destined by nature to excel in one or other of the arts already mentioned. It is proposed, therefore, in the last place, to delineate that genius which in some degree appears common to them all; yet with a more peculiar consideration of poetry: inasmuch as poetry is the most extensive of those arts, the most philosophical, and the most useful.

Book I. 1757

Argument

The subject proposed. Dedication. The ideas of the Supreme Being, the exemplars of all things. The variety of constitution in the minds of men; with its final cause. The general character of a fine imagination. All the immediate pleasures of the human imagination proceed either from Greatness or Beauty in external objects. The pleasure from Greatness; with its final cause. The natural connexion of Beauty with truth [2] and good. The different orders of Beauty in different objects. The infinite and all-comprehending form of Beauty, which belongs to the Divine Mind. The partial and artificial forms of Beauty, which belong to inferior intellectual beings. The origin and general conduct of beauty in man. The subordination of local beauties to the beauty of the Universe. Conclusion.

With what enchantment Nature’s goodly scene
  Attracts the sense of mortals; how the mind
  For its own eye doth objects nobler still
  Prepare; how men by various lessons learn
  To judge of Beauty’s praise; what raptures fill
  The breast with fancy’s native arts endow’d,
  And what true culture guides it to renown,
  My verse unfolds. Ye gods, or godlike powers,
  Ye guardians of the sacred task, attend
  Propitious. Hand in hand around your bard
  Move in majestic measures, leading on
  His doubtful step through many a solemn path,
  Conscious of secrets which to human sight
  Ye only can reveal. Be great in him:
  And let your favour make him wise to speak
  Of all your wondrous empire; with a voice
  So temper’d to his theme, that those who hear
  May yield perpetual homage to yourselves.
  Thou chief, O daughter of eternal Love,
  Whate’er thy name; or Muse, or Grace, adored
  By Grecian prophets; to the sons of Heaven
  Known, while with deep amazement thou dost there
  The perfect counsels read, the ideas old,
  Of thine omniscient Father; known on earth
  By the still horror and the blissful tear
  With which thou seizest on the soul of man;
  Thou chief, Poetic Spirit, from the banks
  Of Avon, whence thy holy fingers cull
  Fresh flowers and dews to sprinkle on the turf
  Where Shakspeare lies, be present. And with thee
  Let Fiction come, on her aërial wings
  Wafting ten thousand colours, which in sport,
  By the light glances of her magic eye,
  She blends and shifts at will through countless forms,
  Her wild creation. Goddess of the lyre,
  Whose awful tones control the moving sphere,
  Wilt thou, eternal Harmony, descend,
  And join this happy train? for with thee comes
  The guide, the guardian of their mystic rites,
  Wise Order: and, where Order deigns to come,
  Her sister, Liberty, will not be far.
  Be present all ye Genii, who conduct
  Of youthful bards the lonely wandering step
  New to your springs and shades; who touch their ear
  With finer sounds, and heighten to their eye
  The pomp of nature, and before them place
  The fairest, loftiest countenance of things.

Nor thou, my Dyson, [3] to the lay refuse
  Thy wonted partial audience. What though first,
  In years unseason’d, haply ere the sports
  Of childhood yet were o’er, the adventurous lay
  With many splendid prospects, many charms,
  Allured my heart, nor conscious whence they sprung,
  Nor heedful of their end? yet serious Truth
  Her empire o’er the calm, sequester’d theme
  Asserted soon; while Falsehood’s evil brood,
  Vice and deceitful Pleasure, she at once
  Excluded, and my fancy’s careless toil
  Drew to the better cause. Maturer aid
  Thy friendship added, in the paths of life,
  The busy paths, my unaccustom’d feet
  Preserving: nor to Truth’s recess divine,
  Through this wide argument’s unbeaten space,
  Withholding surer guidance; while by turns
  We traced the sages old, or while the queen
  Of sciences (whom manners and the mind
  Acknowledge) to my true companion’s voice
  Not unattentive, o’er the wintry lamp
  Inclined her sceptre, favouring. Now the fates
  Have other tasks imposed;—to thee, my friend,
  The ministry of freedom and the faith
  Of popular decrees, in early youth,
  Not vainly they committed; me they sent
  To wait on pain, and silent arts to urge,
  Inglorious; not ignoble, if my cares,
  To such as languish on a grievous bed,
  Ease and the sweet forgetfulness of ill
  Conciliate; nor delightless, if the Muse,
  Her shades to visit and to taste her springs,
  If some distinguish’d hours the bounteous Muse
  Impart, and grant (what she, and she alone,
  Can grant to mortals) that my hand those wreaths
  Of fame and honest favour, which the bless’d
  Wear in Elysium, and which never felt
  The breath of envy or malignant tongues,
  That these my hand for thee and for myself
  May gather. Meanwhile, O my faithful friend,
  O early chosen, ever found the same,
  And trusted and beloved, once more the verse
  Long destined, always obvious to thine ear,
  Attend, indulgent: so in latest years,
  When time thy head with honours shall have clothed
  Sacred to even virtue, may thy mind,
  Amid the calm review of seasons past,
  Fair offices of friendship, or kind peace,
  Or public zeal, may then thy mind well pleased
  Recall these happy studies of our prime.
    From Heaven my strains begin: from Heaven descends
  The flame of genius to the chosen breast,
  And beauty with poetic wonder join’d,
  And inspiration. Ere the rising sun
  Shone o’er the deep, or ’mid the vault of night
  The moon her silver lamp suspended; ere
  The vales with springs were water’d, or with groves
  Of oak or pine the ancient hills were crown’d;
  Then the Great Spirit, whom his works adore,
  Within his own deep essence view’d the forms,
  The forms eternal of created things:
  The radiant sun; the moon’s nocturnal lamp;
  The mountains and the streams; the ample stores
  Of earth, of heaven, of nature. From the first,
  On that full scene his love divine he fix’d,
  His admiration: till, in time complete,
  What he admired and loved his vital power
  Unfolded into being. Hence the breath
  Of life informing each organic frame:
  Hence the green earth, and wild-resounding waves:
  Hence light and shade, alternate; warmth and cold;
  And bright autumnal skies, and vernal showers,
  And all the fair variety of things.
    But not alike to every mortal eye
  Is this great scene unveil’d. For while the claims
  Of social life to different labours urge
  The active powers of man, with wisest care
  Hath Nature on the multitude of minds
  Impress’d a various bias, and to each
  Decreed its province in the common toil.
  To some she taught the fabric of the sphere,
  The changeful moon, the circuit of the stars,
  The golden zones of heaven; to some she gave
  To search the story of eternal thought;
  Of space, and time; of fate’s unbroken chain,
  And will’s quick movement; others by the hand
  She led o’er vales and mountains, to explore
  What healing virtue dwells in every vein
  Of herbs or trees. But some to nobler hopes
  Were destined; some within a finer mould
  She wrought, and temper’d with a purer flame.
  To these the Sire Omnipotent unfolds,
  In fuller aspects and with fairer lights,
  This picture of the world. Through every part
  They trace the lofty sketches of his hand;
  In earth, or air, the meadow’s flowery store,
  The moon’s mild radiance, or the virgin’s mien
  Dress’d in attractive smiles, they see portray’d
  (As far as mortal eyes the portrait scan)
  Those lineaments of beauty which delight
  The Mind Supreme. They also feel their force,
  Enamour’d; they partake the eternal joy.

For as old Memnon’s image, long renown’d
  Through fabling Egypt, at the genial touch
  Of morning, from its inmost frame sent forth
  Spontaneous music, so doth Nature’s hand,
  To certain attributes which matter claims,
  Adapt the finer organs of the mind;
  So the glad impulse of those kindred powers
  (Of form, of colour’s cheerful pomp, of sound
  Melodious, or of motion aptly sped),
  Detains the enliven’d sense; till soon the soul
  Feels the deep concord, and assents through all
  Her functions. Then the charm by fate prepared
  Diffuseth its enchantment Fancy dreams,
  Rapt into high discourse with prophets old,
  And wandering through Elysium, Fancy dreams
  Of sacred fountains, of o’ershadowing groves,
  Whose walks with godlike harmony resound:
  Fountains, which Homer visits; happy groves,
  Where Milton dwells; the intellectual power,
  On the mind’s throne, suspends his graver cares,
  And smiles; the passions, to divine repose
  Persuaded yield, and love and joy alone
  Are waking: love and joy, such as await
  An angel’s meditation. Oh! attend,
  Whoe’er thou art whom these delights can touch;
  Whom Nature’s aspect, Nature’s simple garb
  Can thus command; oh! listen to my song;
  And I will guide thee to her blissful walks,
  And teach thy solitude her voice to hear,
  And point her gracious features to thy view.

Know then, whate’er of the world’s ancient store,
  Whate’er of mimic Art’s reflected scenes,
  With love and admiration thus inspire
  Attentive Fancy, her delighted sons
  In two illustrious orders comprehend,
  Self-taught: from him whose rustic toil the lark
  Cheers warbling, to the bard whose daring thoughts
  Range the full orb of being, still the form,
  Which Fancy worships, or sublime or fair,
  Her votaries proclaim. I see them dawn:
  I see the radiant visions where they rise,
  More lovely than when Lucifer displays
  His glittering forehead through the gates of morn,
  To lead the train of Phoebus and the Spring.

Say, why was man so eminently raised
  Amid the vast creation; why empower’d
  Through life and death to dart his watchful eye,
  With thoughts beyond the limit of his frame;
  But that the Omnipotent might send him forth,
  In sight of angels and immortal minds,
  As on an ample theatre to join
  In contest with his equals, who shall best
  The task achieve, the course of noble toils,
  By wisdom and by mercy preordain’d?
  Might send him forth the sovereign good to learn;
  To chase each meaner purpose from his breast;
  And through the mists of passion and of sense,
  And through the pelting storms of chance and pain,
  To hold straight on, with constant heart and eye
  Still fix’d upon his everlasting palm,
  The approving smile of Heaven? Else wherefore burns
  In mortal bosoms this unquenchèd hope,
  That seeks from day to day sublimer ends,
  Happy, though restless? Why departs the soul
  Wide from the track and journey of her times,
  To grasp the good she knows not? In the field
  Of things which may be, in the spacious field
  Of science, potent arts, or dreadful arms,
  To raise up scenes in which her own desires
  Contented may repose; when things, which are,
  Pall on her temper, like a twice-told tale:
  Her temper, still demanding to be free;
  Spurning the rude control of wilful might;
  Proud of her dangers braved, her griefs endured,
  Her strength severely proved? To these high aims,
  Which reason and affection prompt in man,
  Not adverse nor unapt hath Nature framed
  His bold imagination. For, amid
  The various forms which this full world presents
  Like rivals to his choice, what human breast
  E’er doubts, before the transient and minute,
  To prize the vast, the stable, the sublime?
  Who, that from heights aërial sends his eye
  Around a wild horizon, and surveys
  Indus or Ganges rolling his broad wave
  Through mountains, plains, through spacious cities old,
  And regions dark with woods, will turn away
  To mark the path of some penurious rill
  Which murmureth at his feet? Where does the soul
  Consent her soaring fancy to restrain,
  Which bears her up, as on an eagle’s wings,
  Destined for highest heaven; or which of fate’s
  Tremendous barriers shall confine her flight
  To any humbler quarry? The rich earth
  Cannot detain her; nor the ambient air
  With all its changes. For a while with joy
  She hovers o’er the sun, and views the small
  Attendant orbs, beneath his sacred beam,
  Emerging from the deep, like cluster’d isles
  Whose rocky shores to the glad sailor’s eye
  Reflect the gleams of morning; for a while
  With pride she sees his firm, paternal sway
  Bend the reluctant planets to move each
  Round its perpetual year. But soon she quits
  That prospect; meditating loftier views,
  She darts adventurous up the long career
  Of comets; through the constellations holds
  Her course, and now looks back on all the stars
  Whose blended flames as with a milky stream
  Part the blue region. Empyréan tracts,
  Where happy souls beyond this concave heaven
  Abide, she then explores, whence purer light
  For countless ages travels through the abyss,
  Nor hath in sight of mortals yet arrived.
  Upon the wide creation’s utmost shore
  At length she stands, and the dread space beyond
  Contemplates, half-recoiling: nathless, down
  The gloomy void, astonish’d, yet unquell’d,
  She plungeth; down the unfathomable gulf
  Where God alone hath being. There her hopes
  Rest at the fated goal. For, from the birth
  Of human kind, the Sovereign Maker said
  That not in humble, nor in brief delight,
  Not in the fleeting echoes of renown,
  Power’s purple robes, nor Pleasure’s flowery lap,
  The soul should find contentment; but, from these
  Turning disdainful to an equal good,
  Through Nature’s opening walks enlarge her aim,
  Till every bound at length should disappear,
  And infinite perfection fill the scene.

But lo, where Beauty, dress’d in gentler pomp,
  With comely steps advancing, claims the verse
  Her charms inspire. O Beauty, source of praise,
  Of honour, even to mute and lifeless things;
  O thou that kindlest in each human heart
  Love, and the wish of poets, when their tongue
  Would teach to other bosoms what so charms
  Their own; O child of Nature and the soul,
  In happiest hour brought forth; the doubtful garb
  Of words, of earthly language, all too mean,
  Too lowly I account, in which to clothe
  Thy form divine; for thee the mind alone
  Beholds, nor half thy brightness can reveal
  Through those dim organs, whose corporeal touch
  O’ershadoweth thy pure essence. Yet, my Muse,
  If Fortune call thee to the task, wait thou
  Thy favourable seasons; then, while fear
  And doubt are absent, through wide nature’s bounds
  Expatiate with glad step, and choose at will
  Whate’er bright spoils the florid earth contains,
  Whate’er the waters, or the liquid air,
  To manifest unblemish’d Beauty’s praise,
  And o’er the breasts of mortals to extend
  Her gracious empire. Wilt thou to the isles
  Atlantic, to the rich Hesperian clime,
  Fly in the train of Autumn, and look on,
  And learn from him; while, as he roves around,
  Where’er his fingers touch the fruitful grove,
  The branches bloom with gold; where’er his foot
  Imprints the soil, the ripening clusters swell,
  Turning aside their foliage, and come forth
  In purple lights, till every hillock glows
  As with the blushes of an evening sky?
  Or wilt thou that Thessalian landscape trace,
  Where slow Penéus his clear glassy tide
  Draws smooth along, between the winding cliffs
  Of Ossa and the pathless woods unshorn
  That wave o’er huge Olympus? Down the stream,
  Look how the mountains with their double range
  Embrace the vale of Tempé: from each side
  Ascending steep to heaven, a rocky mound
  Cover’d with ivy and the laurel boughs
  That crown’d young Phoebus for the Python slain.
  Fair Tempé! on whose primrose banks the morn
  Awoke most fragrant, and the noon reposed
  In pomp of lights and shadows most sublime:
  Whose lawns, whose glades, ere human footsteps yet
  Had traced an entrance, were the hallow’d haunt
  Of sylvan powers immortal: where they sate
  Oft in the golden age, the Nymphs and Fauns,
  Beneath some arbour branching o’er the flood,
  And leaning round hung on the instructive lips
  Of hoary Pan, or o’er some open dale
  Danced in light measures to his sevenfold pipe,
  While Zephyr’s wanton hand along their path
  Flung showers of painted blossoms, fertile dews,
  And one perpetual spring. But if our task
  More lofty rites demand, with all good vows
  Then let us hasten to the rural haunt
  Where young Melissa dwells. Nor thou refuse
  The voice which calls thee from thy loved retreat,
  But hither, gentle maid, thy footsteps turn:
  Here, to thy own unquestionable theme,
  O fair, O graceful, bend thy polish’d brow,
  Assenting; and the gladness of thy eyes
  Impart to me, like morning’s wishèd light
  Seen through the vernal air. By yonder stream,
  Where beech and elm along the bordering mead
  Send forth wild melody from every bough,
  Together let us wander; where the hills
  Cover’d with fleeces to the lowing vale
  Reply; where tidings of content and peace
  Each echo brings. Lo, how the western sun
  O’er fields and floods, o’er every living soul,
  Diffuseth glad repose! There,—while I speak
  Of Beauty’s honours, thou, Melissa, thou
  Shalt hearken, not unconscious, while I tell
  How first from Heaven she came: how, after all
  The works of life, the elemental scenes,
  The hours, the seasons, she had oft explored,
  At length her favourite mansion and her throne
  She fix’d in woman’s form; what pleasing ties
  To virtue bind her; what effectual aid
  They lend each other’s power; and how divine
  Their union, should some unambitious maid,
  To all the enchantment of the Idalian queen,
  Add sanctity and wisdom; while my tongue
  Prolongs the tale, Melissa, thou may’st feign
  To wonder whence my rapture is inspired;
  But soon the smile which dawns upon thy lip
  Shall tell it, and the tenderer bloom o’er all
  That soft cheek springing to the marble neck,
  Which bends aside in vain, revealing more
  What it would thus keep silent, and in vain
  The sense of praise dissembling. Then my song
  Great Nature’s winning arts, which thus inform
  With joy and love the rugged breast of man,
  Should sound in numbers worthy such a theme:
  While all whose souls have ever felt the force
  Of those enchanting passions, to my lyre
  Should throng attentive, and receive once more
  Their influence, unobscured by any cloud
  Of vulgar care, and purer than the hand
  Of Fortune can bestow; nor, to confirm
  Their sway, should awful Contemplation scorn
  To join his dictates to the genuine strain
  Of Pleasure’s tongue; nor yet should Pleasure’s ear
  Be much averse. Ye chiefly, gentle band
  Of youths and virgins, who through many a wish
  And many a fond pursuit, as in some scene
  Of magic bright and fleeting, are allured
  By various Beauty, if the pleasing toil
  Can yield a moment’s respite, hither turn
  Your favourable ear, and trust my words.
  I do not mean on bless’d Religion’s seat,
  Presenting Superstition’s gloomy form,
  To dash your soothing hopes; I do not mean
  To bid the jealous thunderer fire the heavens,
  Or shapes infernal rend the groaning earth,
  And scare you from your joys. My cheerful song
  With happier omens calls you to the field,
  Pleased with your generous ardour in the chase,
  And warm like you. Then tell me (for ye know),
  Doth Beauty ever deign to dwell where use
  And aptitude are strangers? is her praise
  Confess’d in aught whose most peculiar ends
  Are lame and fruitless? or did Nature mean
  This pleasing call the herald of a lie,
  To hide the shame of discord and disease,
  And win each fond admirer into snares,
  Foil’d, baffled? No; with better providence
  The general mother, conscious how infirm
  Her offspring tread the paths of good and ill,
  Thus, to the choice of credulous desire,
  Doth objects the completest of their tribe
  Distinguish and commend. Yon flowery bank
  Clothed in the soft magnificence of Spring,
  Will not the flocks approve it? will they ask
  The reedy fen for pasture? That clear rill
  Which trickleth murmuring from the mossy rock,
  Yields it less wholesome beverage to the worn
  And thirsty traveller, than the standing pool
  With muddy weeds o’ergrown? Yon ragged vine
  Whose lean and sullen clusters mourn the rage
  Of Eurus, will the wine-press or the bowl
  Report of her, as of the swelling grape
  Which glitters through the tendrils, like a gem
  When first it meets the sun. Or what are all
  The various charms to life and sense adjoin’d?
  Are they not pledges of a state entire,
  Where native order reigns, with every part
  In health, and every function well perform’d?

Thus, then, at first was Beauty sent from Heaven,
  The lovely ministress of Truth and Good
  In this dark world: for Truth and Good are one;
  And Beauty dwells in them, and they in her,
  With like participation. Wherefore then,
  O sons of earth, would ye dissolve the tie?
  Oh! wherefore with a rash and greedy aim
  Seek ye to rove through every flattering scene
  Which Beauty seems to deck, nor once inquire
  Where is the suffrage of eternal Truth,
  Or where the seal of undeceitful Good,
  To save your search from folly? Wanting these,
  Lo, Beauty withers in your void embrace;
  And with the glittering of an idiot’s toy
  Did Fancy mock your vows. Nor yet let hope,
  That kindliest inmate of the youthful breast,
  Be hence appall’d, be turn’d to coward sloth
  Sitting in silence, with dejected eyes
  Incurious and with folded hands; far less
  Let scorn of wild fantastic folly’s dreams,
  Or hatred of the bigot’s savage pride
  Persuade you e’er that Beauty, or the love
  Which waits on Beauty, may not brook to hear
  The sacred lore of undeceitful Good
  And Truth eternal. From the vulgar crowd
  Though Superstition, tyranness abhorr’d,
  The reverence due to this majestic pair
  With threats and execration still demands;
  Though the tame wretch, who asks of her the way
  To their celestial dwelling, she constrains
  To quench or set at nought the lamp of God
  Within his frame; through many a cheerless wild
  Though forth she leads him credulous and dark
  And awed with dubious notion; though at length
  Haply she plunge him into cloister’d cells
  And mansions unrelenting as the grave,
  But void of quiet, there to watch the hours
  Of midnight; there, amid the screaming owl’s
  Dire song, with spectres or with guilty shades
  To talk of pangs and everlasting woe;
  Yet be not ye dismay’d. A gentler star
  Presides o’er your adventure. From the bower
  Where Wisdom sat with her Athenian sons,
  Could but my happy hand entwine a wreath
  Of Plato’s olive with the Mantuan bay,
  Then (for what need of cruel fear to you,
  To you whom godlike love can well command?),
  Then should my powerful voice at once dispel
  Those monkish horrors; should in words divine
  Relate how favour’d minds like you inspired,
  And taught their inspiration to conduct
  By ruling Heaven’s decree, through various walks
  And prospects various, but delightful all,
  Move onward; while now myrtle groves appear,
  Now arms and radiant trophies, now the rods
  Of empire with the curule throne, or now
  The domes of contemplation and the Muse.

Led by that hope sublime, whose cloudless eye
  Through the fair toils and ornaments of earth
  Discerns the nobler life reserved for heaven,
  Favour’d alike they worship round the shrine
  Where Truth conspicuous with her sister-twins,
  The undivided partners of her sway,
  With Good and Beauty reigns. Oh! let not us
  By Pleasure’s lying blandishments detain’d,
  Or crouching to the frowns of bigot rage,
  Oh! let not us one moment pause to join
  That chosen band. And if the gracious Power,
  Who first awaken’d my untutor’d song,
  Will to my invocation grant anew
  The tuneful spirit, then through all our paths
  Ne’er shall the sound of this devoted lyre
  Be wanting; whether on the rosy mead
  When Summer smiles, to warn the melting heart
  Of Luxury’s allurement; whether firm
  Against the torrent and the stubborn hill
  To urge free Virtue’s steps, and to her side
  Summon that strong divinity of soul
  Which conquers Chance and Fate: or on the height,
  The goal assign’d her, haply to proclaim
  Her triumph; on her brow to place the crown
  Of uncorrupted praise; through future worlds
  To follow her interminated way,
  And bless Heaven’s image in the heart of man.

Such is the worth of Beauty; such her power,
  So blameless, so revered. It now remains,
  In just gradation through the various ranks
  Of being, to contemplate how her gifts
  Rise in due measure, watchful to attend
  The steps of rising Nature. Last and least,
  In colours mingling with a random blaze,
  Doth Beauty dwell. Then higher in the forms
  Of simplest, easiest measure; in the bounds
  Of circle, cube, or sphere. The third ascent
  To symmetry adds colour: thus the pearl
  Shines in the concave of its purple bed,
  And painted shells along some winding shore
  Catch with indented folds the glancing sun.
  Next, as we rise, appear the blooming tribes
  Which clothe the fragrant earth; which draw from her
  Their own nutrition; which are born and die,
  Yet, in their seed, immortal; such the flowers
  With which young Maia pays the village maids
  That hail her natal morn; and such the groves
  Which blithe Pomona rears on Vaga’s bank,
  To feed the bowl of Ariconian swains
  Who quaff beneath her branches. Nobler still
  Is Beauty’s name where, to the full consent
  Of members and of features, to the pride
  Of colour, and the vital change of growth,
  Life’s holy flame with piercing sense is given,
  While active motion speaks the temper’d soul:
  So moves the bird of Juno: so the steed
  With rival swiftness beats the dusty plain,
  And faithful dogs with eager airs of joy
  Salute their fellows. What sublimer pomp
  Adorns the seat where Virtue dwells on earth,
  And Truth’s eternal day-light shines around,
  What palm belongs to man’s imperial front,
  And woman powerful with becoming smiles,
  Chief of terrestrial natures, need we now
  Strive to inculcate? Thus hath Beauty there
  Her most conspicuous praise to matter lent,
  Where most conspicuous through that shadowy veil
  Breaks forth the bright expression of a mind,
  By steps directing our enraptured search
  To Him, the first of minds; the chief; the sole;
  From whom, through this wide, complicated world,
  Did all her various lineaments begin;
  To whom alone, consenting and entire,
  At once their mutual influence all display.
  He, God most high (bear witness, Earth and Heaven),
  The living fountains in himself contains
  Of beauteous and sublime; with him enthroned
  Ere days or years trod their ethereal way,
  In his supreme intelligence enthroned,
  The queen of love holds her unclouded state,
  Urania. Thee, O Father! this extent
  Of matter; thee the sluggish earth and tract
  Of seas, the heavens and heavenly splendours feel
  Pervading, quickening, moving. From the depth
  Of thy great essence, forth didst thou conduct
  Eternal Form: and there, where Chaos reign’d,
  Gav’st her dominion to erect her seat,
  And sanctify the mansion. All her works
  Well pleased thou didst behold: the gloomy fires
  Of storm or earthquake, and the purest light
  Of summer; soft Campania’s new-born rose,
  And the slow weed which pines on Russian hills
  Comely alike to thy full vision stand:
  To thy surrounding vision, which unites
  All essences and powers of the great world
  In one sole order, fair alike they stand,
  As features well consenting, and alike
  Required by Nature ere she could attain
  Her just resemblance to the perfect shape
  Of universal Beauty, which with thee
  Dwelt from the first. Thou also, ancient Mind,
  Whom love and free beneficence await
  In all thy doings; to inferior minds,
  Thy offspring, and to man, thy youngest son,
  Refusing no convenient gift nor good;
  Their eyes didst open, in this earth, yon heaven,
  Those starry worlds, the countenance divine
  Of Beauty to behold. But not to them
  Didst thou her awful magnitude reveal
  Such as before thine own unbounded sight
  She stands (for never shall created soul
  Conceive that object), nor, to all their kinds,
  The same in shape or features didst thou frame
  Her image. Measuring well their different spheres
  Of sense and action, thy paternal hand
  Hath for each race prepared a different test
  Of Beauty, own’d and reverenced as their guide
  Most apt, most faithful. Thence inform’d, they scan
  The objects that surround them; and select,
  Since the great whole disclaims their scanty view,
  Each for himself selects peculiar parts
  Of Nature; what the standard fix’d by Heaven
  Within his breast approves, acquiring thus
  A partial Beauty, which becomes his lot;
  A Beauty which his eye may comprehend,
  His hand may copy, leaving, O Supreme,
  O thou whom none hath utter’d, leaving all
  To thee that infinite, consummate form,
  Which the great powers, the gods around thy throne
  And nearest to thy counsels, know with thee
  For ever to have been; but who she is,
  Or what her likeness, know not. Man surveys
  A narrower scene, where, by the mix’d effect
  Of things corporeal on his passive mind,
  He judgeth what is fair. Corporeal things
  The mind of man impel with various powers,
  And various features to his eye disclose.
  The powers which move his sense with instant joy,
  The features which attract his heart to love,
  He marks, combines, reposits. Other powers
  And features of the self-same thing (unless
  The beauteous form, the creature of his mind,
  Request their close alliance) he o’erlooks
  Forgotten; or with self-beguiling zeal,
  Whene’er his passions mingle in the work,
  Half alters, half disowns. The tribes of men
  Thus from their different functions and the shapes
  Familiar to their eye, with art obtain,
  Unconscious of their purpose, yet with art
  Obtain the Beauty fitting man to love;
  Whose proud desires from Nature’s homely toil
  Oft turn away, fastidious, asking still
  His mind’s high aid, to purify the form
  From matter’s gross communion; to secure
  For ever, from the meddling hand of Change
  Or rude Decay, her features; and to add
  Whatever ornaments may suit her mien,
  Where’er he finds them scatter’d through the paths
  Of Nature or of Fortune. Then he seats
  The accomplish’d image deep within his breast,
  Reviews it, and accounts it good and fair.

Thus the one Beauty of the world entire,
  The universal Venus, far beyond
  The keenest effort of created eyes,
  And their most wide horizon, dwells enthroned
  In ancient silence. At her footstool stands
  An altar burning with eternal fire
  Unsullied, unconsumed. Here every hour,
  Here every moment, in their turns arrive
  Her offspring; an innumerable band
  Of sisters, comely all! but differing far
  In age, in stature, and expressive mien,
  More than bright Helen from her new-born babe.
  To this maternal shrine in turns they come,
  Each with her sacred lamp; that from the source
  Of living flame, which here immortal flows,
  Their portions of its lustre they may draw
  For days, or months, or years; for ages, some;
  As their great parent’s discipline requires.
  Then to their several mansions they depart,
  In stars, in planets, through the unknown shores
  Of yon ethereal ocean. Who can tell,
  Even on the surface of this rolling earth,
  How many make abode? The fields, the groves,
  The winding rivers and the azure main,
  Are render’d solemn by their frequent feet,
  Their rites sublime. There each her destined home
  Informs with that pure radiance from the skies
  Brought down, and shines throughout her little sphere,
  Exulting. Straight, as travellers by night
  Turn toward a distant flame, so some fit eye,
  Among the various tenants of the scene,
  Discerns the heaven-born phantom seated there,
  And owns her charms. Hence the wide universe,
  Through all the seasons of revolving worlds,
  Bears witness with its people, gods and men,
  To Beauty’s blissful power, and with the voice
  Of grateful admiration still resounds:
  That voice, to which is Beauty’s frame divine
  As is the cunning of the master’s hand
  To the sweet accent of the well-tuned lyre.

Genius of ancient Greece, whose faithful steps
  Have led us to these awful solitudes
  Of Nature and of Science; nurse revered
  Of generous counsels and heroic deeds;
  Oh! let some portion of thy matchless praise
  Dwell in my breast, and teach me to adorn
  This unattempted theme. Nor be my thoughts
  Presumptuous counted, if, amid the calm
  Which Hesper sheds along the vernal heaven,
  If I, from vulgar Superstition’s walk,
  Impatient steal, and from the unseemly rites
  Of splendid Adulation, to attend
  With hymns thy presence in the sylvan shade,
  By their malignant footsteps unprofaned.
  Come, O renownèd power; thy glowing mien
  Such, and so elevated all thy form,
  As when the great barbaric lord, again
  And yet again diminish’d, hid his face
  Among the herd of satraps and of kings;
  And, at the lightning of thy lifted spear,
  Crouch’d like a slave. Bring all thy martial spoils,
  Thy palms, thy laurels, thy triumphal songs,
  Thy smiling band of Arts, thy godlike sires
  Of civil wisdom, thy unconquer’d youth,
  After some glorious day rejoicing round
  Their new-erected trophy. Guide my feet
  Through fair Lycéum’s walk, the olive shades
  Of Academus, and the sacred vale
  Haunted by steps divine, where once, beneath
  That ever living platane’s ample boughs,
  Ilissus, by Socratic sounds detain’d,
  On his neglected urn attentive lay;
  While Boreas, lingering on the neighbouring steep
  With beauteous Orithyía, his love tale
  In silent awe suspended. There let me
  With blameless hand, from thy unenvious fields,
  Transplant some living blossoms, to adorn
  My native clime; while, far beyond the meed
  Of Fancy’s toil aspiring, I unlock
  The springs of ancient wisdom; while I add
  (What cannot be disjoin’d from Beauty’s praise)
  Thy name and native dress, thy works beloved
  And honour’d; while to my compatriot youth
  I point the great example of thy sons,
  And tune to Attic themes the British lyre.

Book II. 1765

Argument

Introduction to this more difficult part of the subject. Of Truth and its three classes, matter of fact, experimental or scientifical truth (contra-distinguished from opinion), and universal truth; which last is either metaphysical or geometrical, either purely intellectual or perfectly abstracted. On the power of discerning truth depends that of acting with the view of an end; a circumstance essential to virtue. Of Virtue, considered in the divine mind as a perpetual and universal beneficence. Of human virtue, considered as a system of particular sentiments and actions, suitable to the design of Providence and the condition of man; to whom it constitutes the chief good and the first beauty. Of Vice, and its origin. Of Ridicule: its general nature and final cause. Of the Passions; particularly of those which relate to evil natural or moral, and which are generally accounted painful, though not always unattended with pleasure.

Thus far of Beauty and the pleasing forms
  Which man’s untutor’d fancy, from the scenes
  Imperfect of this ever changing world,
  Creates; and views, enarnour’d. Now my song
  Severer themes demand: mysterious Truth;
  And Virtue, sovereign good: the spells, the trains,
  The progeny of Error; the dread sway
  Of Passion; and whatever hidden stores
  From her own lofty deeds and from herself
  The mind acquires. Severer argument:
  Not less attractive; nor deserving less
  A constant ear. For what are all the forms
  Educed by fancy from corporeal things,
  Greatness, or pomp, or symmetry of parts?
  Not tending to the heart, soon feeble grows,
  As the blunt arrow ’gainst the knotty trunk,
  Their impulse on the sense: while the pall’d eye
  Expects in vain its tribute; asks in vain,
  Where are the ornaments it once admired?
  Not so the moral species, nor the powers
  Of Passion and of Thought. The ambitious mind
  With objects boundless as her own desires
  Can there converse: by these unfading forms
  Touch’d and awaken’d still, with eager act
  She bends each nerve, and meditates well pleased
  Her gifts, her godlike fortune. Such the scenes
  Now opening round us. May the destined verse
  Maintain its equal tenor, though in tracts
  Obscure and arduous! May the source of light,
  All-present, all-sufficient, guide our steps
  Through every maze! and whom, in childish years,
  From the loud throng, the beaten paths of wealth
  And power, thou didst apart send forth to speak
  In tuneful words concerning highest things,
  Him still do thou, O Father, at those hours
  Of pensive freedom, when the human soul
  Shuts out the rumour of the world, him still
  Touch thou with secret lessons; call thou back
  Each erring thought; and let the yielding strains
  From his full bosom, like a welcome rill
  Spontaneous from its healthy fountain, flow!

But from what name, what favourable sign,
  What heavenly auspice, rather shall I date
  My perilous excursion, than from Truth,
  That nearest inmate of the human soul;
  Estranged from whom, the countenance divine
  Of man, disfigured and dishonour’d, sinks
  Among inferior things? For to the brutes
  Perception and the transient boons of sense
  Hath Fate imparted; but to man alone
  Of sublunary beings was it given.
  Each fleeting impulse on the sensual powers
  At leisure to review; with equal eye
  To scan the passion of the stricken nerve,
  Or the vague object striking; to conduct
  From sense, the portal turbulent and loud,
  Into the mind’s wide palace one by one
  The frequent, pressing, fluctuating forms,
  And question and compare them. Thus he learns
  Their birth and fortunes; how allied they haunt
  The avenues of sense; what laws direct
  Their union; and what various discords rise,
  Or fixed, or casual; which when his clear thought
  Retains and when his faithful words express,
  That living image of the external scene,
  As in a polish’d mirror held to view,
  Is Truth; where’er it varies from the shape
  And hue of its exemplar, in that part
  Dim Error lurks. Moreover, from without
  When oft the same society of forms
  In the same order have approach’d his mind,
  He deigns no more their steps with curious heed
  To trace; no more their features or their garb
  He now examines; but of them and their
  Condition, as with some diviner’s tongue,
  Affirms what Heaven in every distant place,
  Through every future season, will decree.
  This too is Truth; where’er his prudent lips
  Wait till experience diligent and slow
  Has authorised their sentence, this is Truth;
  A second, higher kind: the parent this
  Of Science; or the lofty power herself,
  Science herself, on whom the wants and cares
  Of social life depend; the substitute
  Of God’s own wisdom in this toilsome world;
  The providence of man. Yet oft in vain,
  To earn her aid, with fix’d and anxious eye
  He looks on Nature’s and on Fortune’s course:
  Too much in vain. His duller visual ray
  The stillness and the persevering acts
  Of Nature oft elude; and Fortune oft
  With step fantastic from her wonted walk
  Turns into mazes dim; his sight is foil’d;
  And the crude sentence of his faltering tongue
  Is but opinion’s verdict, half believed,
  And prone to change. Here thou, who feel’st thine ear
  Congenial to my lyre’s profounder tone,
  Pause, and be watchful. Hitherto the stores,
  Which feed thy mind and exercise her powers,
  Partake the relish of their native soil,
  Their parent earth. But know, a nobler dower
  Her Sire at birth decreed her; purer gifts
  From his own treasure; forms which never deign’d
  In eyes or ears to dwell, within the sense
  Of earthly organs; but sublime were placed
  In his essential reason, leading there
  That vast ideal host which all his works
  Through endless ages never will reveal.
  Thus then endow’d, the feeble creature man,
  The slave of hunger and the prey of death,
  Even now, even here, in earth’s dim prison bound,
  The language of intelligence divine
  Attains; repeating oft concerning one
  And many, past and present, parts and whole,
  Those sovereign dictates which in furthest heaven,
  Where no orb rolls, Eternity’s fix’d ear
  Hears from coeval Truth, when Chance nor Change,
  Nature’s loud progeny, nor Nature’s self
  Dares intermeddle or approach her throne.
  Ere long, o’er this corporeal world he learns
  To extend her sway; while calling from the deep,
  From earth and air, their multitudes untold
  Of figures and of motions round his walk,
  For each wide family some single birth
  He sets in view, the impartial type of all
  Its brethren; suffering it to claim, beyond
  Their common heritage, no private gift,
  No proper fortune. Then whate’er his eye
  In this discerns, his bold unerring tongue
  Pronounceth of the kindred, without bound,
  Without condition. Such the rise of forms
  Sequester’d far from sense and every spot
  Peculiar in the realms of space or time;
  Such is the throne which man for Truth amid
  The paths of mutability hath built
  Secure, unshaken, still; and whence he views,
  In matter’s mouldering structures, the pure forms
  Of triangle or circle, cube or cone,
  Impassive all; whose attributes nor force
  Nor fate can alter. There he first conceives
  True being, and an intellectual world
  The same this hour and ever. Thence he deems
  Of his own lot; above the painted shapes
  That fleeting move o’er this terrestrial scene
  Looks up; beyond the adamantine gates
  Of death expatiates; as his birthright claims
  Inheritance in all the works of God;
  Prepares for endless time his plan of life,
  And counts the universe itself his home.

Whence also but from Truth, the light of minds,
  Is human fortune gladden’d with the rays
  Of Virtue? with the moral colours thrown
  On every walk of this our social scene,
  Adorning for the eye of gods and men
  The passions, actions, habitudes of life,
  And rendering earth like heaven, a sacred place
  Where Love and Praise may take delight to dwell?
  Let none with heedless tongue from Truth disjoin
  The reign of Virtue. Ere the dayspring flow’d,
  Like sisters link’d in Concord’s golden chain,
  They stood before the great Eternal Mind,
  Their common parent, and by him were both
  Sent forth among his creatures, hand in hand,
  Inseparably join’d; nor e’er did Truth
  Find an apt ear to listen to her lore,
  Which knew not Virtue’s voice; nor, save where Truth’s
  Majestic words are heard and understood,
  Doth Virtue deign to inhabit. Go, inquire
  Of Nature; not among Tartarian rocks,
  Whither the hungry vulture with its prey
  Returns; not where the lion’s sullen roar
  At noon resounds along the lonely banks
  Of ancient Tigris; but her gentler scenes,
  The dovecote and the shepherd’s fold at morn,
  Consult; or by the meadow’s fragrant hedge,
  In spring-time when the woodlands first are green,
  Attend the linnet singing to his mate
  Couch’d o’er their tender young. To this fond care
  Thou dost not Virtue’s honourable name
  Attribute; wherefore, save that not one gleam
  Of Truth did e’er discover to themselves
  Their little hearts, or teach them, by the effects
  Of that parental love, the love itself
  To judge, and measure its officious deeds?
  But man, whose eyelids Truth has fill’d with day,
  Discerns how skilfully to bounteous ends
  His wise affections move; with free accord
  Adopts their guidance; yields himself secure
  To Nature’s prudent impulse; and converts
  Instinct to duty and to sacred law.
  Hence Right and Fit on earth; while thus to man
  The Almighty Legislator hath explain’d
  The springs of action fix’d within his breast;
  Hath given him power to slacken or restrain
  Their effort; and hath shewn him how they join
  Their partial movements with the master-wheel
  Of the great world, and serve that sacred end
  Which he, the unerring reason, keeps in view.

For (if a mortal tongue may speak of him
  And his dread ways) even as his boundless eye,
  Connecting every form and every change,
  Beholds the perfect Beauty; so his will,
  Through every hour producing good to all
  The family of creatures, is itself
  The perfect Virtue. Let the grateful swain
  Remember this, as oft with joy and praise
  He looks upon the falling dews which clothe
  His lawns with verdure, and the tender seed
  Nourish within his furrows; when between
  Dead seas and burning skies, where long unmoved
  The bark had languish’d, now a rustling gale
  Lifts o’er the fickle waves her dancing prow,
  Let the glad pilot, bursting out in thanks,
  Remember this; lest blind o’erweening pride
  Pollute their offerings; lest their selfish heart
  Say to the heavenly ruler, ‘At our call
  Relents thy power; by us thy arm is moved.’
  Fools! who of God as of each other deem;
  Who his invariable acts deduce
  From sudden counsels transient as their own;
  Nor further of his bounty, than the event
  Which haply meets their loud and eager prayer,
  Acknowledge; nor, beyond the drop minute
  Which haply they have tasted, heed the source
  That flows for all; the fountain of his love
  Which, from the summit where he sits enthroned,
  Pours health and joy, unfailing streams, throughout
  The spacious region flourishing in view,
  The goodly work of his eternal day,
  His own fair universe; on which alone
  His counsels fix, and whence alone his will
  Assumes her strong direction. Such is now
  His sovereign purpose; such it was before
  All multitude of years. For his right arm
  Was never idle; his bestowing love
  Knew no beginning; was not as a change
  Of mood that woke at last and started up
  After a deep and solitary sloth
  Of boundless ages. No; he now is good,
  He ever was. The feet of hoary Time
  Through their eternal course have travell’d o’er
  No speechless, lifeless desert; but through scenes
  Cheerful with bounty still; among a pomp
  Of worlds, for gladness round the Maker’s throne
  Loud-shouting, or, in many dialects
  Of hope and filial trust, imploring thence
  The fortunes of their people: where so fix’d
  Were all the dates of being, so disposed
  To every living soul of every kind
  The field of motion and the hour of rest,
  That each the general happiness might serve;
  And, by the discipline of laws divine
  Convinced of folly or chastised from guilt,
  Each might at length be happy. What remains
  Shall be like what is past; but fairer still,
  And still increasing in the godlike gifts
  Of Life and Truth. The same paternal hand,
  From the mute shell-fish gasping on the shore,
  To men, to angels, to celestial minds,
  Will ever lead the generations on
  Through higher scenes of being; while, supplied
  From day to day by his enlivening breath,
  Inferior orders in succession rise
  To fill the void below. As flame ascends,
  As vapours to the earth in showers return,
  As the poised ocean towards the attracting moon
  Swells, and the ever-listening planets, charm’d
  By the sun’s call, their onward pace incline,
  So all things which have life aspire to God,
  Exhaustless fount of intellectual day!
  Centre of souls! Nor doth the mastering voice
  Of Nature cease within to prompt aright
  Their steps; nor is the care of Heaven withheld
  From sending to the toil external aid;
  That in their stations all may persevere
  To climb the ascent of being, and approach
  For ever nearer to the life divine.

But this eternal fabric was not raised
  For man’s inspection. Though to some be given
  To catch a transient visionary glimpse
  Of that majestic scene which boundless power
  Prepares for perfect goodness, yet in vain
  Would human life her faculties expand
  To embosom such an object. Nor could e’er
  Virtue or praise have touch’d the hearts of men,
  Had not the Sovereign Guide, through every stage
  Of this their various journey, pointed out
  New hopes, new toils, which, to their humble sphere
  Of sight and strength, might such importance hold
  As doth the wide creation to his own.
  Hence all the little charities of life,
  With all their duties; hence that favourite palm
  Of human will, when duty is sufficed,
  And still the liberal soul in ampler deeds
  Would manifest herself; that sacred sign
  Of her revered affinity to Him
  Whose bounties are his own; to whom none said,
  ‘Create the wisest, fullest, fairest world,
  And make its offspring happy;’ who, intent
  Some likeness of Himself among his works
  To view, hath pour’d into the human breast
  A ray of knowledge and of love, which guides
  Earth’s feeble race to act their Maker’s part,
  Self-judging, self-obliged; while, from before
  That godlike function, the gigantic power
  Necessity, though wont to curb the force
  Of Chaos and the savage elements,
  Retires abash’d, as from a scene too high
  For her brute tyranny, and with her bears
  Her scornèd followers, Terror, and base Awe
  Who blinds herself, and that ill-suited pair,
  Obedience link’d with Hatred. Then the soul
  Arises in her strength; and, looking round
  Her busy sphere, whatever work she views,
  Whatever counsel bearing any trace
  Of her Creator’s likeness, whether apt
  To aid her fellows or preserve herself
  In her superior functions unimpair’d,
  Thither she turns exulting: that she claims
  As her peculiar good: on that, through all
  The fickle seasons of the day, she looks
  With reverence still: to that, as to a fence
  Against affliction and the darts of pain,
  Her drooping hopes repair—and, once opposed
  To that, all other pleasure, other wealth,
  Vile, as the dross upon the molten gold,
  Appears, and loathsome as the briny sea
  To him who languishes with thirst, and sighs
  For some known fountain pure. For what can strive
  With Virtue? Which of Nature’s regions vast
  Can in so many forms produce to sight
  Such powerful Beauty? Beauty, which the eye
  Of Hatred cannot look upon secure:
  Which Envy’s self contemplates, and is turn’d
  Ere long to tenderness, to infant smiles,
  Or tears of humblest love. Is aught so fair
  In all the dewy landscapes of the Spring,
  The Summer’s noontide groves, the purple eve
  At harvest-home, or in the frosty moon
  Glittering on some smooth sea; is aught so fair
  As virtuous friendship? as the honour’d roof
  Whither, from highest heaven, immortal Love
  His torch ethereal and his golden bow
  Propitious brings, and there a temple holds
  To whose unspotted service gladly vow’d
  The social band of parent, brother, child,
  With smiles and sweet discourse and gentle deeds
  Adore his power? What gift of richest clime
  E’er drew such eager eyes, or prompted such
  Deep wishes, as the zeal that snatcheth back
  From Slander’s poisonous tooth a foe’s renown;
  Or crosseth Danger in his lion walk,
  A rival’s life to rescue? as the young
  Athenian warrior sitting down in bonds,
  That his great father’s body might not want
  A peaceful, humble tomb? the Roman wife
  Teaching her lord how harmless was the wound
  Of death, how impotent the tyrant’s rage,
  Who nothing more could threaten to afflict
  Their faithful love? Or is there in the abyss,
  Is there, among the adamantine spheres
  Wheeling unshaken through the boundless void,
  Aught that with half such majesty can fill
  The human bosom, as when Brutus rose
  Refulgent from the stroke of Caesar’s fate
  Amid the crowd of patriots; and his arm
  Aloft extending like eternal Jove
  When guilt brings down the thunder, call’d aloud
  On Tully’s name, and shook the crimson sword
  Of justice in his rapt astonish’d eye,
  And bade the father of his country hail,
  For lo, the tyrant prostrate on the dust,
  And Rome again is free? Thus, through the paths
  Of human life, in various pomp array’d
  Walks the wise daughter of the judge of heaven,
  Fair Virtue; from her father’s throne supreme
  Sent down to utter laws, such as on earth
  Most apt he knew, most powerful to promote
  The weal of all his works, the gracious end
  Of his dread empire. And, though haply man’s
  Obscurer sight, so far beyond himself
  And the brief labours of his little home,
  Extends not; yet, by the bright presence won
  Of this divine instructress, to her sway
  Pleased he assents, nor heeds the distant goal.
  To which her voice conducts him. Thus hath God,
  Still looking toward his own high purpose, fix’d
  The virtues of his creatures; thus he rules
  The parent’s fondness and the patriot’s zeal;
  Thus the warm sense of honour and of shame;
  The vows of gratitude, the faith of love;
  And all the comely intercourse of praise,
  The joy of human life, the earthly heaven!

How far unlike them must the lot of guilt
  Be found! Or what terrestrial woe can match
  The self-convicted bosom, which hath wrought
  The bane of others, or enslaved itself
  With shackles vile? Not poison, nor sharp fire,
  Nor the worst pangs that ever monkish hate
  Suggested, or despotic rage imposed,
  Were at that season an unwish’d exchange,
  When the soul loathes herself; when, flying thence
  To crowds, on every brow she sees portray’d
  Pell demons, Hate or Scorn, which drive her back
  To solitude, her judge’s voice divine
  To hear in secret, haply sounding through
  The troubled dreams of midnight, and still, still
  Demanding for his violated laws
  Fit recompense, or charging her own tongue
  To speak the award of justice on herself.
  For well she knows what faithful hints within
  Were whisper’d, to beware the lying forms
  Which turn’d her footsteps from the safer way,
  What cautions to suspect their painted dress,
  And look with steady eyelid on their smiles,
  Their frowns, their tears. In vain; the dazzling hues
  Of Fancy, and Opinion’s eager voice,
  Too much prevail’d. For mortals tread the path
  In which Opinion says they follow good
  Or fly from evil; and Opinion gives
  Report of good or evil, as the scene
  Was drawn by Fancy, pleasing or deform’d;
  Thus her report can never there be true
  Where Fancy cheats the intellectual eye
  With glaring colours and distorted lines.
  Is there a man to whom the name of death
  Brings terror’s ghastly pageants conjured up
  Before him, death-bed groans, and dismal vows,
  And the frail soul plunged headlong from the brink
  Of life and daylight down the gloomy air,
  An unknown depth, to gulfs of torturing fire
  Unvisited by mercy? Then what hand
  Can snatch this dreamer from the fatal toils
  Which Fancy and Opinion thus conspire
  To twine around his heart? Or who shall hush
  Their clamour, when they tell him that to die,
  To risk those horrors, is a direr curse
  Than basest life can bring? Though Love with prayers
  Most tender, with affliction’s sacred tears,
  Beseech his aid; though Gratitude and Faith
  Condemn each step which loiters; yet let none
  Make answer for him that if any frown
  Of Danger thwart his path, he will not stay
  Content, and be a wretch to be secure.
  Here Vice begins then: at the gate of life,
  Ere the young multitude to diverse roads
  Part, like fond pilgrims on a journey unknown,
  Sits Fancy, deep enchantress; and to each
  With kind maternal looks presents her bowl,
  A potent beverage. Heedless they comply,
  Till the whole soul from that mysterious draught
  Is tinged, and every transient thought imbibes
  Of gladness or disgust, desire or fear,
  One homebred colour, which not all the lights
  Of Science e’er shall change; not all the storms
  Of adverse Fortune wash away, nor yet
  The robe of purest Virtue quite conceal.
  Thence on they pass, where, meeting frequent shapes
  Of good and evil, cunning phantoms apt
  To fire or freeze the breast, with them they join
  In dangerous parley; listening oft, and oft
  Gazing with reckless passion, while its garb
  The spectre heightens, and its pompous tale
  Repeats, with some new circumstance to suit
  That early tincture of the hearer’s soul.
  And should the guardian, Reason, but for one
  Short moment yield to this illusive scene
  His ear and eye, the intoxicating charm
  Involves him, till no longer he discerns,
  Or only guides to err. Then revel forth
  A furious band that spurn him from the throne,
  And all is uproar. Hence Ambition climbs
  With sliding feet and hands impure, to grasp
  Those solemn toys which glitter in his view
  On Fortune’s rugged steep; hence pale Revenge
  Unsheaths her murderous dagger; Rapine hence
  And envious Lust, by venal fraud upborne,
  Surmount the reverend barrier of the laws
  Which kept them from their prey; hence all the crimes
  That e’er defiled the earth, and all the plagues
  That follow them for vengeance, in the guise
  Of Honour, Safety, Pleasure, Ease, or Pomp,
  Stole first into the fond believing mind.

Yet not by Fancy’s witchcraft on the brain
  Are always the tumultuous passions driven
  To guilty deeds, nor Reason bound in chains
  That Vice alone may lord it. Oft, adorn’d
  With motley pageants, Folly mounts his throne,
  And plays her idiot antics, like a queen.
  A thousand garbs she wears: a thousand ways
  She whirls her giddy empire. Lo, thus far
  With bold adventure to the Mantuan lyre
  I sing for contemplation link’d with love,
  A pensive theme. Now haply should my song
  Unbend that serious countenance, and learn
  Thalia’s tripping gait, her shrill-toned voice,
  Her wiles familiar: whether scorn she darts
  In wanton ambush from her lip or eye,
  Or whether, with a sad disguise of care
  O’ermantling her gay brow, she acts in sport
  The deeds of Folly, and from all sides round
  Calls forth impetuous Laughter’s gay rebuke;
  Her province. But through every comic scene
  To lead my Muse with her light pencil arm’d;
  Through every swift occasion which the hand
  Of Laughter points at, when the mirthful sting
  Distends her labouring sides and chokes her tongue,
  Were endless as to sound each grating note
  With which the rooks, and chattering daws, and grave
  Unwieldy inmates of the village pond,
  The changing seasons of the sky proclaim;
  Sun, cloud, or shower. Suffice it to have said,
  Where’er the power of Ridicule displays
  Her quaint-eyed visage, some incongruous form,
  Some stubborn dissonance of things combined,
  Strikes on her quick perception: whether Pomp,
  Or Praise, or Beauty be dragg’d in and shewn
  Where sordid fashions, where ignoble deeds,
  Where foul Deformity is wont to dwell;
  Or whether these with shrewd and wayward spite
  Invade resplendent Pomp’s imperious mien,
  The charms of Beauty, or the boast of Praise.
  Ask we for what fair end the Almighty Sire
  In mortal bosoms stirs this gay contempt,
  These grateful pangs of laughter; from disgust
  Educing pleasure? Wherefore, but to aid
  The tardy steps of Reason, and at once
  By this prompt impulse urge us to depress
  Wild Folly’s aims? For, though the sober light
  Of Truth slow dawning on the watchful mind
  At length unfolds, through many a subtle tie,
  How these uncouth disorders end at last
  In public evil; yet benignant Heaven,
  Conscious how dim the dawn of Truth appears
  To thousands, conscious what a scanty pause
  From labour and from care the wider lot
  Of humble life affords for studious thought
  To scan the maze of Nature, therefore stamp’d
  These glaring scenes with characters of scorn,
  As broad, as obvious to the passing clown
  As to the letter’d sage’s curious eye.
  But other evils o’er the steps of man
  Through all his walks impend; against whose might
  The slender darts of Laughter nought avail:
  A trivial warfare. Some, like cruel guards,
  On Nature’s ever-moving throne attend;
  With mischief arm’d for him whoe’er shall thwart
  The path of her inexorable wheels,
  While she pursues the work that must be done
  Through ocean, earth, and air. Hence, frequent forms
  Of woe; the merchant, with his wealthy bark,
  Buried by dashing waves; the traveller,
  Pierced by the pointed lightning in his haste;
  And the poor husbandman, with folded arms,
  Surveying his lost labours, and a heap
  Of blasted chaff the product of the field
  Whence he expected bread. But worse than these,
  I deem far worse, that other race of ills
  Which human kind rear up among themselves;
  That horrid offspring which misgovern’d Will
  Bears to fantastic Error; vices, crimes,
  Furies that curse the earth, and make the blows,
  The heaviest blows, of Nature’s innocent hand
  Seem sport: which are indeed but as the care
  Of a wise parent, who solicits good
  To all her house, though haply at the price
  Of tears and froward wailing and reproach
  From some unthinking child, whom not the less
  Its mother destines to be happy still.

These sources then of pain, this double lot
  Of evil in the inheritance of man,
  Required for his protection no slight force,
  No careless watch; and therefore was his breast
  Fenced round with passions quick to be alarm’d,
  Or stubborn to oppose; with Fear, more swift
  Than beacons catching flame from hill to hill,
  Where armies land: with Anger, uncontroll’d
  As the young lion bounding on his prey;
  With Sorrow, that locks up the struggling heart;
  And Shame, that overcasts the drooping eye
  As with a cloud of lightning. These the part
  Perform of eager monitors, and goad
  The soul more sharply than with points of steel,
  Her enemies to shun or to resist.
  And as those passions, that converse with good,
  Are good themselves; as Hope and Love and Joy,
  Among the fairest and the sweetest boons
  Of life, we rightly count: so these, which guard
  Against invading evil, still excite
  Some pain, some tumult; these, within the mind
  Too oft admitted or too long retain’d,
  Shock their frail seat, and by their uncurb’d rage
  To savages more fell than Libya breeds
  Transform themselves, till human thought becomes
  A gloomy ruin, haunt of shapes unbless’d,
  Of self-tormenting fiends; Horror, Despair,
  Hatred, and wicked Envy: foes to all
  The works of Nature and the gifts of Heaven.

But when through blameless paths to righteous ends
  Those keener passions urge the awaken’d soul,
  I would not, as ungracious violence,
  Their sway describe, nor from their free career
  The fellowship of Pleasure quite exclude.
  For what can render, to the self-approved,
  Their temper void of comfort, though in pain?
  Who knows not with what majesty divine
  The forms of Truth and Justice to the mind
  Appear, ennobling oft the sharpest woe
  With triumph and rejoicing? Who, that bears
  A human bosom, hath not often felt
  How dear are all those ties which bind our race
  In gentleness together, and how sweet
  Their force, let Fortune’s wayward hand the while
  Be kind or cruel? Ask the faithful youth,
  Why the cold urn of her whom long he loved
  So often fills his arms; so often draws
  His lonely footsteps, silent and unseen,
  To pay the mournful tribute of his tears?
  Oh! he will tell thee that the wealth of worlds
  Should ne’er seduce his bosom to forego
  Those sacred hours when, stealing from the noise
  Of care and envy, sweet remembrance soothes
  With Virtue’s kindest looks his aching breast,
  And turns his tears to rapture. Ask the crowd,
  Which flies impatient from the village walk
  To climb the neighbouring cliffs, when far below
  The savage winds have hurl’d upon the coast
  Some helpless bark; while holy Pity melts
  The general eye, or Terror’s icy hand
  Smites their distorted limbs and horrent hair;
  While every mother closer to her breast
  Catcheth her child, and, pointing where the waves
  Foam through the shatter’d vessel, shrieks aloud
  As one poor wretch, who spreads his piteous arms
  For succour, swallow’d by the roaring surge,
  As now another, dash’d against the rock,
  Drops lifeless down. Oh! deemest thou indeed
  No pleasing influence here by Nature given
  To mutual terror and compassion’s tears?
  No tender charm mysterious, which attracts
  O’er all that edge of pain the social powers
  To this their proper action and their end?
  Ask thy own heart; when at the midnight hour,
  Slow through that pensive gloom thy pausing eye,
  Led by the glimmering taper, moves around
  The reverend volumes of the dead, the songs
  Of Grecian bards, and records writ by fame
  For Grecian heroes, where the sovereign Power
  Of heaven and earth surveys the immortal page,
  Even as a father meditating all
  The praises of his son, and bids the rest
  Of mankind there the fairest model learn
  Of their own nature, and the noblest deeds
  Which yet the world hath seen. If then thy soul
  Join in the lot of those diviner men;
  Say, when the prospect darkens on thy view;
  When, sunk by many a wound, heroic states
  Mourn in the dust and tremble at the frown
  Of hard Ambition; when the generous band
  Of youths who fought for freedom and their sires
  Lie side by side in death; when brutal Force
  Usurps the throne of Justice, turns the pomp
  Of guardian power, the majesty of rule,
  The sword, the laurel, and the purple robe,
  To poor dishonest pageants, to adorn
  A robber’s walk, and glitter in the eyes
  Of such as bow the knee; when beauteous works,
  Rewards of virtue, sculptured forms which deck’d
  With more than human grace the warrior’s arch,
  Or patriot’s tomb, now victims to appease
  Tyrannic envy, strew the common path
  With awful ruins; when the Muse’s haunt,
  The marble porch where Wisdom wont to talk
  With Socrates or Tully, hears no more
  Save the hoarse jargon of contentious monks,
  Or female Superstition’s midnight prayer;
  When ruthless Havoc from the hand of Time
  Tears the destroying scythe, with surer stroke
  To mow the monuments of Glory down;
  Till Desolation o’er the grass-grown street
  Expands her raven wings, and, from the gate
  Where senates once the weal of nations plann’d,
  Hisseth the gliding snake through hoary weeds
  That clasp the mouldering column: thus when all
  The widely-mournful scene is fix’d within
  Thy throbbing bosom; when the patriot’s tear
  Starts from thine eye, and thy extended arm
  In fancy hurls the thunderbolt of Jove
  To fire the impious wreath on Philip’s brow,
  Or dash Octavius from the trophied car;
  Say, doth thy secret soul repine to taste
  The big distress? Or wouldst thou then exchange
  Those heart-ennobling sorrows for the lot
  Of him who sits amid the gaudy herd
  Of silent flatterers bending to his nod;
  And o’er them, like a giant, casts his eye,
  And says within himself, ‘I am a King,
  And wherefore should the clamorous voice of woe
  Intrude upon mine ear?’ The dregs corrupt
  Of barbarous ages, that Circaean draught
  Of servitude and folly, have not yet,
  Bless’d be the Eternal Ruler of the world!
  Yet have not so dishonour’d, so deform’d
  The native judgment of the human soul,
  Nor so effaced the image of her Sire.

Book III. 1770

What tongue then may explain the various fate
  Which reigns o’er earth? or who to mortal eyes
  Illustrate this perplexing labyrinth
  Of joy and woe, through which the feet of man
  Are doom’d to wander? That Eternal Mind
  From passions, wants, and envy far estranged,
  Who built the spacious universe, and deck’d
  Each part so richly with whate’er pertains
  To life, to health, to pleasure, why bade he
  The viper Evil, creeping in, pollute
  The goodly scene, and with insidious rage,
  While the poor inmate looks around and smiles
  Dart her fell sting with poison to his soul?
  Hard is the question, and from ancient days
  Hath still oppress’d with care the sage’s thought;
  Hath drawn forth accents from the poet’s lyre
  Too sad, too deeply plaintive; nor did e’er
  Those chiefs of human kind, from whom the light
  Of heavenly truth first gleam’d on barbarous lands,
  Forget this dreadful secret when they told
  What wondrous things had to their favour’d eyes
  And ears on cloudy mountain been reveal’d,
  Or in deep cave by nymph or power divine,
  Portentous oft, and wild. Yet one I know.
  Could I the speech of lawgivers assume,
  One old and splendid tale I would record,
  With which the Muse of Solon in sweet strains
  Adorn’d this theme profound, and render’d all
  Its darkness, all its terrors, bright as noon,
  Or gentle as the golden star of eve.
  Who knows not Solon,—last, and wisest far,
  Of those whom Greece, triumphant in the height
  Of glory, styled her fathers,—him whose voice
  Through Athens hush’d the storm of civil wrath;
  Taught envious Want and cruel Wealth to join
  In friendship; and, with sweet compulsion, tamed
  Minerva’s eager people to his laws,
  Which their own goddess in his breast inspired?

’Twas now the time when his heroic task
  Seem’d but perform’d in vain; when, soothed by years
  Of flattering service, the fond multitude
  Hung with their sudden counsels on the breath
  Of great Pisistratus, that chief renown’d,
  Whom Hermes and the Idalian queen had train’d,
  Even from his birth, to every powerful art
  Of pleasing and persuading; from whose lips
  Flow’d eloquence which, like the vows of love,
  Could steal away suspicion from the hearts
  Of all who listen’d. Thus from day to day
  He won the general suffrage, and beheld
  Each rival overshadow’d and depress’d
  Beneath his ampler state; yet oft complain’d,
  As one less kindly treated, who had hoped
  To merit favour, but submits perforce
  To find another’s services preferr’d,
  Nor yet relaxeth aught of faith or zeal.
  Then tales were scatter’d of his envious foes,
  Of snares that watch’d his fame, of daggers aim’d
  Against his life. At last, with trembling limbs,
  His hair diffused and wild, his garments loose,
  And stain’d with blood from self-inflicted wounds,
  He burst into the public place, as there,
  There only, were his refuge; and declared
  In broken words, with sighs of deep regret,
  The mortal danger he had scarce repell’d.
  Fired with his tragic tale, the indignant crowd,
  To guard his steps, forthwith a menial band,
  Array’d beneath his eye for deeds of war,
  Decree. Oh! still too liberal of their trust,
  And oft betray’d by over-grateful love,
  The generous people! Now behold him fenced
  By mercenary weapons, like a king,
  Forth issuing from the city-gate at eve
  To seek his rural mansion, and with pomp
  Crowding the public road. The swain stops short,
  And sighs; the officious townsmen stand at gaze,
  And shrinking give the sullen pageant room.
  Yet not the less obsequious was his brow;
  Nor less profuse of courteous words his tongue,
  Of gracious gifts his hand; the while by stealth,
  Like a small torrent fed with evening showers,
  His train increased; till, at that fatal time
  Just as the public eye, with doubt and shame
  Startled, began to question what it saw,
  Swift as the sound of earthquakes rush’d a voice
  Through Athens, that Pisistratus had fill’d
  The rocky citadel with hostile arms,
  Had barr’d the steep ascent, and sate within
  Amid his hirelings, meditating death
  To all whose stubborn necks his yoke refused.
  Where then was Solon? After ten long years
  Of absence, full of haste from foreign shores,
  The sage, the lawgiver had now arrived:
  Arrived, alas! to see that Athens, that
  Fair temple raised by him and sacred call’d
  To Liberty and Concord, now profaned
  By savage hate, or sunk into a den
  Of slaves who crouch beneath the master’s scourge,
  And deprecate his wrath, and court his chains.
  Yet did not the wise patriot’s grief impede
  His virtuous will, nor was his heart inclined
  One moment with such woman-like distress
  To view the transient storms of civil war,
  As thence to yield his country and her hopes
  To all-devouring bondage. His bright helm,
  Even while the traitor’s impious act is told,
  He buckles on his hoary head; he girds
  With mail his stooping breast; the shield, the spear
  He snatcheth; and with swift indignant strides
  The assembled people seeks; proclaims aloud
  It was no time for counsel; in their spears
  Lay all their prudence now; the tyrant yet
  Was not so firmly seated on his throne,
  But that one shock of their united force
  Would dash him from the summit of his pride,
  Headlong and grovelling in the dust. ‘What else
  Can reassert the lost Athenian name,
  So cheaply to the laughter of the world
  Betray’d; by guile beneath an infant’s faith
  So mock’d and scorn’d? Away, then: Freedom now
  And Safety dwell not but with Fame in arms;
  Myself will shew you where their mansion lies,
  And through the walks of Danger or of Death
  Conduct you to them.’—While he spake, through all
  Their crowded ranks his quick sagacious eye
  He darted; where no cheerful voice was heard
  Of social daring; no stretch’d arm was seen
  Hastening their common task: but pale mistrust
  Wrinkled each brow; they shook their head, and down
  Their slack hands hung; cold sighs and whisper’d doubts 130
  From breath to breath stole round. The sage meantime
  Look’d speechless on, while his big bosom heaved,
  Struggling with shame and sorrow, till at last
  A tear broke forth; and, ‘O immortal shades,
  O Theseus,’ he exclaim’d, ‘O Codrus, where,
  Where are ye now behold for what ye toil’d
  Through life! behold for whom ye chose to die!’
  No more he added; but with lonely steps
  Weary and slow, his silver beard depress’d,
  And his stern eyes bent heedless on the ground,
  Back to his silent dwelling he repair’d.
  There o’er the gate, his armour, as a man
  Whom from the service of the war his chief
  Dismisseth after no inglorious toil,
  He fix’d in general view. One wishful look
  He sent, unconscious, toward the public place
  At parting; then beneath his quiet roof
  Without a word, without a sigh, retired.
  Scarce had the morrow’s sun his golden rays
  From sweet Hymettus darted o’er the fanes
  Of Cecrops to the Salaminian shores,
  When, lo, on Solon’s threshold met the feet
  Of four Athenians, by the same sad care
  Conducted all, than whom the state beheld
  None nobler. First came Megacles, the son
  Of great Alcmaeon, whom the Lydian king,
  The mild, unhappy Croesus, in his days
  Of glory had with costly gifts adorn’d,
  Fair vessels, splendid garments, tinctured webs
  And heaps of treasured gold, beyond the lot
  Of many sovereigns; thus requiting well
  That hospitable favour which erewhile
  Alcmaeon to his messengers had shown,
  Whom he, with offerings worthy of the god,
  Sent from his throne in Sardis, to revere
  Apollo’s Delphic shrine. With Megacles
  Approach’d his son, whom Agarista bore,
  The virtuous child of Clistheues, whose hand
  Of Grecian sceptres the most ancient far
  In Sicyon sway’d: but greater fame he drew
  From arms controll’d by justice, from the love
  Of the wise Muses, and the unenvied wreath
  Which glad Olympia gave. For thither once
  His warlike steeds the hero led, and there
  Contended through the tumult of the course
  With skilful wheels. Then victor at the goal,
  Amid the applauses of assembled Greece,
  High on his car he stood and waved his arm.
  Silence ensued: when straight the herald’s voice
  Was heard, inviting every Grecian youth,
  Whom Clisthenes content might call his son,
  To visit, ere twice thirty days were pass’d,
  The towers of Sicyon. There the chief decreed,
  Within the circuit of the following year,
  To join at Hymen’s altar, hand in hand
  With his fair daughter, him among the guests
  Whom worthiest he should deem. Forthwith from all
  The bounds of Greece the ambitious wooers came:
  From rich Hesperia; from the Illyrian shore,
  Where Epidamnus over Adria’s surge
  Looks on the setting sun; from those brave tribes
  Chaonian or Molossian, whom the race
  Of great Achilles governs, glorying still
  In Troy o’erthrown; from rough Aetolia, nurse
  Of men who first among the Greeks threw off
  The yoke of kings, to commerce and to arms
  Devoted; from Thessalia’s fertile meads,
  Where flows Penéus near the lofty walls
  Of Cranon old; from strong Eretria, queen
  Of all Euboean cities, who, sublime
  On the steep margin of Euripus, views
  Across the tide the Marathonian plain,
  Not yet the haunt of glory. Athens too,
  Minerva’s care, among her graceful sons
  Found equal lovers for the princely maid:
  Nor was proud Argos wanting; nor the domes
  Of sacred Elis; nor the Arcadian groves
  That overshade Alpheus, echoing oft
  Some shepherd’s song. But through the illustrious band
  Was none who might with Megacles compare
  In all the honours of unblemish’d youth.
  His was the beauteous bride; and now their son,
  Young Clisthenes, betimes, at Solon’s gate
  Stood anxious; leaning forward on the arm
  Of his great sire, with earnest eyes that ask’d
  When the slow hinge would turn, with restless feet,
  And cheeks now pale, now glowing; for his heart
  Throbb’d full of bursting passions, anger, grief
  With scorn imbitter’d, by the generous boy
  Scarce understood, but which, like noble seeds,
  Are destined for his country and himself
  In riper years to bring forth fruits divine
  Of liberty and glory. Next appear’d
  Two brave companions, whom one mother bore
  To different lords; but whom the better ties
  Of firm esteem and friendship render’d more
  Than brothers: first Miltiades, who drew
  From godlike Æacus his ancient line;
  That Æacus whose unimpeach’d renown
  For sanctity and justice won the lyre
  Of elder bards to celebrate him throned
  In Hades o’er the dead, where his decrees
  The guilty soul within the burning gates
  Of Tartarus compel, or send the good
  To inhabit with eternal health and peace
  The valleys of Elysium. From a stem
  So sacred, ne’er could worthier scion spring
  Than this Miltiades; whose aid ere long
  The chiefs of Thrace, already on their ways,
  Sent by the inspired foreknowing maid who sits
  Upon the Delphic tripod, shall implore
  To wield their sceptre, and the rural wealth
  Of fruitful Chersonesus to protect
  With arms and laws. But, nothing careful now
  Save for his injured country, here he stands
  In deep solicitude with Cimon join’d:
  Unconscious both what widely different lots
  Await them, taught by nature as they are
  To know one common good, one common ill.
  For Cimon, not his valour, not his birth
  Derived from Codrus, not a thousand gifts
  Dealt round him with a wise, benignant hand;
  No, not the Olympic olive, by himself
  From his own brow transferr’d to soothe the mind
  Of this Pisistratus, can long preserve
  From the fell envy of the tyrant’s sons,
  And their assassin dagger. But if death
  Obscure upon his gentle steps attend,
  Yet fate an ample recompense prepares
  In his victorious son, that other great
  Miltiades, who o’er the very throne
  Of Glory shall with Time’s assiduous hand
  In adamantine characters engrave
  The name of Athens; and, by Freedom arm’d
  ’Gainst the gigantic pride of Asia’s king,
  Shall all the achievements of the heroes old
  Surmount, of Hercules, of all who sail’d
  From Thessaly with Jason, all who fought
  For empire or for fame at Thebes or Troy.

Such were the patriots who within the porch
  Of Solon had assembled. But the gate
  Now opens, and across the ample floor
  Straight they proceed into an open space
  Bright with the beams of morn: a verdant spot,
  Where stands a rural altar, piled with sods
  Cut from the grassy turf and girt with wreaths,
  Of branching palm. Here Solon’s self they found
  Clad in a robe of purple pure, and deck’d
  With leaves of olive on his reverend brow.
  He bow’d before the altar, and o’er cakes
  Of barley from two earthen vessels pour’d
  Of honey and of milk a plenteous stream;
  Calling meantime the Muses to accept
  His simple offering, by no victim tinged
  With blood, nor sullied by destroying fire,
  But such as for himself Apollo claims
  In his own Delos, where his favourite haunt
  Is thence the Altar of the Pious named.

Unseen the guests drew near, and silent view’d
  That worship; till the hero-priest his eye
  Turn’d toward a seat on which prepared there lay
  A branch of laurel. Then his friends confess’d
  Before him stood. Backward his step he drew,
  As loath that care or tumult should approach
  Those early rites divine; but soon their looks,
  So anxious, and their hands, held forth with such
  Desponding gesture, bring him on perforce
  To speak to their affliction. ‘Are ye come,’
  He cried, ‘to mourn with me this common shame?
  Or ask ye some new effort which may break
  Our fetters? Know then, of the public cause
  Not for yon traitor’s cunning or his might
  Do I despair; nor could I wish from Jove
  Aught dearer, than at this late hour of life,
  As once by laws, so now by strenuous arms,
  From impious violation to assert
  The rights our fathers left us. But, alas!
  What arms? or who shall wield them? Ye beheld
  The Athenian people. Many bitter days
  Must pass, and many wounds from cruel pride
  Be felt, ere yet their partial hearts find room
  For just resentment, or their hands indure
  To smite this tyrant brood, so near to all
  Their hopes, so oft admired, so long beloved.
  That time will come, however. Be it yours
  To watch its fair approach, and urge it on
  With honest prudence; me it ill beseems
  Again to supplicate the unwilling crowd
  To rescue from a vile deceiver’s hold
  That envied power, which once with eager zeal
  They offer’d to myself; nor can I plunge
  In counsels deep and various, nor prepare
  For distant wars, thus faltering as I tread
  On life’s last verge, ere long to join the shades
  Of Minos and Lycurgus. But behold
  What care employs me now. My vows I pay
  To the sweet Muses, teachers of my youth
  And solace of my age. If right I deem
  Of the still voice that whispers at my heart,
  The immortal sisters have not quite withdrawn
  Their old harmonious influence. Let your tongues
  With sacred silence favour what I speak,
  And haply shall my faithful lips be taught
  To unfold celestial counsels, which may arm,
  As with impenetrable steel your breasts,
  For the long strife before you, and repel
  The darts of adverse fate.’—He said, and snatch’d
  The laurel bough, and sate in silence down,
  Fix’d, wrapp’d in solemn musing, full before
  The sun, who now from all his radiant orb
  Drove the gray clouds, and pour’d his genial light
  Upon the breast of Solon. Solon raised
  Aloft the leafy rod, and thus began:—

‘Ye beauteous offspring of Olympian Jove
  And Memory divine, Pierian maids,
  Hear me, propitious. In the morn of life,
  When hope shone bright and all the prospect smiled,
  To your sequester’d mansion oft my steps
  Were turn’d, O Muses, and within your gate
  My offerings paid. Ye taught me then with strains
  Of flowing harmony to soften war’s
  Dire voice, or in fair colours, that might charm
  The public eye, to clothe the form austere
  Of civil counsel. Now my feeble age,
  Neglected, and supplanted of the hope
  On which it lean’d, yet sinks not, but to you,
  To your mild wisdom flies, refuge beloved
  Of solitude and silence. Ye can teach
  The visions of my bed whate’er the gods
  In the rude ages of the world inspired,
  Or the first heroes acted; ye can make
  The morning light more gladsome to my sense
  Than ever it appear’d to active youth
  Pursuing careless pleasure; ye can give
  To this long leisure, these unheeded hours,
  A labour as sublime, as when the sons
  Of Athens throng’d and speechless round me stood,
  To hear pronounced for all their future deeds
  The bounds of right and wrong. Celestial powers!
  I feel that ye are near me: and behold,
  To meet your energy divine, I bring
  A high and sacred theme; not less than those
  Which to the eternal custody of Fame
  Your lips intrusted, when of old ye deign’d
  With Orpheus or with Homer to frequent
  The groves of Hæmus or the Chian shore.

‘Ye know, harmonious maids, (for what of all
  My various life was e’er from you estranged?)
  Oft hath my solitary song to you
  Reveal’d that duteous pride which turn’d my steps
  To willing exile; earnest to withdraw
  From envy and the disappointed thirst
  Of lucre, lest the bold familiar strife,
  Which in the eye of Athens they upheld
  Against her legislator, should impair
  With trivial doubt the reverence of his laws.
  To Egypt therefore through the Ægean isles
  My course I steer’d, and by the banks of Nile
  Dwelt in Canopus. Thence the hallow’d domes
  Of Sals, and the rites to Isis paid,
  I sought, and in her temple’s silent courts,
  Through many changing moons, attentive heard
  The venerable Sonchis, while his tongue
  At morn or midnight the deep story told
  Of her who represents whate’er has been,
  Or is, or shall be; whose mysterious veil
  No mortal hand hath ever yet removed.
  By him exhorted, southward to the walls
  Of On I pass’d, the city of the sun,
  The ever-youthful god. Twas there, amid
  His priests and sages, who the livelong night
  Watch the dread movements of the starry sphere,
  Or who in wondrous fables half disclose
  The secrets of the elements, ’twas there
  That great Paenophis taught my raptured ears
  The fame of old Atlantis, of her chiefs,
  And her pure laws, the first which earth obey’d.
  Deep in my bosom sunk the noble tale;
  And often, while I listen’d, did my mind
  Foretell with what delight her own free lyre
  Should sometime for an Attic audience raise
  Anew that lofty scene, and from their tombs
  Call forth those ancient demigods, to speak
  Of Justice and the hidden Providence
  That walks among mankind. But yet meantime
  The mystic pomp of Ammon’s gloomy sons
  Became less pleasing. With contempt I gazed
  On that tame garb and those unvarying paths,
  To which the double yoke of king and priest
  Had cramp’d the sullen race. At last, with hymns
  Invoking our own Pallas and the gods
  Of cheerful Greece, a glad farewell I gave
  To Egypt, and before the southern wind
  Spread my full sails. What climes I then survey’d,
  What fortunes I encounter’d in the realm
  Of Croesus or upon the Cyprian shore,
  The Muse, who prompts my bosom, doth not now
  Consent that I reveal. But when at length
  Ten times the sun returning from the south
  Had strow’d with flowers the verdant earth, and fill’d
  The groves with music, pleased I then beheld
  The term of those long errors drawing nigh.
  Nor yet, I said, will I sit down within
  The walls of Athens, till my feet have trod
  The Cretan soil, have pierced those reverend haunts
  Whence Law and Civil Concord issued forth
  As from their ancient home, and still to Greece
  Their wisest, loftiest discipline proclaim.
  Straight where Amnisus, mart of wealthy ships,
  Appears beneath famed Cnossus and her towers,
  Like the fair handmaid of a stately queen,
  I check’d my prow, and thence with eager steps
  The city of Minos enter’d. O ye gods,
  Who taught the leaders of the simpler time
  By written words to curb the untoward will
  Of mortals, how within that generous isle
  Have ye the triumphs of your power display’d
  Munificent! Those splendid merchants, lords
  Of traffic and the sea, with what delight
  I saw them, at their public meal, like sons
  Of the same household, join the plainer sort
  Whose wealth was only freedom! whence to these
  Vile envy, and to those fantastic pride,
  Alike was strange; but noble concord still
  Cherish’d the strength untamed, the rustic faith,
  Of their first fathers. Then the growing race,
  How pleasing to behold them in their schools,
  Their sports, their labours, ever placed within,
  O shade of Minos! thy controlling eye.
  Here was a docile band in tuneful tones
  Thy laws pronouncing, or with lofty hymns
  Praising the bounteous gods, or, to preserve
  Their country’s heroes from oblivious night,
  Resounding what the Muse inspired of old;
  There, on the verge of manhood, others met,
  In heavy armour through the heats of noon
  To march, the rugged mountain’s height to climb
  With measured swiftness, from the hard-bent bow
  To send resistless arrows to their mark,
  Or for the fame of prowess to contend,
  Now wrestling, now with fists and staves opposed,
  Now with the biting falchion, and the fence
  Of brazen shields; while still the warbling flute
  Presided o’er the combat, breathing strains
  Grave, solemn, soft; and changing headlong spite
  To thoughtful resolution cool and clear.
  Such I beheld those islanders renown’d,
  So tutor’d from their birth to meet in war
  Each bold invader, and in peace to guard
  That living flame of reverence for their laws,
  Which nor the storms of fortune, nor the flood
  Of foreign wealth diffused o’er all the land,
  Could quench or slacken. First of human names
  In every Cretan’s heart was Minos still;
  And holiest far, of what the sun surveys
  Through his whole course, were those primeval seats
  Which with religious footsteps he had taught
  Their sires to approach; the wild Dictaean cave
  Where Jove was born: the ever verdant meads
  Of Ida, and the spacious grotto, where
  His active youth he pass’d, and where his throne
  Yet stands mysterious; whither Minos came
  Each ninth returning year, the king of gods
  And mortals there in secret to consult
  On justice, and the tables of his law
  To inscribe anew. Oft also with like zeal
  Great Rhea’s mansion from the Cnossian gates
  Men visit; nor less oft the antique fane
  Built on that sacred spot, along the banks
  Of shady Theron, where benignant Jove
  And his majestic consort join’d their hands
  And spoke their nuptial vows. Alas, ’twas there
  That the dire fame of Athens sunk in bonds
  I first received; what time an annual feast
  Had summon’d all the genial country round,
  By sacrifice and pomp to bring to mind
  That first great spousal; while the enamour’d youths
  And virgins, with the priest before the shrine,
  Observe the same pure ritual, and invoke
  The same glad omens. There, among the crowd
  Of strangers from those naval cities drawn
  Which deck, like gems, the island’s northern shore,
  A merchant of Ægina I descried,
  My ancient host; but, forward as I sprung
  To meet him, he, with dark dejected brow,
  Stopp’d half averse; and, “O Athenian guest,”
  He said, “art thou in Crete, these joyful rites
  Partaking? Know thy laws are blotted out:
  Thy country kneels before a tyrant’s throne.”
  He added names of men, with hostile deeds
  Disastrous; which obscure and indistinct
  I heard: for, while he spake, my heart grew cold
  And my eyes dim; the altars and their train
  No more were present to me; how I fared,
  Or whither turn’d, I know not; nor recall
  Aught of those moments, other than the sense
  Of one who struggles in oppressive sleep,
  And, from the toils of some distressful dream
  To break away, with palpitating heart,
  Weak limbs, and temples bathed in death-like dew,
  Makes many a painful effort. When at last
  The sun and nature’s face again appear’d,
  Not far I found me, where the public path,
  Winding through cypress groves and swelling meads,
  From Cnossus to the cave of Jove ascends.
  Heedless I follow’d on; till soon the skirts
  Of Ida rose before me, and the vault
  Wide opening pierced the mountain’s rocky side.
  Entering within the threshold, on the ground
  I flung me, sad, faint, overworn with toil.’

The Beginning of the Fourth Book of the Pleasures of the Imagination, 1770

One effort more, one cheerful sally more,
  Our destined course will finish; and in peace
  Then, for an offering sacred to the powers
  Who lent us gracious guidance, we will then
  Inscribe a monument of deathless praise,
  O my adventurous song! With steady speed
  Long hast thou, on an untried voyage bound,
  Sail’d between earth and heaven: hast now survey’d,
  Stretch’d out beneath thee, all the mazy tracts
  Of Passion and Opinion; like a waste
  Of sands and flowery lawns and tangling woods,
  Where mortals roam bewilder’d: and hast now
  Exulting soar’d among the worlds above,
  Or hover’d near the eternal gates of heaven,
  If haply the discourses of the gods,
  A curious, but an unpresuming guest,
  Thou mightst partake, and carry back some strain
  Of divine wisdom, lawful to repeat,
  And apt to be conceived of man below.
  A different task remains; the secret paths
  Of early genius to explore: to trace
  Those haunts where Fancy her predestined sons,
  Like to the demigods of old, doth nurse
  Remote from eyes profane. Ye happy souls
  Who now her tender discipline obey,
  Where dwell ye? What wild river’s brink at eve
  Imprint your steps? What solemn groves at noon
  Use ye to visit, often breaking forth
  In rapture ’mid your dilatory walk,
  Or musing, as in slumber, on the green?—
  Would I again were with you!-O ye dales
  Of Tyne, and ye most ancient woodlands; where,
  Oft as the giant flood obliquely strides,
  And his banks open, and his lawns extend,
  Stops short the pleased traveller to view
  Presiding o’er the scene some rustic tower
  Founded by Norman or by Saxon hands:
  O ye Northumbrian shades, which overlook
  The rocky pavement and the mossy falls
  Of solitary Wensbeck’s limpid stream;
  How gladly I recall your well-known seats
  Beloved of old, and that delightful time
  When all alone, for many a summer’s day,
  I wander’d through your calm recesses, led
  In silence by some powerful hand unseen.

Nor will I e’er forget you; nor shall e’er
  The graver tasks of manhood, or the advice
  Of vulgar wisdom, move me to disclaim
  Those studies which possess’d me in the dawn
  Of life, and fix’d the colour of my mind
  For every future year: whence even now
  From sleep I rescue the clear hours of morn,
  And, while the world around lies overwhelm’d
  In idle darkness, am alive to thoughts
  Of honourable fame, of truth divine
  Or moral, and of minds to virtue won
  By the sweet magic of harmonious verse;
  The themes which now expect us. For thus far
  On general habits, and on arts which grow
  Spontaneous in the minds of all mankind,
  Hath dwelt our argument; and how, self-taught,
  Though seldom conscious of their own employ,
  In Nature’s or in Fortune’s changeful scene
  Men learn to judge of Beauty, and acquire
  Those forms set up, as idols in the soul
  For love and zealous praise. Yet indistinct,
  In vulgar bosoms, and unnoticed lie
  These pleasing stores, unless the casual force
  Of things external prompt the heedless mind
  To recognise her wealth. But some there are
  Conscious of Nature, and the rule which man
  O’er Nature holds; some who, within themselves
  Retiring from the trivial scenes of chance
  And momentary passion, can at will
  Call up these fair exemplars of the mind;
  Review their features; scan the secret laws
  Which bind them to each other: and display
  By forms, or sounds, or colours, to the sense
  Of all the world their latent charms display;
  Even as in Nature’s frame (if such a word,
  If such a word, so bold, may from the lips
  Of man proceed) as in this outward frame
  Of things, the great Artificer portrays
  His own immense idea. Various names
  These among mortals bear, as various signs
  They use, and by peculiar organs speak
  To human sense. There are who, by the flight
  Of air through tubes with moving stops distinct,
  Or by extended chords in measure taught
  To vibrate, can assemble powerful sounds
  Expressing every temper of the mind
  From every cause, and charming all the soul
  With passion void of care. Others mean time
  The rugged mass of metal, wood, or stone,
  Patiently taming; or with easier hand
  Describing lines, and with more ample scope
  Uniting colours; can to general sight
  Produce those permanent and perfect forms,
  Those characters of heroes and of gods,
  Which from the crude materials of the world,
  Their own high minds created. But the chief
  Are poets; eloquent men, who dwell on earth
  To clothe whate’er the soul admires or loves
  With language and with numbers. Hence to these
  A field is open’d wide as Nature’s sphere;
  Nay, wider: various as the sudden acts
  Of human wit, and vast as the demands
  Of human will. The bard nor length, nor depth,
  Nor place, nor form controls. To eyes, to ears,
  To every organ of the copious mind,
  He offereth all its treasures. Him the hours,
  The seasons him obey, and changeful Time
  Sees him at will keep measure with his flight,
  At will outstrip it. To enhance his toil,
  He summoneth, from the uttermost extent
  Of things which God hath taught him, every form
  Auxiliar, every power; and all beside
  Excludes imperious. His prevailing hand
  Gives, to corporeal essence, life and sense
  And every stately function of the soul.
  The soul itself to him obsequious lies,
  Like matter’s passive heap; and as he wills,
  To reason and affection he assigns
  Their just alliances, their just degrees:
  Whence his peculiar honours; whence the race
  Of men who people his delightful world,
  Men genuine and according to themselves,
  Transcend as far the uncertain sons of earth,
  As earth itself to his delightful world,
  The palm of spotless Beauty doth resign.

Odes on Several Subjects, in Two Books

Book I

Ode I

Preface

1 Off yonder verdant hillock laid,
  Where oaks and elms, a friendly shade,
      O’erlook the falling stream,
  O master of the Latin lyre,
  A while with thee will I retire
      From summer’s noontide beam.

2 And, lo, within my lonely bower,
  The industrious bee from many a flower
      Collects her balmy dews:
  ‘For me,’ she sings, ‘the gems are born,
  For me their silken robe adorn,
      Their fragrant breath diffuse.’

3 Sweet murmurer! may no rude storm
  This hospitable scene deform,
      Nor check thy gladsome toils;
  Still may the buds unsullied spring,
  Still showers and sunshine court thy wing
      To these ambrosial spoils.

4 Nor shall my Muse hereafter fail
  Her fellow labourer thee to hail;
      And lucky be the strains!
  For long ago did Nature frame
  Your seasons and your arts the same,
      Your pleasures and your pains.

5 Like thee, in lowly, sylvan scenes,
  On river banks and flowery greens,
      My Muse delighted plays;
  Nor through the desert of the air,
  Though swans or eagles triumph there,
      With fond ambition strays.

6 Nor where the boding raven chaunts,
  Nor near the owl’s unhallow’d haunts
    Will she her cares employ;
  But flies from ruins and from tombs,
  From Superstition’s horrid glooms,
      To day-light and to joy.

7 Nor will she tempt the barren waste;
  Nor deigns the lurking strength to taste
      Of any noxious thing;
  But leaves with scorn to Envy’s use
  The insipid nightshade’s baneful juice,
      The nettle’s sordid sting.

8 From all which Nature fairest knows,
  The vernal blooms, the summer rose,
      She draws her blameless wealth;
  And, when the generous task is done,
  She consecrates a double boon,
      To Pleasure and to Health.

Ode II

On the Winter-Solstice. 1740

1 The radiant ruler of the year
  At length his wintry goal attains;
  Soon to reverse the long career,
  And northward bend his steady reins.
  Now, piercing half Potosi’s height,
  Prone rush the fiery floods of light
  Ripening the mountain’s silver stores:
  While, in some cavern’s horrid shade,
  The panting Indian hides his head,
  And oft the approach of eve implores.

2 But lo, on this deserted coast,
  How pale the sun! how thick the air!
  Mustering his storms, a sordid host,
  Lo, Winter desolates the year.
  The fields resign their latest bloom;
  No more the breezes waft perfume,
  No more the streams in music roll:
  But snows fall dark, or rains resound;
  And, while great Nature mourns around,
  Her griefs infect the human soul.

3 Hence the loud city’s busy throngs
  Urge the warm bowl and splendid fire:
  Harmonious dances, festive songs,
  Against the spiteful heaven conspire.
  Meantime, perhaps, with tender fears
  Some village dame the curfew hears,
  While round the hearth her children play:
  At morn their father went abroad;
  The moon is sunk, and deep the road;
  She sighs, and vonders at his stay.

4 But thou, my lyre, awake, arise,
  And hail the sun’s returning force:
  Even now he climbs the northern skies,
  And health and hope attend his course.
  Then louder howl the aerial waste,
  Be earth with keener cold embraced,
  Yet gentle hours advance their wing;
  And Fancy, mocking Winter’s might,
  With flowers and dews and streaming light
  Already decks the new-born Spring.

5 O fountain of the golden day,
  Could mortal vows promote thy speed,
  How soon before thy vernal ray
  Should each unkindly damp recede!
  How soon each hovering tempest fly,
  Whose stores for mischief arm the sky,
  Prompt on our heads to burst amain,
  To rend the forest from the steep,
  Or, thundering o’er the Baltic deep,
  To whelm the merchant’s hopes of gain!

6 But let not man’s unequal views
  Presume o’er Nature and her laws:
  ’Tis his with grateful joy to use
  The indulgence of the Sovereign Cause;
  Secure that health and beauty springs
  Through this majestic frame of things,
  Beyond what he can reach to know;
  And that Heaven’s all-subduing will,
  With good, the progeny of ill,
  Attempereth every state below.

7 How pleasing wears the wintry night,
  Spent with the old illustrious dead!
  While, by the taper’s trembling light,
  I seem those awful scenes to tread
  Where chiefs or legislators lie,
  Whose triumphs move before my eye,
  In arms and antique pomp array’d;
  While now I taste the Ionian song,
  Now bend to Plato’s godlike tongue
  Resounding through the olive shade.

8 But should some cheerful, equal friend
  Bid leave the studious page a while.
  Let mirth on wisdom then attend,
  And social ease on learned toil.
  Then while, at love’s uncareful shrine,
  Each dictates to the god of wine
  Her name whom all his hopes obey,
  What flattering dreams each bosom warm,
  While absence, heightening every charm,
  Invokes the slow-returning May!

9 May, thou delight of heaven and earth,
  When will thy genial star arise?
  The auspicious morn, which gives thee birth,
  Shall bring Eudora to my eyes.
  Within her sylvan haunt, behold,
  As in the happy garden old,
  She moves like that primeval fair:
  Thither, ye silver-sounding lyres,
  Ye tender smiles, ye chaste desires,
  Fond hope and mutual faith, repair.

10 And if believing love can read
  His better omens in her eye,
  Then shall my fears, O charming maid,
  And every pain of absence die:
  Then shall my jocund harp, attuned
  To thy true ear, with sweeter sound
  Pursue the free Horatian song:
  Old Tyne shall listen to my tale,
  And Echo, down the bordering vale,
  The liquid melody prolong.

For the Winter Solstice, December 11, 1740. As Originally Written

1 Now to the utmost southern goal
  The sun has traced his annual way,
  And backward now prepares to roll,
  And bless the north with earlier day.
  Prone on Potosi’s lofty brow
  Floods of sublimer splendour flow,
  Ripening the latent seeds of gold,
  Whilst, panting in the lonely shade,
  Th’ afflicted Indian hides his head,
  Nor dares the blaze of noon behold.

2 But lo! on this deserted coast
  How faint the light, how chill the air!
  Lo! arm’d with whirlwind, hail, and frost,
  Fierce Winter desolates the year.
  The fields resign their cheerful bloom,
  No more the breezes breathe perfume,
  No more the warbling waters roll;
  Deserts of snow fatigue the eye,
  Successive tempests bloat the sky,
  And gloomy damps oppress the soul.

3 But let my drooping genius rise,
  And hail the sun’s remotest ray:
  Now, now he climbs the northern skies,
  To-morrow nearer than to-day.
  Then louder howl the stormy waste,
  Be land and ocean worse defaced,
  Yet brighter hours are on the wing,
  And Fancy, through the wintry gloom,
  Radiant with dews and flowers in bloom,
  Already hails th’ emerging spring.

4 O fountain of the golden day!
  Could mortal vows but urge thy speed,
  How soon before thy vernal ray
  Should each unkindly damp recede!
  How soon each tempest hovering fly,
  That now fermenting loads the sky,
  Prompt on our heads to burst amain,
  To rend the forest from the steep,
  And thundering o’er the Baltic deep,
  To whelm the merchant’s hopes of gain!

5 But let not man’s imperfect views
  Presume to tax wise Nature’s laws;
  ’Tis his with silent joy to use
  Th’ indulgence of the Sovereign Cause;
  Secure that from the whole of things
  Beauty and good consummate springs,
  Beyond what he can reach to know;
  And that the providence of Heaven
  Has some peculiar blessing given
  To each allotted state below.

6 Even now how sweet the wintry night
  Spent with the old illustrious dead!
  While, by the taper’s trembling light,
  I seem those awful courts to tread,
  Where chiefs and legislators lie,
  Whose triumphs move before my eye,
  With every laurel fresh display’d;
  While charm’d I rove in classic song,
  Or bend to freedom’s fearless tongue,
  Or walk the academic shade.

Ode III

To a Friend, Unsuccessful in Love

1 Indeed, my Phædria, if to find
  That wealth can female wishes gain,
  Had e’er disturb’d your thoughtful mind,
  Or caused one serious moment’s pain,
  I should have said that all the rules
  You learn’d of moralists and schools
  Were very useless, very vain.

2 Yet I perhaps mistake the case—
  Say, though with this heroic air,
  Like one that holds a nobler chase,
  You try the tender loss to bear,
  Does not your heart renounce your tongue?
  Seems not my censure strangely wrong
  To count it such a slight affair?

3 When Hesper gilds the shaded sky,
  Oft as you seek the well-known grove,
  Methinks I see you cast your eye
  Back to the morning scenes of love:
  Each pleasing word you heard her say,
  Her gentle look, her graceful way,
  Again your struggling fancy move.

4 Then tell me, is your soul entire?
  Does Wisdom calmly hold her throne?
  Then can you question each desire,
  Bid this remain, and that be gone?
  No tear half-starting from your eye?
  No kindling blush, you know not why?
  No stealing sigh, nor stifled groan?

5 Away with this unmanly mood!
  See where the hoary churl appears,
  Whose hand hath seized the favourite good
  Which you reserved for happier years:
  While, side by side, the blushing maid
  Shrinks from his visage, half afraid,
  Spite of the sickly joy she wears.

6 Ye guardian powers of love and fame,
  This chaste, harmonious pair behold;
  And thus reward the generous flame
  Of all who barter vows for gold.
  O bloom of youth, O tender charms
  Well-buried in a dotard’s arms!
  O equal price of beauty sold!

7 Cease then to gaze with looks of love:
  Bid her adieu, the venal fair:
  Unworthy she your bliss to prove;
  Then wherefore should she prove your care?
  No: lay your myrtle garland down;
  And let a while the willow’s crown
  With luckier omens bind your hair.

8 O just escaped the faithless main,
  Though driven unwilling on the land;
  To guide your favour’d steps again,
  Behold your better Genius stand:
  Where Truth revolves her page divine,
  Where Virtue leads to Honour’s shrine,
  Behold, he lifts his awful hand.

9 Fix but on these your ruling aim,
  And Time, the sire of manly care,
  Will fancy’s dazzling colours tame;
  A soberer dress will beauty wear:
  Then shall esteem, by knowledge led,
  Enthrone within your heart and head
  Some happier love, some truer fair.

Ode IV

Affected Indifference. To the Same

1 Yes: you contemn the perjured maid
    Who all your favourite hopes betray’d:
    Nor, though her heart should home return,
    Her tuneful tongue its falsehood mourn,
    Her winning eyes your faith implore,
    Would you her hand receive again,
    Or once dissemble your disdain,
    Or listen to the siren’s theme,
    Or stoop to love: since now esteem
  And confidence, and friendship, is no more.

2 Yet tell me, Phaedria, tell me why,
    When, summoning your pride, you try
    To meet her looks with cool neglect,
    Or cross her walk with slight respect
    (For so is falsehood best repaid),
    Whence do your cheeks indignant glow?
    Why is your struggling tongue so slow?
    What means that darkness on your brow,
    As if with all her broken vow
  You meant the fair apostate to upbraid?

Ode V

Against Suspicion

1 Oh, fly! ’tis dire Suspicion’s mien;
    And, meditating plagues unseen,
        The sorceress hither bends:
    Behold her touch in gall imbrued:
    Behold—her garment drops with blood
        Of lovers and of friends.

2 Fly far! Already in your eyes
    I see a pale suffusion rise;
        And soon through every vein,
    Soon will her secret venom spread,
    And all your heart and all your head
        Imbibe the potent stain.

3 Then many a demon will she raise
    To vex your sleep, to haunt your ways;
        While gleams of lost delight
    Raise the dark tempest of the brain,
    As lightning shines across the main
        Through whirlwinds and through night.

4 No more can faith or candour move;
    But each ingenuous deed of love,
        Which reason would applaud,
    Now, smiling o’er her dark distress,
    Fancy malignant strives to dress
        Like injury and fraud.

5 Farewell to virtue’s peaceful times:
    Soon will you stoop to act the crimes
        Which thus you stoop to fear:
    Guilt follows guilt; and where the train
    Begins with wrongs of such attain,
        What horrors form the rear!

6 ’Tis thus to work her baleful power,
    Suspicion waits the sullen hour
        Of fretfulness and strife,
    When care the infirmer bosom wrings,
    Or Eurus waves his murky wings
        To damp the seats of life.

7 But come, forsake the scene unbless’d,
    Which first beheld your faithful breast
        To groundless fears a prey:
    Come where, with my prevailing lyre,
    The skies, the streams, the groves conspire
        To charm your doubts away.

8 Throned in the sun’s descending car,
    What power unseen diffuseth far
        This tenderness of mind?
    What Genius smiles on yonder flood?
    What God, in whispers from the wood,
        Bids every thought be kind?

9 O Thou, whate’er thy awful name,
    Whose wisdom our untoward frame
        With social love restrains;
    Thou, who by fair affection’s ties
    Giv’st us to double all our joys,
        And half disarm our pains;

10 If far from Dyson and from me
     Suspicion took, by thy decree,
         Her everlasting flight;
     If firm on virtue’s ample base
     Thy parent hand has deign’d to raise
         Our friendship’s honour’d height;

11 Let universal candour still,
     Clear as yon heaven-reflecting rill,
         Preserve my open mind;
     Nor this nor that man’s crooked ways
     One sordid doubt within me raise
         To injure human kind.

Notes

¹ This the Athenians did in a peculiar manner, by the words [Greek: kalokagathus] and [Greek: kalokagathia].

² Truth is here taken, not in a logical, but in a mixed and popular sense, or for what has been called the truth of things; denoting as well their natural and regular condition, as a proper estimate or judgment concerning them.

³ ‘Dyson:’ see Life.

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