Why to be good in vain is man betray'd?
Betray'd by traitors lodg'd in his own breast,
By sweet complacencies from virtue felt?
Why whispers Nature lies on Virtue's part;
Or if blind Instinct (which assumes the name
Of sacred Conscience) plays the fool in man,
Why Reason made accomplice in the cheat?
Why are the wisest loudest in her praise?
Can man by reason's beam be led astray?
Or, at his peril, imitate his God?

Since virtue sometimes ruins us on earth,
Or both are true, or man survives the grave.
Or man survives the grave, or own, Lorenzo,
Thy boast supreme a wild absurdity.
Dauntless thy spirit, cowards are thy scorn.
Grant man immortal, and thy scorn is just.
The man immortal, rationally brave,
Dares rush on death-because he cannot die :
But if man loses all when life is lost,
He lives a coward, or a fool expires.
A daring infidel, (and such there are,
From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge,
Or pure heroical defect of thought)

Of all earth's madmen most deserves a chain.
When to the grave we follow the renown'd

For valour, virtue, science, all we love,

And all we praise; for worth whose noontide beam,

Enabling us to think in higher style,

Mends our ideas of ethereal pow'rs,

Dream we that lustre of the moral world
Goes out in stench, and rottenness the close?
Why was he wise to know, and warm to praise,
And strenuous to transcribe, in human life,
The Mind Almighty? Could it be that Fate,
Just when the lineaments began to shine,
And dawn the Deity, should snatch the draught,
With night eternal blot it out, and give
The skies alarm, lest ange's too might die?
If human souls, why not angelic too,
Extinguish'd, and a solitary God,

O'er ghastly ruin, frowning from his throne?
Shall we this moment gaze on God in man,
The next lose man for ever in the dust?
From dust we disengage, or man mistakes,
And there, where least his judgment fears a flaw,
Wisdom and worth how boldly he commends!
Wisdom and worth are sacred names; rever'd
Where not embrac'd; applauded! deify'd!
Why not compassion'd too? If spirits die,
Both are calamities, inflicted both

To make us but more wretched. Wisdom's eye
Acute, for what? to spy more miseries;

And worth so recompens'd, new points their stings..

Or man surmounts the grave, or gain is loss,
And worth exalted humbles us the more.

Thou wilt not patronize a scheme that makes
Weakness and vice the refuge of mankind.
"Has virtue then no joys?"-Yes, joys dear bought,
Talk ne'er so long, in this imperfect state
Virtue and vice are at eternal war.
Virtue's a combat; and who fights for nought,
Or for precarious, or for small reward?
Who virtue's self-reward so loud resound,
Would take degrees angelic here below,
And virtue, while they compliment, betray,
By feeble motives and unfaithful guards.
The crown, th' unfading crown, her soul inspires:
'Tis that, and that alone, can countervail
The body's treach'ries and the worlds assaults.
On earth's poor pay our famish'd virtue dies:
Truth incontestable! in spite of all

A Bayle has preach'd, or a Voltaire believ'd.
In man the more we dive, the more we see
Heav'n's signet stamping an immortal make.
Dive to the bottom of his soul, the base
Sustaining all, what find we? knowledge, love.
As light and heat, essential to the sun,
These to the soul: and why, if souls expire?

How little lovely here? how little known?
Small knowledge we dig up with endless toil,
And love unfeign'd may purchase perfect hate.
Why starv'd, on earth, our angel appetites,
While brutal are indulg'd their fulsome fill?
Were then capacities divine conferr'd,
As a mock-diadem, in savage sport,
Rank insult of our pompous poverty,

Which reaps but pain from seeming claims so fair?
In future age lies no redress? and shuts
Eternity the door on our complaint?

If so, for what strange ends were mortals made!
The worst to wallow, and the best to weep;
The man who merits most must most complain :
Can we conceive a disregard in Heav'n,
What the worst perpetrate, or best endure?

This cannot be. To love and know, in man
Is boundless appetite, and boundless pow'r;
And these demonstrate boundless objects too.
Objects, pow'rs, appetites, Heaven suits in all,
Nor, Nature through, e'er violates this sweet
Eternal concord on her tuneful string.
Is man the sole exception from her laws?
Eternity struck off from human hope,
(I speak with truth, but veneration too)
Man is a monster, the reproach of Heav'n,

A stain, a dark impenetrable cloud
On Nature's beauteous aspect, and deforms
(Amazing blot!) deforms her with her lord.
If such is man's allotment, what is heav'n?
Or own the soul immortal, or blaspheme.
Or own the soul immortal, or invert
All order. Go, mock majesty! go, man!
And bow to thy superiors of the stall,
Thro' ev'ry scene of sense superior far:

They graze the turf untill'd; they drink the stream
Unbrew'd, and ever full, and unimbitter'd

With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despairs,
Mankind's peculiar! Reason's precious dower!
No foreign clime they ransack for their robes,
Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar;

Their good is good entire, unmix'd, unmarr'd;
They find a paradise in ev'ry field,

On boughs forbidden where no curses hang;
Their ill no more than strikes the sense, unstretch'd
By previous dread, or murmur in the rear:

When the worst comes, it comes unfear'd; one stroke
Begins and ends their woe: they die but once;
Bless'd, incommunicable privilege! for which
Proud man, who rules the globe, and reads the stars,
Philosopher or hero, sighs in vain.

Account for this prerogative in brutes.