An Essay on Man; Moral Essays and Satires

For Chartres’ head reserve the hanging wall? #130
   But still this world (so fitted for the knave)
Contents us not. A better shall we have?
A kingdom of the just then let it be:
But first consider how those just agree.
The good must merit God’s peculiar care: #135
But who, but God, can tell us who they are?
One thinks on Calvin Heaven’s own spirit fell;
Another deems him instrument of hell;
If Calvin feel Heaven’s blessing, or its rod.
This cries there is, and that, there is no God. #140
What shocks one part will edify the rest,
Nor with one system can they all be blest.
The very best will variously incline,
And what rewards your virtue, punish mine.
Whatever is, is right. This world, ’tis true, #145
Was made for Cæsar—but for Titus too:
And which more blest? who chained his country, say,
Or he whose virtue sighed to lose a day?
   “But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed.”
What then?  Is the reward of virtue bread? #150
That, vice may merit, ’tis the price of toil;
The knave deserves it, when he tills the soil,
The knave deserves it, when he tempts the main,
Where folly fights for kings, or dives for gain.
The good man may be weak, be indolent; #155
Nor is his claim to plenty, but content.
But grant him riches, your demand is o’er?
“No—shall the good want health, the good want power?”
Add health, and power, and every earthly thing,
“Why bounded power? why private? why no king?” #160
Nay, why external for internal given?
Why is not man a god, and earth a heaven?
Who ask and reason thus, will scarce conceive
God gives enough, while He has more to give:
Immense the power, immense were the demand; #165
Say, at what part of nature will they stand?
   What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,
The soul’s calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy,
Is virtue’s prize: A better would you fix?
Then give humility a coach and six, #170
Justice a conqueror’s sword, or truth a gown,
Or public spirit its great cure, a crown.
Weak, foolish man! will heaven reward us there
With the same trash mad mortals wish for here?
The boy and man an individual makes, #175
Yet sighest thou now for apples and for cakes?
Go, like the Indian, in another life
Expect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife:
As well as dream such trifles are assigned,
As toys and empires, for a God-like mind. #180
Rewards, that either would to virtue bring
No joy, or be destructive of the thing:
How oft by these at sixty are undone
The virtues of a saint at twenty-one!
To whom can riches give repute or trust, #185
Content, or pleasure, but the good and just?
Judges and senates have been bought for gold,
Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Oh, fool! to think God hates the worthy mind,
The lover and the love of human kind, #190
Whose life is healthful, and whose conscience clear,
Because he wants a thousand pounds a year.
   Honour and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.
Fortune in men has some small difference made, #195
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;
The cobbler aproned, and the parson gowned,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned,
“What differ more (you cry) than crown and cowl?”
I’ll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool. #200
You’ll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,
Worth makes the man, and want of it, the fellow;
The rest is all but leather or prunella.
   Stuck o’er with titles and hung round with strings, #205
That thou mayest be by kings, or wh***s of kings.
Boast the pure blood of an illustrious race,
In quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece;
But by your fathers’ worth if yours you rate,
Count me those only who were good and great. #210
Go! if your ancient, but ignoble blood
Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood,
Go! and pretend your family is young;
Nor own, your fathers have been fools so long.
What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards? #215
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.
   Look next on greatness; say where greatness lies?
“Where, but among the heroes and the wise?”
Heroes are much the same, the points agreed,
From Macedonia’s madman to the Swede; #220
The whole strange purpose of their lives, to find
Or make, an enemy of all mankind?
Not one looks backward, onward still he goes,
Yet ne’er looks forward farther than his nose.
No less alike the politic and wise; #225
All sly slow things, with circumspective eyes;
Men in their loose unguarded hours they take,
Not that themselves are wise, but others weak.
But grant that those can conquer, these can cheat;
’Tis phrase absurd to call a villain great: #230
Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave,
Is but the more a fool, the more a knave.
Who noble ends by noble means obtains,
Or failing, smiles in exile or in chains,
Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed #235
Like Socrates, that man is great indeed.
   What’s fame? a fancied life in others’ breath,
A thing beyond us, even before our death.
Just what you hear, you have, and what’s unknown
The same (my Lord) if Tully’s, or your own. #240
All that we feel of it begins and ends
In the small circle of our foes or friends;
To all beside as much an empty shade
An Eugene living, as a Cæsar dead;
Alike or when, or where, they shone, or shine, #245
Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine.
A wit’s a feather, and a chief a rod;
An honest man’s the noblest work of God.
Fame but from death a villain’s name can save,
As justice tears his body from the grave; #250
When what the oblivion better were resigned,
Is hung on high, to poison half mankind.
All fame is foreign, but of true desert;
Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart:
One self-approving hour whole years outweighs #255
Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas;
And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,
Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels.
   In parts superior what advantage lies?
Tell (for you can) what is it to be wise? #260
’Tis but to know how little can be known;
To see all others’ faults, and feel our own;
Condemned in business or in arts to drudge,
Without a second or without a judge;
Truths would you teach or save a sinking land, #265
All fear, none aid you, and few understand.
Painful pre-eminence! yourself to view
Above life’s weakness, and its comforts too.
   Bring, then, these blessings to a strict account;
Make fair deductions; see to what they mount; #270
How much of other each is sure to cost;
How each for other oft is wholly lost;
How inconsistent greater goods with these;
How sometimes life is risked, and always ease;
Think, and if still the things thy envy call, #275
Say, would’st thou be the man to whom they fall?
To sigh for ribands if thou art so silly,
Mark how they grace Lord Umbra, or Sir Billy:
Is yellow dirt the passion of thy life?
Look but on Gripus, or on Gripus’ wife; #280
If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined,
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind:
Or ravished with the whistling of a name,
See Cromwell; damned to everlasting fame!
If all, united, thy ambition call, #285
From ancient story learn to scorn them all.
There, in the rich, the honoured, famed, and great,
See the false scale of happiness complete!
In hearts of kings, or arms of queens who lay,
How happy! those to ruin, these betray. #290
Mark by what wretched steps their glory grows,
From dirt and seaweed as proud Venice rose;
In each how guilt and greatness equal ran,
And all that raised the hero, sunk the man:
Now Europe’s laurels on their brows behold, #295
But stained with blood, or ill exchanged for gold;
Then see them broke with toils or sunk with ease,
Or infamous for plundered provinces.
Oh, wealth ill-fated! which no act of fame
E’er taught to shine, or sanctified from shame; #300
What greater bliss attends their close of life?
Some greedy minion, or imperious wife.
The trophied arches, storeyed halls invade
And haunt their slumbers in the pompous shade.
Alas! not dazzled with their noontide ray, #305
Compute the morn and evening to the day;
The whole amount of that enormous fame,
A tale, that blends their glory with their shame;
   Know, then, this truth (enough for man to know)
“Virtue alone is happiness below.” #310
The only point where human bliss stands still,
And tastes the good without the fall to ill;
Where only merit constant pay receives,
Is blest in what it takes, and what it gives;
The joy unequalled, if its end it gain, #315
And if it lose, attended with no pain;
Without satiety, though e’er so blessed,
And but more relished as the more distressed:
The broadest mirth unfeeling folly wears,
Less pleasing far than virtue’s very tears: #320
Good, from each object, from each place acquired
For ever exercised, yet never tired;
Never elated, while one man’s oppressed;
Never dejected while another’s blessed;
And where no wants, no wishes can remain, #325
Since but to wish more virtue, is to gain.
   See the sole bliss Heaven could on all bestow!
Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know:
Yet poor with fortune, and with learning blind,
The bad must miss; the good, untaught, will find; #330
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God;
Pursues that chain which links the immense design,
Joins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine;
Sees, that no being any bliss can know, #335
But touches some above, and some below;
Learns, from this union of the rising whole,
The first, last purpose of the human soul;
And knows, where faith, law, morals, all began,
All end, in love of God, and love of man. #340
   For Him alone, hope leads from goal to goal,
And opens still, and opens on his soul!
Till lengthened on to faith, and unconfined,
It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind
He sees, why Nature plants in man alone #345
Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown:
(Nature, whose dictates to no other kind
Are given in vain, but what they seek they find)
Wise is her present; she connects in this
His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss; #350
At once his own bright prospect to be blest,
And strongest motive to assist the rest.
   Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine,
Gives thee to make thy neighbour’s blessing thine.
Is this too little for the boundless heart? #355
Extend it, let thy enemies have part:
Grasp the whole worlds of reason, life, and sense,
In one close system of benevolence:
Happier as kinder, in whate’er degree,
And height of bliss but height of charity. #360
   God loves from whole to parts: but human soul
Must rise from individual to the whole.
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake!
The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds, #365
Another still, and still another spreads;
Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace;
His country next; and next all human race;
Wide and more wide, the o’erflowings of the mind
Take every creature in, of every kind; #370
Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest,
And Heaven beholds its image in his breast.
   Come, then, my friend! my genius! come along;
Oh, master of the poet, and the song!
And while the muse now stoops, or now ascends, #375
To man’s low passions, or their glorious ends,
Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise,
To fall with dignity, with temper rise;
Formed by thy converse, happily to steer
From grave to gay, from lively to severe; #380
Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease,
Intent to reason, or polite to please.
Oh! while along the stream of time thy name
Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame,
Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, #385
Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale?
When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose,
Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes,
Shall then this verse to future age pretend
Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend? #390
That urged by thee, I turned the tuneful art
From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart;
From wit’s false mirror held up Nature’s light;
Showed erring pride, whatever is, is right;
That reason, passion, answer one great aim; #395
That true self-love and social are the same;
That virtue only makes our bliss below;
And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know.