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Attention, habit and experience gains;

Each strengthens Reason, and Self-love restrains.
Let subtle school-men teach their friends to fight,
More studious to divide than to unite;

And Grace and Virtue, Sense and Reason split,
With all the rash dexterity of wit.

Wits, just like fools, at war about a name,
Have full as oft no meaning, or the same.
Self-love and Reason to one end aspire,
Pain their aversion, Pleasure their desire;
But greedy That, its object would devour,
This taste the honey, and not wound the flow'r:
Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.

On the PASSIONS.

(POPE.)

:

MODES of Self-love the Passions we may call
'Tis real good, or seeming, moves them all;
But since not ev'ry good we can divide,
And Reason bids us for our own provide:
Passions, tho' selfish, if their means be fair,
List under Reason, and deserve her care;
Those that, imparted, court a nobler aim,
Exalt their kind, and take some Virtue's name.
In lazy Apathy let Stoics boast

Their Virtue fix'd; 'tis fix'd as in a frost ;
Contracted all, retiring to the breast;
But strength of mind is Exercise, not Rest :
The rising tempest puts in act the soul,
Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole.
On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,

Reason the card, but Passion is the gale;

Nor God alone in the still calm we find,

He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind.
Passions, like elements, tho' born to fight,
Yet, mix'd and soften'd, in his work unite:
These 'tis enough to temper and employ;
But what composes Man, can Man destroy?
Suffice that Reason keep to Nature's road,
Subject, compound them, follow her and God.
Love, Hope, and Joy, fair Pleasure's smiling train,
Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain;

These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind:
The lights and shades whose well-accorded strife
Gives all the strength and colour of our life.
Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes;
And, when in act they cease, in prospect rise:
Present to grasp, and future still to find,
The whole employ of body and of mind.
All spread their charms, but charm not all alike;
On diff'rent senses, diff'rent objects strike;
Hence diff'rent passions more or less inflame,
As strong or weak the organs of the frame;
And hence one MASTER-PASSION in the breast,
Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.
As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath,
Receives the lurking principle of death;

The young disease, that must subdue at length,

Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength: So, cast and mingled with his very frame,

The mind's disease, its RULING PASSION came;

Each vital humour, which should feed the whole,
Soon flows to this in body and in soul :
Whatever warms the heart, or fills the head,
As the mind opens, and its functions spread,
Imagination plies her dang'rous art,
And pours it all upon the peccant part.
Nature its mother, Habit is its nurse;
Wit, Spirit, Faculties, but make it worse;
Reason itself but gives it edge and pow'r;
As Heaven's blest beam turns vinegar more sour.
We, wretched subjects tho' to lawful sway,
In this weak queen, some fav'rite still obey:
Ah! if she lends not arms, as well as rules,
What can she more than tell us we are fools?
Teach us to mourn our nature, not to mend,
A sharp accuser, but a helpless friend!
Or from a judge turn pleader, to persuade
The choice we make, or justify it made;
roud of an easy conquest all along,,

he but removes weak passions for the strong:
o, when small humours gather to a gout,
The doctor fancies he has driv'n them out.
Yes, Nature's road must ever be preferr'd;
eason is here no guide, but still a guard;

'Tis hers to rectify, not overthrow,

And treat this passion more as friend than foe:
A mightier pow'r the strong direction sends,
And sev tal men impels to sev'ral ends :
Like varying winds, by other passions tost,
This drives them constant to a certain coast.
Let pow'r or knowledge, gold or glory, please,
Or (oft more strong than all) the love of ease:
Thro' life 'tis follow'd, ev'n at life's expence ;
The merchant's toil, the sage's indolence,
The monk's humility, the hero's pride,
All, all alike, find Reason on their side.
Th' eternal art, educing good from ill,
Grafts on this passion our best principle:
'Tis thus the mercury of man is fix'd,
Strong grows the virtue with his nature mix'd;
The dross cements what else were too refin'd,
And in one int'rest body acts with mind.

As fruits, ungrateful to the planter's care,
On foreign stocks inserted, learn to bear :
The surest virtues thus from passions shoot,
Wild Nature's vigour working at the root.
What crops of wit and honesty appear
From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear!
See anger, zeal and fortitude supply;
Ev'n av'rice, prudence; sloth, philosophy;
Lust, through some certain strainers well refin'd,
Is gentle love, and charms all womankind;
Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave,
Is emulation in the learn'd or brave;
Nor virtue, male or female, can we name,
But what will grow on pride, or grow on shame.
Thus Nature gives us (let it check our pride)
The virtue nearest to our vice ally'd :
Reason the bias turns to good from ill,
And Nero reigns a Titus, if he will.
The fiery soul, abhorr'd in Catiline,
In Decius charms, in Curtius is divine:
The same ambition can destroy or save,
And makes a patriot as it makes a knave.

This light and darkness, in our chaos join'd,
What shall divide? The God within the mind..
Extremes in Nature equal ends produce,
In men they join to some mysterious use;

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Tho' each by turns the other's bounds invade,
As, in some well-wrought picture, light and shade,
And oft so mix, the diff'rence is too nice
Where ends the Virtue, or begins the Vice.
Fools! who from hence into the notion fall,
That Vice or Virtue there is none at all.
If white and black blend, soften, and unite
A thousand ways, is there no black or white?
Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain;
'Tis to mistake them costs the time and pain.
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

But where th' extreme of vice, was ne'er agreed:
Ask where's the North? at York, 'tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland at the Orcades; and there

At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where.
No creature owns it in the first degree,

But thinks his neighbour further gone than he;
Ev'n those, who dwell beneath its very zone,
Or never feel the rage, or never own;
What happier natures shrink at with affright,
The hard inhabitant contends is right.

Virtuous and vicious, ev'ry man must be,
Few in th' extreme, but all in the degree;
The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise:
And ev'n the best, by fits, what they despise.
'Tis but by parts we follow good or ill;
For, vice or virtue, self directs it still;
Each individual seeks a sev'ral goal;

But HEAVEN'S great view is one, and that the whole;
That counter-works each folly and caprice;
That disappoints th' effect of ev'ry vice;
That happy frailties to all ranks apply'd;
Shame to the virgin, to the matron pride;
Fear to the statesman, rashness to the chief,
To kings presumption, and to crowds belief;
That Virtue's ends from Vanity can raise,
Which seeks no int'rest, no reward but praise;
And build on wants. and on defects of mind,.
The joy, the peace, the glory of mankind.
Heav'n forming each on other to depend,
A master, or a servant, or a friend,

102

Bids each on other for assistance call,

"Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all,
Wants, frailties, passions, closer, still ally
The common int'rest, or endear the tie.
To these we owe true friendship, love sincere,
Each home-felt joy that life inherits here:
Yet from the same we learn, in its decline,
Those joys, those loves, those int'rests to resign;
Taught half by reason, half by mere decay,
To welcome death, and calmly pass away.
Whate'er the passion, knowledge, fame, or pelf
Not one will change his neighbour with himself.
The learn'd is happy nature to explore,
The fool is happy that he knows no more;
The rich is happy in the plenty giv'n,

The poor contents him with the care of Heav'n.
See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing,
The sot a hero, lunatic a king;

The starving chemist in his golden views
Supremely blest, the poet in his muse.

age:

See some strange comfort ev'ry state attend,
And pride bestow'd on all, a common friend
See some fit passion ev'ry age supply,
Hope travels thro', nor quits us when we die.
Behold the child, by nature's kindly law,
Pleas'd with a rattle, tickled with a straw:
Some livelier play-thing gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite:
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,
And beads and prayer-books are the toys of
Pleas'd with this bauble still, as that before;
'Till tir'd he sleeps, and Life's poor play is o'er.
Meanwhile Opinion gilds with varying rays
Those painted clouds that beautify our days;
Each want of happiness by Hope supply'd,
And each vacuity of sense by pride:
These build as fast as knowledge can destroy;
In Folly's cup still laughs the bubble, Joy;
One prospect lost, another still we gain;
And not a vanity is given in vain;

Ev'n mean Self-love becomes, by force divine,
The scale to measure others' wants by thine.
See! and confess, one comfort still must rise;
'Tis this, Tho' Man's a fool, yet GOD IS WISE.

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