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With aspect mild, and elevated eye,
Behold him seated on a mount serene,

Above the fogs of sense, and passion's storm;
All the black cares and tumults of this life,
Like harmless thunders breaking at his feet,
Excite his pity, not impair his peace.

Earth's genuine sons, the scepter'd and the slave,
A mingled mob! a wandering herd! he sees
Bewilder'd in the vale; in all unlike!

His full reverse in all! what higher praise?
What stronger demonstration of the right?

The present all their care, the future his.
When public welfare calls, or private want,
They give to fame, his bounty he conceals.
Their virtues varnish nature, his exalt.
Mankind's esteem they court, and he his own.
Theirs, the wild chase of false felicities,
His, the compos'd possession of the true.
Alike throughout is his consistent peace,
All of one colour, and an even thread;
While party-colour'd shreds of happiness,
With hideous gaps between, patch up for them
A madman's robe; each puff of fortune blows
The tatters by, and shews their nakedness.

He sees with other eyes than theirs: where they Behold a sun, he spies a Deity;

What makes them only smile, makes him adore.
Where they see mountains, he but atoms sees;
An empire in his balance weighs a grain.
They things terrestrial worship as divine;

His hopes immortal blow them by as dust,
That dims his sight, and shortens his survey,
Which longs in infinite to lose all bound.
Titles and honours (if they prove his fate)
He lays aside to find his dignity;
No dignity they find in aught besides.
They triumph in externals, (which conceal
Man's real glory) proud of an eclipse.
Himself too much he prizes to be proud,
And nothing thinks so great in man as man.
Too dear he holds his interest, to neglect
Another's welfare, or his right invade ;
Their interest, like a lion, lives on prey.
They kindle at the shadow of a wrong;
Wrong he sustains with temper, looks on heaven,
Nor stoops to think his injurer his foe;
Nought but what wounds his virtue wounds his peace.
A cover'd heart their character defends;
A cover'd heart denies him half his praise.
With nakedness his innocence agrees;
While their broad foliage testifies their fall.
Their no joys end, where his full feast begins:
His joys create, theirs murder, future bliss.
To triumph in existence, his alone;
And his alone, triumphantly to think
His true existence is not yet begun.

His glorious course was, yesterday, complete;
Death, then, was welcome; yet life still is sweet.

From his Satires.

THE LOVE OF PRAISE.

FROM SATIRE I.

WHAT will not men attempt for sacred praise?
The love of praise, howe'er conceal'd by art,
Reigns, more or less, and glows, in every heart:
The proud, to gain it, toils on toils endure;
:The modest shun it, but to make it sure.
O'er globes, and sceptres, now on thrones it swells;
Now trims the midnight lamp in college cells:
'Tis Tory, Whig; it plots, prays, preaches, pleads,
Harangues in senates, squeaks in masquerades.
Here, to Steele's humour makes a bold pretence;
There, bolder, aims at Pulteney's eloquence.
It aids the dancer's heel, the writer's head,
And heaps the plain with mountains of the dead;
Nor ends with life; but nods in sable plumes,
Adorns our herse, and flatters on our tombs.

PROPENSITY OF MAN TO FALSE AND FANTASTIC JOYS.

FROM SATIRE V.

MAN's rich with little, were his judgment true;

Nature is frugal, and her wants are few;
Those few wants answer'd, bring sincere delights;

But fools create themselves new appetites:
Fancy and pride seek things at vast expense,

Which relish not to reason, nor to sense.

When surfeit, or unthankfulness, destroys,
In nature's narrow sphere, our solid joys,
In fancy's airy land of noise and show,

Where nought but dreams, no real pleasures grow;
Like cats in air-pumps, to subsist we strive

On joys too thin to keep the soul alive.

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* Such blessings nature pours, O'erstock'd mankind enjoy but half her stores: In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen,

She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green:
Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace,
And waste their music on the savage race.
Is nature then a niggard of her bliss?
Repine we guiltless in a world like this?
But our lewd tastes her lawful charms refuse,
And painted art's deprav'd allurements choose.

CHARACTERS OF WOMEN-THE WEDDED WIT.

FROM THE SAME.

NOUGHT but a genius can a genius fit;

A wit herself, Amelia weds a wit:

Both wits! though miracles are said to cease,

Three days, three wondrous days! they liv'd in

peace;

With the fourth sun a warm dispute arose,

On Durfey's poesy, and Bunyan's prose:
The learned war both wage with equal force,
And the fifth morn concluded the divorce.

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THE ASTRONOMICAL LADY.

FROM THE SAME.

SOME nymphs prefer astronomy to love;
Elope from mortal man, and range above.
The fair philosopher to Rowley flies,
Where in a box the whole creation lies:
She sees the planets in their turns advance,
And scorns, Poitier, thy sublunary dance:
Of Desaguliers she bespeaks fresh air;
And Whiston has engagements with the fair.
What vain experiments Sophronia tries!
'Tis not in air-pumps the gay colonel dies.
But though to-day this rage of science reigns,
(O fickle sex!) soon end her learned pains.
Lo! Pug from Jupiter her heart has got,
Turns out the stars, and Newton is a sot.

THE LANGUID LADY.

FROM THE SAME.

THE languid lady next appears in state,
Who was not born to carry her own weight;
She lolls, reels, staggers, till some foreign aid
To her own stature lifts the feeble maid.
Then, if ordain'd to so severe a doom,
She, by just stages, journeys round the room:
But, knowing her own weakness, she despairs
To scale the Alps-that is, ascend the stairs,

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