While with thy heavenly form he feeds his Our joyous streets with crowds of frolic youth; And with fresh songs the umbrageous groves resound.

Could, with their sound, and terrible array,
Expel our fears, and drive the thought of death
away.

But since the supposition vain appears,
Since clinging cares, and trains of inbred fears,
Are not with sounds to be affrighted thence,
But in the midst of pomp pursues the prince;
Not aw'd by arms, but in the presence bold,
Without respect to purple or to gold;

When heaven and earth were in confusion hurl'd
For the debated empire of the world,
Which awed with dreadful expectation lay,
Soon to be slaves, uncertain who should sway:
So, when our mortal frame shall be disjoin`d,
The lifeless lump uncoupled from the mind,
From sense of grief and pain we shall be free;
We shall not feel, because we shall not be.
Though earth in seas, and seas in heaven were
lost,

Why should not we those pageantries despise,
Whose worth but in our want of reason lies?
For life is all in wandering errors led;
And just as children are surpris'd with dread,
And tremble in the dark, so riper years,
E'en in broad daylight, are possess'd with fears,
And shake at shadows fanciful and vain,
As those that in the breasts of children reign.
These bugbears of the mind, this inward hell,
No rays of outward sunshine can dispel;
But nature and right reason must display
Their beams abroad, and bring the gladsome soul The new-made man would be another thing.

We should not move, we only should be toss'd.
Nay, e'en suppose when we have suffered fate
The soul should feel in her divided state,
What's that to us? for we are only we,
While souls and bodies in our frame agree.
Nay, though our atoms should revolve by chance,
And matter leap into the former dance;
Though time our life and motion could restore,
And make our bodies what they were before,
What gain to us would all this bustle bring?

to day.

ANIMALS AND THEIR YOUNG.

THE race of man, the beasts that graze, or prey,
The speechless natives of the watery way,
Birds of all wing, or those that joy to rove
In still recesses of th' embowering grove,
Or on the grassy bank their pastime take;
That sip the fountain, or that skim the lake;
Not one of all the myriad broods you find,
But some distinction marks him from his kind.
Else, could the young with conscious rapture go
To greet its dam? or she her nursling know?
But they no less the lines distinctive scan,
Than reas'ning optics man discern from man.
When, in the fane, the victim-calf expires,
While clouds of fragrance roll from hallow'd
fires;

When purple currents, warm with floating life,
Pours by the shrine the sacrificial knife,
Through the green lawns the pensive mother
strays;

Her anxious search the frequent step bewrays:
Each plain she traverses, each haunt she tries,
And turns, and wistful turns, her straining eyes:
Now stops, and tells in moans her ravish'd love
To listening echoes of the umbrageous grove:
Oft at the stall, in anguish and despair,
Her darling seeks; but finds no darling there.
The tender shrubs no more with joy she views:
No herbs, sweet glistering with refreshing dews,
Can soothe the ranklings of Affliction's dart,
Plung'd to the last recesses of her heart.
Of other young no semblance gives relief;
No love transferr'd can mitigate her grief.

When once an interrupting pause is made,
That individual being is decay'd.

We, who are dead and gone, shall bear no part
In all the pleasures, nor shall feel the smart,
Which to that other mortal shall accrue,
Whom to our matter time shall mould anew.
For backward if you look on that long space
Of ages past, and view the changing face
Of matter, toss'd and variously combin'd
In sundry shapes, 'tis easy for the mind
From thence to infer, that seeds of things have
been

In the same order as they now are seen:
Which yet our dark remembrance cannot trace,
Because a pause of life, a gaping space,
Has come betwixt, where memory lies dead,
And all the wandering motions from the sense
are fled.

For whosoe'er shall in misfortunes live,
Must be, when those misfortunes shall arrive;
And since the man who is not, feels not woe,
(For death exempts him, and wards off the blow,
Which we, the living, only feel and bear,)
What is there left for us in death to fear?
When once that pause of life has come between,
'Tis just the same as we had never been.
And, therefore, if a man bemoan his lot,
That, after death, his mouldering limbs shall rot,
Or flames, or jaws of beasts devour his mass,
Know, he's an insincere, unthinking ass.
A secret sting remains within his mind;
The fool is to his own cast offals kind.
He boasts no sense can after death remain,
Yet makes himself a part of life again;
As if some other He could feel the pain.

See through gay meads the wretched wanderer go, If, while we live, this thought molest his head, A pensive form of unavailing woe!

Book III.

AGAINST THE FEAR OF DEATH.

WHAT has this bugbear Death to frighten man,
If souls can die, as well as bodies can?
For, as before our birth we felt no pain,
When Punic arms infested land and main,

What wolf or vulture shall devour me dead?
He wastes his days in idle grief, nor can
Distinguish 'twixt the body and the man;
But thinks himself can still himself survive,
And what when dead he feels not, feels alive.
Then he repines that he was born to die,
Nor knows in death there is no other He,
No living He remains his grief to vent,
And o'er his senseless carcase to lament.

All things, like thee, have time to rise and rot,
And from each other's ruin are begot:
For life is not confin'd to him or thee;
'Tis given to all for use, to none for property.

Which once the pause of life has left an empty Consider former ages past and gone,

And last, suppose great Nature's voice should call Then tell me, fool, what part in them thou To thee, or me, or any of us all;

"What dost thou mean, ungrateful wretch, thou Thus may'st thou judge the future by the past. vain,

No ghost, no goblins, that still presage keep,
But all is there serene in that eternal sleep.
For all the dismal tales that poets tell,
Are verified on earth, and not in hell.
No Tantalus looks up with fearful eye,

So many monarchs with their mighty state,
Who rul'd the world, were overrul'd by fate,
That mighty king, who lorded o'er the main,
And whose stupendous bridge did the wild
waves restrain,

Or dreads the impending rock to crush him from Him death, a greater monarch overcame;

on high:

But fear of chance disturbs our easy hours,

Or vain imagin'd wrath of vain imagin'd pow

ers,

No Tityus torn by vultures lies in hell;
Nor could the lobes of his rank liver swell
To that prodigious mass, for their eternal meal;
Not though his monstrous bulk had cover'd o'er
Nine spreading acres, or nine thousand more;
Not though the globe of earth had been the giant's
floor.

Nor in eternal torments could he lie;
Nor could his corpse sufficient food supply.
But he's the Tityus, who by love opprest,
Or tyrant passion preying on his breast,
And ever-anxious thoughts, is robb'd of rest.
The Sisyphus is he, whom noise and strife
Seduce from all the soft retreats of life,
To vex the government, disturb the laws:
Drunk with the fumes of popular applause,
He courts the giddy crowd to make him great,
And sweats and toils in vain, to mount the so-
vereign seat.

For still to aim at power, and still to fail,
Ever to strive, and never to prevail,
What is it, but, in reason's true account,
To heave the stone against the rising mount?
Which urg'd, and labour'd, and forc'd up with
pain,

Nor spar'd his guards the more, for their immor-
tal name.

The Roman chief, the Carthagenian dread,
Scipio, the thunderbolt of war, is dead,
And, like a common slave, by fate in triumph

led.

The founders of invented arts are lost;
And wits who made eternity their boast.
Where now is Homer, who possessed the throne?
The immortal work remains, the immortal au-
thor's gone.

Democritus, perceiving age invade,

His body weaken'd, and his mind decay'd,
Obey'd the summons with a cheerful face;
Made haste to welcome death, and met him half
the race.

That stroke e'en Epicurus could not bar,
Though he in wit surpass'd mankind, as far
As does the midday sun the midnight star.
And thou, dost thou disdain to yield thy breath,
Whose very life is little more than death?
More than one-half by lazy sleep possess'd,
And when awake thy soul but nods at best,
Day-dreams and sickly thoughts revolving in thy
breast.

Eternal troubles haunt thy anxious mind,
Whose cause and cure thou never hop'st to find;
But still uncertain, with thyself at strife,
Thou wanderest in the labyrinth of life.

Recoils, and rolls impetuous down, and smokes O, if the foolish race of man, who find

And which their cheated labour ne'er could fill. But straight returns; for he's as restless there,

As for the dog, the furies, and the snakes,
The gloomy caverns, and the burning lakes,
And all the vain infernal trumpery,
They neither are, nor were, nor e'er can be.
But here on earth the guilty have in view
The mighty pains to mighty mischiefs due;
Racks, prisons, poisons, the Tarpeian rock,
Stripes, hangmen, pitch, and suffocating smoke;
And last, and most, if these were cast behind,
The avenging horror of a conscious mind,
Whose deadly fear anticipates the blow,
And sees no end of punishment and woe;
But looks for more, at the last grasp of breath:
This makes a hell on earth, and life a death.
Meantime, when thoughts of death disturb thy
head,

Consider, Ancus, great and good, is dead;
Ancus, thy better far, was born to die;

And thou, dost thou bewail mortality?

And finds there's no relief in open air.
Another to his villa would retire,

And spurs as hard as if it were on fire;

No sooner enter'd at his country door,
Than he begins to stretch, and yawn, and snore;
Or seeks the city which he left before.
Thus every man o'erworks his weary will,
To shun himself, and to shake off his ill;
The shaking fit returns, and hangs upon him still.
No prospect of repose, or hope of ease;
The wretch is ignorant of his disease;
Which known would all his fruitless trouble

spare;

For he would know the world not worth his

care.

Then would he search more deeply for the cause,
And study Nature's will, and Nature's laws:
For in this moment lies not the debate,
But on our future, fix'd, eternal state;

That never-changing state, which all must keep, | And costliest viands, garlands, odours, wines,
Whom death has doom'd to everlasting sleep.
Why are we, then, so fond of mortal life,
Beset with dangers and maintained with strife?
A life, which all our care can never save:
One fate attends us, and one common grave.
Besides, we tread but a perpetual round
We ne'er strike out, but beat the former ground,
And the same mawkish joys in the same track
are found.

For still we think our absent blessing best,
Which clogs, and is no blessing when possest;
A new arising wish expels it from the breast.
The feverish thirst of life increases still;

We call for more and more, and never have our
fill;

Yet know not what to-morrow we shall try,
What dregs of life in the last draught may lie:
Nor by the longest life we can attain,
One moment from the length of death we gain;
For all behind belongs to his eternal reign.
When once the Fates have cut the mortal thread,
The man as much to all intents is dead,
Who dies to-day, and will as long be so,
As he who died a thousand years ago.

Book IV.

RUSTIC DEITIES AND SUPERSTITIONS.

HERE haunt the goat-foot Satyrs, and the Nymphs,
As rustics tell, and Fauns, whose frolic dance
And midnight revels oft, they say, are heard
Breaking the noiseless silence; while soft strains
Melodious issue, and the vocal band
Strike to their madrigals the plaintive lyre.
Such, feign they, sees the shepherd, obvious oft,
Led on by PAN, with pine-leav'd garland crown'd,
And seven-mouth'd reed, his labouring lip be-
neath,

Waking the woodland MUSE with ceaseless song.
These, and a thousand legends wilder still,
Recount they; haply lest their desert homes
Seem of the gods abandon'd, boastful hence
Of sights prodigious; or by cause, perchance,
More trivial urg'd, for ne'er was tale so wild,
Feign'd, but the crowd would drink with greedy

ears.

FRUITS OF ILLICIT LOVE.

THEN, too, his form consumes, the cares of love
Waste all his vigour, and his days roll on
In vilest bondage. Amply though endow'd,
His wealth decays, his debts with speed augment,
The post of duty never fills he more,
And all his sick'ning reputation dies.
Meanwhile rich unguents from his mistress laugh;
Laugh from her feet soft Sicyon's shoes superb:
The green-ray'd emerald o'er her, dropp'd in gold,
Gleams large and numerous; and the sea-blue
silk,

Deep-worn, enclasps her, with the moisture drunk
Of constant revels. All his sires amass'd
Now flaunts in ribands, in tiaras flames
Full o'er her front, and now to robes eonverts
Of Chian loose, or Alidonian mould:
While feasts, and festivals of boundless pomp,

And scatter'd roses ceaseless are renew'd.
But fruitless every act: some bitter still
Wells forth perpetual from his fount of bliss,
And poisons every flowret. Keen remorse
Goads him, perchance, for dissipated time,
And months on months destroy'd; or from the fair
Haply some phrase of doubtful import darts,
That, like a living coal, his heart corrodes:
Or oft her eyes wide wander, as he deems,
And seek some happier rival, while the smile
Of smother'd love half dimples o'er her cheeks.

Book V.

THE NEW-BORN BABE.

THUS, like a sailor by a tempest hurl'd
Ashore, the babe is shipwreck'd on the world:
Naked he lies, and ready to expire;
Helpless of all that human wants require;
Expos'd upon inhospitable earth,
From the first moment of his hapless birth.
Straight with foreboding cries he fills the room;
Too true a presage of his future doom.

But flocks and herds, and every savage beast,

By more indulgent Nature are increas'd:
They want no rattles for their froward mood,
Nor nurse to reconcile them to their food
With broken words; nor winter blasts they fear,
Nor change their habits with the changing year;
Nor, for their safety, citadels prepare,
Nor forge the wicked instruments of war:
Unlabour'd Earth her bounteous treasure grants,
And Nature's lavish hand supplies their common

wants.

PRIMEVAL LIFE AND MANNERS.

YET man's first sons, as o'er the fields they trod,
Rear'd from the hardy earth, were hardier far;
Strong built, with ampler bones, with muscles
nerv'd

Broad and substantial; to the power of heat,
Of cold, of varying viands, and disease,
Each hour superior; the wild lives of beasts
Leading, while many a lustre o'er them roll'd.
Nor crooked ploughshare knew they, nor to drive,
Deep through the soil, the rich-returning spade;
Nor how the tender seedling to replant,

Nor from the fruit-tree prune the wither'd branch.
What showers bestow'd, what earth spontaneous

bore,

And suns matur'd, their craving breasts appeas J.
But acorn-meals chief cull'd they from the shade
Of forest-oaks; and, in their wintry months,
The wild wood-whortle with its purple fruit
Fed them, then larger and more amply pour'd.
And many a boon besides, now long extinct,
The fresh-form'd earth her hapless offspring dealt.
Then floods, and fountains, too, their thirst to
slake,

Call'd them, as now the cataract abrupt
Calls, when athirst, the desert's savage tribes
And, through the night still wand'ring, they the

caves

Throng'd of the wood-nymphs, whence the bab bling well