There all alone, and compliments apart,
I ask these sober questions of my

heart:

If, when the more you drink the more you crave, You tell the doctor; when the more you have The more you want, why not, with equal ease, Confess as well your folly as disease? The heart resolves this matter in a trice, 'Men only feel the smart, but not the vice.' When golden angels cease to cure the evil, You give all royal witchcraft to the Devil : When servile chaplains cry, that birth and place Endue a peer with honour, truth, and grace, Look in that breast, most dirty dean! be fair, Say, can you find out one such lodger there? Yet still, not heeding what your heart can teach, You go to church to hear these flatterers preach. Indeed, could wealth bestow, or wit or merit, A grain of courage, or a spark of spirit, The wisest man might blush, I must agree, If D*** loved sixpence more than he.

If there be truth in law, and use can give A property, that's yours on which you live. Delightful Abs-court, if its fields afford Their fruits to you, confesses you its lord: All Worldly's hens, nay, partridge, sold to town, His venison too a guinea makes your own: He bought at thousands what with better wit You purchase as you want, and bit by bit: Now, or long since, what difference will be found? You pay a penny, and he paid a pound.

Heathcote himself, and such large acred men, Lords of fat E'sham, or of Lincoln Fen, Buy every stick of wood that lends them heat, Buy every pullet they afford to eat.

Yet these are wights who fondly call their own
Half that the Devil o'erlooks from Lincoln town.
The laws of God, as well as of the land,
Abhor a perpetuity should stand:

Estates have wings, and hang in Fortune's power,
Loose on the point of every wavering hour,
Ready by force, or of your own accord,

By sale, at least by death, to change their lord.
Man? and for ever? wretch! what wouldst thou
Heir urges heir, like wave impelling wave. [have?
All vast possessions (just the same the case
Whether you call them villa, park, or chase),
Alas, my Bathurst! what will they avail?
Join Cotswood bills to Saperton's fair dale;
Let rising granaries and temples here,
There mingled farms and pyramids, appear,
Link towns to towns with avenues of oak,
Enclose whole downs in walls; 'tis all a joke!
Inexorable Death shall level all,

And trees, and stones, and farms, and farmer, fall.
Gold, silver, ivory, vases sculptured high,
Paint, marble, gems, and robes of Persian dye,
There are who have not-and, thank Heaven!
there are

Who, if they have not, think not worth their care. Talk what you will oftaste, my friend! you'll find Two of a face as soon as of a mind.

Why of two brothers, rich and restless one Ploughs, burns, manures, and toils from sun to sun; The other slights, for women, sports, and wines, All Townshend's turnips, and all Grosvenor's mines:

Why one, like Bu**, with pay and scorn content, Bows and votes on in court and parliament;

One, driven by strong benevolence of soul,
Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole;
Is known alone to that directing Power
Who forms the genius in the natal hour:
That God of Nature, who, within us still,
Inclines our action, not constrains our will:
Various of temper, as of face or frame,
Each individual: His great end the same.
Yes, sir, how small soever be my heap,
A part I will enjoy as well as keep.
My heir may sigh, and think it want of grace
A man so poor would live without a place;
But sure no statute in his favour says

How free or frugal I shall pass my days;
I who at some times spend, at others spare,
Divided between carelessness and care.
'Tis one thing, madly to disperse my store;
Another, not to heed to treasure more;
Glad, like a boy, to snatch the first good day,
And pleased, if sordid want be far

away.

What is❜t to me (a passenger, God wot) Whether my vessel be first-rate or not? The ship itself may make a better figure, But I that sail, am neither less nor bigger. I neither strut with every favouring breath, Nor strive with all the tempest in my teeth: In power, wit, figure, virtue, fortune, placed Behind the foremost, and before the last.

But why all this of avarice? I have none.'

I wish you joy, sir, of a tyrant gone:
But does no other lord it at this hour,
As wild and mad? the avarice of power?
Does neither rage inflame, nor fear appal?
Not the black fear of death, that saddens all?

With terrors round, can Reason hold her throne,
Despise the known, nor tremble at the' unknown?
Survey both worlds, intrepid and entire,

In spite of witches, devils, dreams, and fire?
Pleased to look forward, pleased to look behind,
And count each birth-day with a grateful mind?
Has life no sourness, drawn so near its end?
Canst thou endure a foe, forgive a friend?
Has age but melted the rough parts away,
As winter fruits grow mild ere they decay?
Or will think, my
you
friend! your business done,
When of a hundred thorns you pull out one?
Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;
You've play'd, and loved, and ate, and drank your
Walk sober off, before a sprightlier age [fill.
Comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage:
Leave such to trifle with more grace
and ease,

Whom folly pleases, and whose follies please.

BOOK IV. ODE I,

TO VENUS.

AGAIN? new tumults in my breast?
Ah, spare me, Venus! let me, let me rest!
I am not now, alas! the man

As in the gentle reign of my Queen Anne.
Ah! sound no more thy soft alarms,

Nor circle sober fifty with thy charms.

Mother too fierce of dear desires!

Turn, turn to willing hearts your wanton fires:
To number five direct your doves,

There spread round Murray all your blooming loves;

Noble and young, who strikes the heart
With every sprightly, every decent part;
Equal the injured to defend,

To charm the mistress, or to fix the friend:
He, with a hundred arts refined,

Shall stretch thy conquests over half the kind :
To him each rival shall submit,

Make but his riches equal to his wit.

Then shall thy form the marble grace,
(Thy Grecian form) and Chloe lend the face:
His house, embosom'd in the grove,

Sacred to social life and social love,
Shall glitter o'er the pendent green,
Where Thames reflects the visionary scene;
Thither the silver-sounding lyres

Shall call the smiling Loves and young Desires;
There every Grace and Muse shall throng,
Exalt the dance, or animate the song;
There youths and nymphs, in consort gay,
Shall hail the rising, close the parting day,
With me, alas! those joys are o'er;

For me the vernal garlands bloom no more.
Adieu! fond hope of mutual fire,
The still-believing, still-renew'd desire:
Adieu! the heart-expanding bowl,
And all the kind deceivers of the soul!
But why? ah! tell me, ah! too dear,
Steals down

my cheek the' involuntary tear?
Why words so flowing, thoughts so free,
Stop, or turn nonsense, at one glance of thee?
Thee, dress'd in Fancy's airy beam,

Absent I follow through the' extended dream; Now, now I seize, I clasp thy charms,

And now you burst (ah, cruel!) from my arms,