Look now around, and with impartial eyes
Confider, and examine all who rise;
Weigh well their actions, and their treach❜rous ends,
How greatness grows, and by what steps afcends;
What murders, treafons, perjuries, deceit; 21
How many crush'd, to make one monfter great.
Would you command? Have Fortune in your pow'r ?
Hug when you ftab, and smile when you devour?
Be bloody, falfe, flatter, forfwear, and lye, 25
Turn pander, pathick, parafite, or spy;
Such thriving arts may your wish'd purpose bring,
A minifter at leaft, perhaps a king.
Fortune we most unjustly partial call,
A mistress free, who bids alike to all;
But on fuch terms as only fuit the base,
Honour denies and fhuns the foul embrace.
The honeft man, who ftarves and is undone,
Not Fortune, but his vertue keeps him down.
Had Cato bent beneath the conq'ring cause,
He might have liv'd to give new fenates laws;
But on vile terms difdaining to be great,
He perish'd by his choice, and not his fate.
Honours and life, th' ufurper bids, and all
That vain mistaken men Good-fortune call,
Virtue forbids, and fets before his eyes
An honest death, which he accepts, and dies:
O glorious refolution! noble pride!
More nonour'd, than the tyrant liv'd, he dy'd;
More lov'd, more prais'd, more envy'd in his doom,
Than Cæfar trampling on the rights of Rome. 46
The virtuous nothing fear, but life with fhame,
And death's a pleasant road that leads to fame.
On bones, and scraps of dogs let me be fed,
My limbs uncover'd, and expos'd my head
To bleakeft colds, a kennel be my bed.
This, and all other martyrdom for thee,
Seems glorious, all, thrice beauteous Honesty!
Judge me, ye pow'rs! Let Fortune tempt or frown,
I ftand prepar'd, my honour is my own.
Ye great disturbers, who in endless noise,
In blood and rapine seek unnatural joys;
For what is all this buftle but to fhun
Those thoughts with which you dare not be alone?
As men in mifery, oppreft with care,
Seek in the rage of wine to drown despair.
Let others fight, and eat their bread in blood,
Regardless if the cause be bad or good;
Or cringe in courts, depending on the nods
Of strutting pygmies who would pass for gods.
For me, unpractis'd in the courtiers school,
Who loath a knave, and tremble at a fool;
Who honour gen'rous Wycherly oppret,
Poffeft of little, worthy of the best,
Rich in himself, in virtue that outshines
All but the fame of his immortal lines;
More than the wealthiest lord, who helps to drain
The famifh'd land, and rouls in impious gain;
What can I hope in courts? Or how fucceed?
Tygers and wolves fhall in the ocean breed,
The whale and dolphin fatten on the meed,
And every element exchange its kind,
Ere thriving honefty in courts we find.
Happy the man, of mortals happiest he,
Whofe quiet mind from vain defires is free;
Whom neither hopes deceive, nor fears torment,
But lives at peace, within himself content;
In thought or act, accountable to none,
But to himself, and to the gods alone :
O fweetness of content! Seraphick joy!
Which nothing wants, and nothing can destroy.
Where dwells this peace, this freedom of the
Where, but in fhades remote from human kind;
In flow'ry vales, where nymphs and fhepherds
But never comes within the palace gate.
Farewell then cities, courts, and camps, farewell,
Welcome, ye groves, here let me ever dwell,
From cares, from bufinefs, and mankind remove,
All but the Muses, and infpiring Love:
How sweet the morn! how gentle is the night!
How calm the ev'ning! and the day how bright!
From hence, as from a hill, I view below The crowded world, a mighty wood in show, Where feveral wand'rers travel day and night By different paths, and none are in the right.
IMITATED, FROM THE EIGHTH BOOK
BY JONATHAN SWIFT, D. D.
DEAN OF ST. PATRICK'S, DUBLIN.*
In ancient times, as story tells,
The faints would often leave their cells,
And ftrole about, but hide their quality,
To try good people's hofpitality.
It happen'd on a winter-night,
As authors of the legend write,
Two brother-hermits, faints by trade,
Taking their tour in masquerade,
Difguis'd in tatter'd habits went
To a small village down in Kent;
Where, in the ftrolers canting strain,
They beg'd from door to door in vain,
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