Without reftraint habituate to range
The paths of pleasure; can I bear this change?
Doom'd from the world unwilling to retire,
In bloom of life, and warm with young defire,
In lieu of roofs with regal fplendor gay,
Condemn'd in diftant wilds to drag the day;
Where beasts of prey maintain their favage court,
Or human brutes (the worst of brutes) refort.
Yes, yes, the change I could unfighing fee,
For none I mourn, but what I find in thee,
There center all my woes, thy heart eftrang'd,
I weep my lover, not my fortune, chang'd;
Blefs'd with thy prefence, I could all forget,
Nor gilded palaces in huts regret,
But exil'd thence, fuperfluous is the reft,
Each place the fame, my hell is in my breast;
To pleasure dead, and living but to pain,
My only sense to fuffer, and complain.
As all my wrongs distressful I repeat,
Say, can thy pulfe with equal cadence beat?
Can't thou know peace? is confcience mute within? That upright delegate for fecret fin;
Is nature fo extinguish'd in thy heart,
That not one spark remains to take my part?
Not one repentant throb, one grateful figh?
Thy breast unruffled, and unwet thy eye ?
Thou cool betrayer, temperate in ill!
Thou nor remorfe, nor thought humane can'ft feel:
Nature has form'd thee of the rougher kind,
And education more debas'd thy mind,
Born in an age when guilt and fraud prevail,
When Juftice fleeps, and Int'reft holds the scale;
Thy loofe companions a licentious crew,
Moft to each other, all to us untrue,
Whom chance, or habit mix, but rarely choice,
Nor leagu❜d in friendship, but in focial vice,
Who indigent of honour, or of shame,
Glory in crimes which others blush to name;
By right or wrong difdaining to be mov'd,
Unprincipled, unloving, and unlov'd.
The fair who trufts their proftituted vows,
If not their falfhood, ftill their boasts expofe;
Nor knows the wifeft to elude the harm,
Ev'n fhe whofe prudence fhuns the tinfel charm
They know to flander, though they fail to warm:
They make her languifh in fictitious flame,
Affix fome fpecious flander on her name,
And baffled by her virtue, triumph o'er her fame.
These are the leaders of thy blinded youth,
These vile feducers laugh'd thee out of truth;
Whose fcurril jefts all folemn ties profane,
Or Friendship's band, or Hymen's facred chain;
Morality as weakness they upbraid,
Nor ev'n revere Religion's hallow'd head;
Alike they spurn divine and human laws,
And treat the honeft like the chriftian cause.
Curfe on that tongue whofe vile pernicious art
Delights the ear but to corrupt the heart,
That takes advantage of the chearful hour,
When weaken'd Virtue bends to Nature's pow'r,
And would the goodness of the foul efface,
To fubftitute dishonour in her place.
With fuch you lofe the day in falfe delights,
In lewd debauch you revel out the nights,
(O fatal commerce to Monimia's peace!)
Their
arguments convince because they please ;
Whilft fophiftry for reafon they admit,
And wander dazzled by the glare of wit,
Wit that on ill a fpecious luftre throws,
And in falfe colours every object shows,
That gilds the wrong, depreciating the right,
And hurts the judgment, while it feasts the fight;
So in the prifm to the deluded eye
Each pictur'd trifle takes a rainbow dye,
With borrow'd charms the fhining profpect glows,
And truth revers'd the faithlefs mirror fhows,
Inverted scenes in bright confufion lie,
The lawns impending o'er the nether sky;
No juft, no real images we meet,
But all the gaudy vision is deceit.
Oft I revolve in this distracted mind
Each word, each look, that fpoke my charmer kind But oh! how dear their memory I pay!
What pleasures past can present cares allay?
Of all I love for ever difpoffefs'd:
Ah! what avails to think I once was blefs'd?
Hard difpofition of unequal fate!
'Mix'd are our joys, and tranfient are their date;
Nor can reflection bring them back again,
Yet brings an after-sting to every pain.
Thy fatal letters, oh immoral youth,
Those perjur'd pledges of fictitious truth,
Dear as they were no fecond joy afford,
My cred❜lous heart once leap'd at every word,
My glowing bofom throbb'd with thick-heav'd fighs,
And floods of rapture gufh'd into my eyes:
When now repeated (for thy theft was vain,
Each treafur'd fyllable my thoughts retain)
Far other paffions rule, and diff'rent care,
My joys and grief, my transports and despair.
Why doft thou mock the ties of conftant love?
But half its joys the faithless ever prove,
They only taste the pleasures they receive,
When fure the nobleft is in those we give.
Acceptance is the heav'n which mortals know,
But 'tis the blifs of angels to beftow.
Oh! emulate, my love, that task divine,
Be thou that angel, and that heav'n be mine.
Yet, yet relent, yet intercept my fate:
Alas! I rave, and fue for new deceit.
As foon the dead fhall from the grave return,
As love extinguish'd with new ardor burn.
Oh! that I dar'd to act a Roman part,
And ftab thy image in this faithful heart,
Where riveted for life fecure you reign,
A cruel inmate, author of my pain:
But coward-like irrefolute I wait
Time's tardy aid, nor dare to rush on fate;
Perhaps may linger on life's latest stage,
Survive thy cruelties, and fall by age:
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