Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

Chloe is prudent-Would you too be wise?
Then never break your heart when Chloe dies.
One certain portrait may (I grant) be seen,
Which Heav'n has varnish'd out and made a queen;
The same for ever! and describ'd by all

With truth and goodness, as with crown and ball.
Poets heap virtues, painters gems, at will,

And shew their zeal, and hide their want of skill.
'Tis well-but, artists! who can paint or write,
To draw the naked is your true delight.
That robe of quality so struts and swells,
None see what parts of Nature it conceals:
The' exactest traits of body or of mind
We owe to models of an humble kind.

If Queensberry to strip there's no compelling,
"Tis from a handmaid we must take a Helen.
From peer or bishop 'tis no easy thing

To draw the man who loves his God or king.
Alas! I copy (or my draught would fail)
From honest Mahomet or plain Parson Hale.
But grant in public, men sometimes are shown,
A woman's seen in private life alone:

Our bolder talents in full light display'd,
Your virtues open fairest in the shade.

Bred to disguise, in public 'tis you hide;

There none distinguish 'twixt your shame or pride,
Weakness or delicacy; all so nice,

That each may seem a virtue or a vice.
In men we various ruling passions find;
In women, two almost divide the kind;
Those, only fix'd, they first or last obey,
The love of pleasure and the love of sway.
That, Nature gives; and where the lesson taught
Is but to please, can pleasure seem a fault?
Experience this: by man's oppression curst,
They seek the second not to lose the first.
Men some to business, some to pleasure take,
But every woman is at heart a rake:
Men, some to quiet, some to public strife,
But every lady would be queen for life.

Yet mark the fate of a whole sex of queens!
Power all their end, but beauty all the means..
In youth they conquer with so wild a rage
As leaves them scarce a subject in their age:
For foreign glory, foreign joy, they roam;
No thought of peace or happiness at home.
But wisdom's triumph is well-tim'd retreat,
As hard a science to the fair as great!
Beauties, like tyrants, old and friendless grown,
Yet hate repose, and dread to be alone;
Worn out in public, weary every eye,

Nor leave one sigh behind them when they die.
Pleasures the sex, as children birds, pursue,
Still out of reach, yet never out of view;
Sure if they catch to spoil the toy at most,
To covet flying, and regret when lost:
At last, to follies youth could scarce defend,
It grows their age's prudence to pretend ;
Asham'd to own they gave delight before,
Reduc'd to feign it when they give no more.
As hags hold sabbaths, less for joy than spite,
So these their merry, miserable night;
Still round and round the ghosts of beauty glide,
And haunt the places where their honour died.
See how the world its veterans rewards!
A youth of frolics, an old age of cards;
Fair to no purpose, artful to no end,

Young without lovers, old without a friend;
A fop their passion, but their prize a sot,
Alive ridiculous, and dead forgot!

Ah, friend! to dazzle let the vain design;

To raise the thought and touch the heart be thine!
That charm shall grow, while what fatigues the ring,
Flaunts and goes down an unregarded thing.
So when the sun's broad beam has tir'd the sight,
All mild ascends the moon's more sober light;
Serene in virgin modesty she shines,

And unobserv'd the glaring orb declines.

Oh! bless'd with temper, whose unclouded ray Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day;

She who can love a sister's charms, or hear
Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear;
She who ne'er answers till a husband cools,
Or, if she rules him, never shews she rules;
Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,
Yet has her humour most when she obeys;
Let fops or fortune fly which way they will,
Disdains all loss of tickets or codille;
Spleen, vapours, or small-pox, above them all,
And mistress of herself though china fall.
And yet, believe me, good as well as ill,
Woman's at best a contradiction still.
Heav'n when it strives to polish all it can
Its last best work, but forms a softer man ;
Picks from each sex to make the favorite blest,
Your love of pleasure, our desire of rest;
Blends, in exception to all general rules,
Your taste of follies with our scorn of fools;
Reserve with frankness, art with truth ally'd,
Courage with softness, modesty with pride;
Fix'd principles, with fancy ever new,
Shakes altogether, and produces-you.

[ocr errors]

Be this a woman's fame; with this unblest,
Toasts live a scorn, and queens may die a jest.
This Phoebus promis'd (I forget the year)

When those blue eyes first open'd on the sphere;
Ascendant Phoebus watch'd that hour with care,
Averted half your parents' simple prayer,
And gave you beauty, but deny'd the pelf
That buys your sex a tyrant o'er itself.
The generous god who wit and gold refines,

And ripens spirits as he ripens mines,

Kept dross for dutchesses, the world shall know it, To you gave sense, good humour, and a poet.

To Allen Lord Bathursts

PART I.

That it is known to few, most falling into one of the extremes, avarice or profusion. The point discussed, whether the invention of money has been more commodious or pernicious to mankind. That riches, either to the avaricious or the prodigal, cannot afford happiness, scarcely necessaries. That avarice is an absolute frenzy, without an end or purpose. Conjectures about the motives of avaricious men. That the conduct of men, with respect to riches, can only be accounted for by the order of Providence, which works the general good out of extremes, and brings all to its great end by perpetual revolutions. How a miser acts upon principles which appear to him reasonable. How a prodigal does the same. The due medium and -true use of riches. The Man of Ross. The fate of the profuse and the covetous, in two examples; both miserable in life and in death. The story of Sir Balaam.

P. WHO shall decide when doctors disagree,
And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?
You hold the word, from Jove to Momus giv'n,
That man was made the standing jest of Heav'n,
And gold but sent to keep the fools in play,
For some to heap, and some to throw away.
But I, who think more highly of our kind,
(And surely Heav'u and I are of a mind)
Opine that Nature, as in duty bound,
Deep hid the shining mischief under ground:
But when by man's audacious labour won
Flam'd forth this rival to its sire the sun;
Then careful Heav'n supply'd two sorts of men,
To squander these, and those to hide again.
Like doctors thus, when much dispute has past,
We find our tenets just the same at last;

Both fairly owning riches, in effect,

No grace of Heav'n or token of the' elect;
Giv'n to the fool, the mad, the vain, the evil,
To Ward, to Waters, Chartres, and the devil.
B. What nature wants commodious gold bestows;
"Tis thus we eat the bread another sows. *

P. But how unequal it bestows, observe;
'Tis thus we riot, while who sow it starve:
What nature wants (a phrase I much distrust)
Extends to luxury, extends to lust:

Useful I grant, it serves what life requires,
But dreadful too, the dark assassin hires.

B. Trade it may help, society extend:

P. But lures the pirate, and corrupts the friend. B. It raises armies in a nation's aid:

P. But bribes a senate, and the land's betray'd.
In vain may heroes fight and patriots rave,
If secret gold sap on from knave to knave.
Once, we confess, beneath the patriot's cloak,
From the crack'd bag the dropping guinea spoke,
And, jingling down the back-stairs, told the crew,
"Old Cato is as great a rogue as you."
Bless'd paper credit! last and best supply!
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!
Gold, imp'd by thee, can compass hardest things,
Can pocket states, can fetch or carry kings;
A single leaf shall waft an army o'er,
Or ship off senates to some distant shore;
A leaf, like Sibyl's, scatter to and fro

Our fates and fortunes as the winds shall blow;
Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen,
And silent sells a king, or buys a queen.

O! that such bulky bribes as all might see
Still, as of old, incumber'd villany!

Could France or Rome divert our brave designs With all their brandies or with all their wines; What could they more than knights and squires confound,

Or water all the quorum ten miles round ?

« ПредишнаНапред »