Let us (for shame!) no more be fed The roguery of alchemy; And we, the bubbled fools, Spend all our present stock in hopes of golden rules. But what does our proud ignorance learning call? We oddly Plato's paradox make good; Our knowledge is but mere remembrance all; For Learning's mighty treasures look Think she there does all her treasures hide, And that her troubled ghost still haunts there since she died; Confine her walks to colleges and schools; And, sick with dregs of knowledge grown, Curs'd be the wretch! nay, doubly curs'd, (If it may lawful be To curse our great enemy) Who learn'd himself that heresy first, Thrice happy, you have 'scap'd this general pest. Those mighty epithets, Learn'd, Good, and Which we ne'er join'd before, but in romances I must, like him that painted Venus' face, Let not old Rome boast Fabius' fate; You bought it at a cheaper rate; Nor has it left the usual bloody scar, To show it cost its price in war; [meet, War! that mad game the world so loves to play, And for it does so dearly pay; For though with loss or victory awhile Yet, at the last, the box sweeps all away. Only the laurel got by peace Shoots to the earth and dies; Nor ever green and flourishing 'twill last, About the head crown'd with these bays It melts the sword of war, yet keeps it in the sheath. The wily shifts of state, those jugglers' tricks The thoughts of monarchs and designs of states! How the mouse makes the mighty mountain shake, The mighty mountain labours with its birth; Scar'd at the' unheard-of prodigy, Expect some great gigantic son of earth; Lo, it appears! See, how they tremble! how they quake! Out starts the little beast, and mocks their idle fears,' Then tell (dear favourite Muse !) Still lurks in palaces and courts? Take thy unwonted flight, And on the terrace light, See where she lies! See how she rears her head, And rolls about her dreadful eyes, To drive all virtue out, or look it dead! 'Twas sure this basilisk sent Temple thence; And though as some ('tis said) for their defence Made up of virtue and transparent innocence; He pe'er could overcome her quite ; In pieces cut, the viper still did reunite; Sing (beloved Muse!) the pleasures of retreat, And in some untouch'd virgin strain Show the delights thy sister Nature yields; Sing of thy vales, sing of thy woods, sing of thy Go publish o'er the plain How mighty a proselyte you gain! [fields; How noble a reprisal on the great! These are the Paradises of her own; To the lov'd pasture where he us❜d to feed, Oft 'gainst her fountain does complain, In this new happy scene Are nobler subjects for your learned pen: More than your predecessor Adam knew ; How that which we a kernel see, (Whose well-compacted forms escape the light, Unpierc'd by the blunt rays of sight) Shall ere long grow into a tree, Whence takes it its increase, and whence its birth, Or from the sun, or from the air, or from the earth?: |