Curb these licentious fons of strife;
Hence chiefly rise the storms of life:
If they grow mutinous, and rave,
They are thy masters, thou their flave.
Regard the world with cautious eye,
Nor raife your expectation high.
See that the balanc'd scales be fuch,
You neither fear nor hope too much.
For disappointment's not the thing,
'Tis pride and paffion point the sting.
Life is a fea, where storms must rise,
'Tis folly talks of cloudless skies:
He who contracts his swelling fail
Eludes the fury of the gale.
Be still, nor anxious thoughts employ,
Distrust imbitters present joy:
On God for all events depend;
You cannot want when God's your friend.
Weigh well your part, and do your bett;
Leave to your Maker all the reft.
The hand which form'd thee in the womb,
Guides from the cradle to the tomb.
Can the fond mother flight her boy;
Can she forget her prattling joy?
Say then shall fov'reign Love defert
The humble, and the honeft heart?
Heav'n may not grant thee all thy mind;
Yet say not thou that Heav'n's unkind.
God is alike, both good and wife,
In what he grants and what denies:
Perhaps, what Goodness gives to-day,
To-morrow Goodness takes away.
You say that troubles intervene,
That forrows darken half the scene.
True-----and this consequence you fee,
The world was ne'er design'd for thee:
You're like a paffenger below,
That stays perhaps a night or fo;
But ftill his native country lies
Beyond the bound'ries of the skies.
Of Heav'n afk virtue, wisdom, health,
But never let thy pray'r be wealth,
If food be thine, (though little gold)
And raiment to repel the cold;
Such as may nature's wants fuffice,
Not what from pride and folly rife;
If foft the motions of thy foul,
And a calm confcience crowns the whole;
Add but a friend to all this store,
You can't, in reafon, with for more: And if kind Heav'n this comfort brings, 'Tis more than Heav'n bestows on kings.
He spake----The airy spectre flies,
And ftrait the sweet illufion dies.
The vifion, at the early dawn,
Confign'd me to the thoughtful morn;
To all the cares of waking clay,
And inconsistent dreams of day.
FROM POPE'S ESSAY ON MAN.
Он happiness! our being's end and aim!
Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate'er thy name:
That something still which prompts the eternal figh,
For which we bear to live, or dare to die;
Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
O'erlook'd, seen double, by the fool, and wife,
Plant of celestial feed! if dropt below,
Say, in what mortal foil thou deign'st to grow?
Fair op'ning to some court's propitious shine,
Or deep with diamonds in the flaming mine?
Twin'd with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield,
Or reap'd in iron harvests of the field?
Where grows?---where grows it not? if vain our toil
We ought to blame the culture, not the foil.
Fix'd to no spot is happiness sincere,
'Tis no where to be found, or ev'ry where;
'Tis never to be bought, but always free,
And fied from monarchs, St. John, dwells with thee.
Afk of the learn'd the way: the learn'd are blind;
This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind.
Some place the bliss in action, some in ease;
Those call it pleafure, and contentment these:
Some, funk to beafts, find pleasure end in pain;
Some fwell'd to gods, confess ev'n virtue vain:
Or indolent: to each extreme they fall,
To truft in ev'ry thing, or doubt of all.
Who thus define it, say they more or less
Than this, that happiness is happiness?
Take nature's path, and mad opinions leave;
All states can reach it, and all heads conceive;
Obvious her goods, in no extreme they dwell;
There needs but thinking right, and meaning well::
And mourn our various portions as we please,
Equal is common fenfe, and common eafe.
Remember, man, "the Univerfal Caufe "Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws;" And makes what happiness we justly call Subfift not in the good of one, but all. There's not a blessing individuals find But fome way leans and hearkens to the kind : No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride, No cavern'd hermit refts felf-fatisfy'd. Who moft to shun or hate mankind pretend, Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend: Abstract what others feel, what others think, All pleasures ficken, and all glories fink: Each has his share; and who would more obtain,. Shall find the pleasure pays not half the pain..
Order is Heav'n's first law; and this confeft, Some are, and must be, greater than the reft; More rich, more wife; but who infers from hence That fuch are happier, shocks all common fenfe. Heav'n to mankınd impartial we confefs, If all are equal in their happiness : But mutual wants this happiness increase, All nature's diff'rence keeps all nature's peace. Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; Bliss is the fame in fubject or in king, In who obtain defence, or who defend, In him who is, or him who finds a friend: Heav'n breathes through every member of the whole One common bleffing as one common foul. But fortune's gifts if each alike poffeft, And each were equal, must not all contest? If then to all men happiness was meant, God in externals could not place content. Fortune her gifts may varioufly difpofe, And these be happy call'd, unhappy thofe; But Heav'n's just balance equal will appear, While those are plac'd in hope, and thefe in fear: Not present good or ill, the joy or curse, But future views of better, or of worse. Oh fons of earth!' attempt ye still to rife, By mountains pil'd on mountains, to the skies? Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys, And buries madmen in the heaps they raife.
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