At best more watchful this, but that more strong. The action of the stronger to suspend,
Reason still use, to reason still attend:
Attention, habit, and experience gains;
Each strengthens reason, and self-love restrains.
Let subtle schoolmen teach these friends to fight,
More studious to divide than to unite,
And grace and virtue, sense and reason split,
With all the rash dexterity of wit.
Wits, just like fools, at war about a name,
Have full as oft no meaning, or the same.
Self-love and reason to one end aspire,
Pain their aversion, pleasure their desire:
But greedy that its object would devour,'
This taste the honey, and not wound the flower:
Pleasure, or wrong, or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.
Modes of self-love, the passions we may call;
'Tis real good, or seeming, moves them all:
But since not every good we can divide,
And reason bids us for our own provide;
Passions, though selfish, if their means be fair,
List under reason, and deserve her care:
Those that imparted, court a nobler aim,
Exalt their kind, and take some virtue's name:
In lazy apathy let stoics boast
Their virtue fix'd; 'tis fix'd as in a frost;
Contracted all, retiring to the breast;
But strength of mind is exercise, not rest:
The rising tempest puts in act the soul,
Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole.
On life's vast océan diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale;
Nor God alone in the still calm we find;
He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind
Passions, like elements, though born to fight,
Yet, mix'd and soft'ned, in his work unite;
These 'tis enough to temper and employ;
But what composes man, can man destroy?
Suffice that reason keep to nature's road,
Subject, compound them, follow her and God.
Love, hope and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train,
Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain;
These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confind,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind;
The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife Gives all the strength and colour of our life.
Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes, And when in act they cease, in prospect rise; Present to grasp, and future still to find, The whole employ of body and of mind. All spread their charms, but charm not all alike; On different senses, different objects strike: Hence different passions more or less inflame; As strong or weak, the organs of the frame; And hence one master passion in the breast, Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.
As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath,
Receives the lurking principle of death;
The young disease that must subdue at length,
Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his
strength:
So, cast and mingled with his very frame,
The mind's disease, its ruling passion came;
Each vital humor which should feed the whole
Soon flows to this, in body and in soul;
Whatever warms the heart or fills the head,
As the mind opens, and its functions spread,
Imagination plies her dangerous art,
it all upon the peccant part,
Nature its mother, habit is its nurse;
Wit, spirit, faculties but make it worse:
Reason itself but gives it edge and power,
As heaven's blest beam turns vinegar more sour.
We, wretched subjects, though to lawful sway,
In this weak queen some fav'rite still obey.
Ah! if she lend not arms, as well as rules,
What can she more than tell us we are fools?
Teach us to mourn our nature, not to mend,
A sharp accuser, but a helpless friend!
Or from a judge turn pleader, to pursuade
The choice we make, or justify it made.
Proud of an easy conquest all along,
She but removes weak passions for the strong;
So, when small humors gather to a gout,
The doctor fancies he has driv'n them out.
Yes, nature's road must ever be prefer' d; Reason is here no guide, but still a guard; "Tis her's to rectify, not overthrow,
And treat this passion more as friend than foe:]'
A mightier power the strong direction sends,
And sev'ral men impels to sev'ral ends.
Like varying winds, by other passions tost,
This drives them constant to a certain coast.
Let power or knowledge, gold or glory, please,
Or, (oft more strong than all) the love of ease;
Through life 'tis follow'd, ev'n at life's expence;
The merchant's toil, the sage's indolence,
The monk's humility, the hero's pride,
All, all alike, find reason on their side.
The eternal art, educing good from ill,
Grafts on this passion our best principle;
'Tis thus the mercury of man is fix'd,
Strong grows the virtue with his nature mix'd,
The dross cements what else were too refin'd,
And in one int'rest body acts with mind.
As fruits, ungrateful to the planter's care,
On savage stocks inserted learn to bear;
The surest virtues thus from passions shoot,
Wild nature's vigor working at the root.
What crops of wit and honesty appear
From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear!
See anger, zeal and fortitude supply;
E'en av'rice, prudence; sloth, philosophy:
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