The tiger's dreadful shape and look.
But wise Ulysses, by the aid
Of Hermes, had to him convey'd
A flow'r, whose virtue did suppress
The force of charms, and their success:
While his mates drank so deep, that they
Were turn'd to swine, which fed all day
On mast, and human food had left,
Of shape and voice at once bereft;
Only the mind--above all charms--
Unchang'd did mourn those monstrous harms.
O, worthless herbs, and weaker arts,
To change their limbs, but not their hearts!
Man's life and vigour keep within,
Lodg'd in the centre, not the skin.
Those piercing charms and poisons, which
His inward parts taint and bewitch,
More fatal are, than such, which can
Outwardly only spoil the man.
Those change his shape and make it foul,
But these deform and kill his soul.

LIB. III. METRUM VI.

All sorts of men, that live on Earth,
Have one beginning and one birth.
For all things there is one Father,
Who lays out all, and all doth gather.
He the warm sun with rays adorns,
And fills with brightness the moon's horns.
The azur'd heav'ns with stars He burnish'd,
And the round world with creatures furnish'd.
But men--made to inherit all--
His own sons He was pleas'd to call,
And that they might be so indeed,
He gave them souls of divine seed.
A noble offspring surely then
Without distinction are all men.
O, why so vainly do some boast
Their birth and blood and a great host
Of ancestors, whose coats and crests
Are some rav'nous birds or beasts!
If extraction they look for,
And God, the great Progenitor,
No man, though of the meanest state,
Is base, or can degenerate,
Unless, to vice and lewdness bent,
He leaves and taints his true descent.

THE OLD MAN OF VERONA OUT OF CLAUDIAN, [EPIGRAMMA II.]

_Felix, qui propriis avum transegit in arvis,
Una domus puerum, &c._

Most happy man! who in his own sweet fields
Spent all his time; to whom one cottage yields
In age and youth a lodging; who, grown old,
Walks with his staff on the same soil and mould
Where he did creep an infant, and can tell
Many fair years spent in one quiet cell!
No toils of fate made him from home far known,
Nor foreign waters drank, driv'n from his own.
No loss by sea, no wild land's wasteful war
Vex'd h