pain,
And though success disgusts; yet still, Lorenzo!
In vain we strive to pluck it from our hearts;
By Nature planted for the noblest ends.
Absurd the famed advice to Pyrrhus[34] given,
More praised, than ponder'd; specious, but unsound;
Sooner that hero's sword the world had quell'd,
Than Reason, his ambition. Man must soar.
An obstinate activity within, 390
An insuppressive spring, will toss him up
In spite of Fortune's load. Not kings alone,
Each villager has his ambition too;
No Sultan prouder than his fetter'd slave:
Slaves build their little Babylons of straw,
Echo the proud Assyrian, in their hearts,
And cry,--"Behold the wonders of my might!"
And why? Because immortal as their lord;
And souls immortal must for ever heave
At something great; the glitter, or the gold; 400
The praise of mortals, or the praise of Heaven.
Nor absolutely vain is human praise,
When human is supported by divine.
I'll introduce Lorenzo to himself; 404
Pleasure and Pride (bad masters!) share our hearts.
As love of pleasure is ordain'd to guard
And feed our bodies, and extend our race;
The love of praise is planted to protect,
And propagate the glories of the mind.
What is it, but the love of praise, inspires,
Matures, refines, embellishes, exalts,
Earth's happiness? From that, the delicate, 412
The grand, the marvellous, of civil life,
Want and convenience, underworkers, lay
The basis, on which love of glory builds.
Nor is thy life, O Virtue! less in debt
To praise, thy secret stimulating friend.
Were men not proud, what merit should we miss!
Pride made the virtues of the Pagan world.
Praise is the salt that seasons right to man, 420
And whets his appetite for moral good.
Thirst of applause is Virtue's second guard;
Reason, her first; but reason wants an aid;
Our private reason is a flatterer;
Thirst of applause calls public judgment in,
To poise our own, to keep an even scale,
And give endanger'd Virtue fairer play.
Here a fifth proof arises, stronger still:
Why this so nice construction of our hearts?
These delicate moralities of sense; 430
This constitutional reserve of aid
To succour virtue, when our reason fails;
If virtue, kept alive by care and toil