,
And oft, the mark of injuries on earth,
When labour'd to maturity (its bill
Of disciplines, and pains, unpaid), must die?
Why freighted rich, to dash against a rock?
Were man to perish when most fit to live, 438
O how misspent were all these stratagems,
By skill divine inwoven in our frame!
Where are Heaven's holiness and mercy fled?
Laughs Heaven, at once, at Virtue, and at Man?
If not, why that discouraged, this destroy'd?
Thus far Ambition. What says Avarice?
This her chief maxim, which has long been thine:
"The wise and wealthy are the same,"--I grant it.
To store up treasure with incessant toil,
This is man's province, this his highest praise.
To this great end keen Instinct stings him on.
To guide that instinct, Reason! is thy charge; 450
'Tis thine to tell us where true treasure lies:
But, Reason failing to discharge her trust,
Or to the deaf discharging it in vain,
A blunder follows; and blind Industry,
Gall'd by the spur, but stranger to the course
(The course where stakes of more than gold are won),
O'erloading, with the cares of distant age,
The jaded spirits of the present hour,
Provides for an eternity below.
"Thou shalt not covet," is a wise command; 460
But bounded to the wealth the sun surveys:
Look farther, the command stands quite reversed,
And avarice is a virtue most divine.
Is faith a refuge for our happiness?
Most sure: and is it not for reason too?
Nothing this world unriddles, but the next.
Whence inextinguishable thirst of gain?
From inextinguishable life in man.
Man, if not meant, by worth, to reach the skies,
Had wanted wing to fly so far in guilt. 470
Sour grapes, I grant, ambition, avarice,
Yet still their root is immortality: 472
These its wild growths so bitter, and so base,
(Pain and reproach!) Religion can reclaim,
Refine, exalt, throw down their poisonous lee,
And make them sparkle in the bowl of bliss.
See, the third witness laughs at bliss remote,
And falsely promises an Eden here:
Truth she shall speak for once, though prone to lie,
A common cheat, and Pleasure is her name. 480
To Pleasure never was Lorenzo deaf;
Then hear her now, now first thy real friend.
Since Nature made us not more fond than proud
Of happine