ss (whence hypocrites in joy!
Makers of mirth! artificers of smiles!),
Why should the joy most poignant sense affords,
Burn us with blushes, and rebuke our pride?--
Those heaven-born blushes tell us man descends,
Even in the zenith of his earthly bliss:
Should Reason take her infidel repose, 490
This honest instinct speaks our lineage high;
This instinct calls on darkness to conceal
Our rapturous relation to the stalls.
Our glory covers us with noble shame,
And he that's unconfounded, is unmann'd.
The man that blushes, is not quite a brute.
Thus far with thee, Lorenzo, will I close:
Pleasure is good, and man for pleasure made;
But pleasure full of glory, as of joy;
Pleasure, which neither blushes, nor expires. 500
The witnesses are heard; the cause is o'er;
Let Conscience file the sentence in her court,
Dearer than deeds that half a realm convey;
Thus seal'd by Truth, th' authentic record runs:
"Know all; know, infidels,--unapt to know!
'Tis immortality your nature solves; 506
'Tis immortality deciphers man,
And opens all the mysteries of his make.
Without it, half his instincts are a riddle;
Without it, all his virtues are a dream.
His very crimes attest his dignity;
His sateless thirst of pleasure, gold, and fame,
Declares him born for blessings infinite: 513
What less than infinite makes unabsurd
Passions, which all on earth but more inflames?
Fierce passions, so mismeasured to this scene,
Stretch'd out, like eagles' wings, beyond our nest,
Far, far beyond the worth of all below,
For earth too large, presage a nobler flight,
And evidence our title to the skies." 520
Ye gentle theologues, of calmer kind!
Whose constitution dictates to your pen,
Who, cold yourselves, think ardour comes from hell!
Think not our passions from Corruption sprung,
Though to Corruption now they lend their wings;
That is their mistress, not their mother. All
(And justly) Reason deem divine: I see,
I feel a grandeur in the passions too,
Which speaks their high descent, and glorious end;
Which speaks them rays of an eternal fire. 530
In Paradise itself they burn'd as strong,
Ere Adam fell; though wiser in their aim.
Like the proud Eastern,[35] struck by Providence,
What tho