ugh our passions are run mad, and stoop
With low, terrestrial appetite, to graze
On trash, on toys, dethroned from high desire?
Yet still, through their disgrace, no feeble ray
Of greatness shines, and tells us whence they fell:
But these (like that fallen monarch when reclaim'd), 539
When Reason moderates the rein aright,
Shall reascend, remount their former sphere,
Where once they soar'd illustrious; ere seduced
By wanton Eve's debauch, to stroll on earth,
And set the sublunary world on fire.
But grant their phrensy lasts; their phrensy fails
To disappoint one providential end,
For which Heaven blew up ardour in our hearts:
Were Reason silent, boundless Passion speaks
A future scene of boundless objects too,
And brings glad tidings of eternal day. 550
Eternal day! 'tis that enlightens all;
And all, by that enlighten'd, proves it sure.
Consider man as an immortal being,
Intelligible all; and all is great;
A crystalline transparency prevails,
And strikes full lustre through the human sphere:
Consider man as mortal, all is dark,
And wretched; Reason weeps at the survey.
The learn'd Lorenzo cries, "And let her weep,
Weak, modern Reason: ancient times were wise. 560
Authority, that venerable guide,
Stands on my part; the famed Athenian porch
(And who for wisdom so renown'd as they?)
Denied this immortality to man."
I grant it; but affirm, they proved it too.
A riddle this!--have patience; I'll explain.
What noble vanities, what moral flights,
Glittering through their romantic wisdom's page,
Make us at once despise them, and admire?
Fable is flat to these high-season'd sires; 570
They leave th' extravagance of song below.
"Flesh shall not feel; or, feeling, shall enjoy
The dagger, or the rack; to them, alike 573
A bed of roses, or the burning bull."
In men exploding all beyond the grave,
Strange doctrine, this! As doctrine, it was strange;
But not, as prophecy; for such it proved,
And, to their own amazement, was fulfill'd:
They feign'd a firmness Christians need not feign.
The Christian truly triumph'd in the flame: 580
The Stoic saw, in double wonder lost,
Wonder at them, and wonder at himself,
To find the bold adventures of his thought
Not bold, and that he strove to lie