Dive to the bottom of his soul, the base
Sustaining all, what find we? knowledge, love.
As light and heat, essential to the sun,
These to the soul: and why, if souls expire?
How little lovely here? how little known?
Small knowledge we dig up with endless toil,
And love unfeign'd may purchase perfect hate.
Why starv'd, on earth, our angel-appetites,
While brutal are indulg'd their fulsome fill?
Were then capacities divine conferr'd,
As a mock-diadem, in savage sport,
Rank insult of our pompous poverty,
Which reaps but pain from seeming claims so fair?
In future age lies no redress? and shuts
Eternity the door on cur complaint?
so, for what strange ends were mortals made! 279 The worst to wallow, and the best to weep;
The man who merits most must most complain:
Can we conceive a disregard in Heav'n,
What the worst perpetrate cr best endure?
This cannot be. To love and know, in man
Is boundless appetite, and boundless pow'r;
And these demonstrate boundless objects too.
Objects, pow'rs, appetites, Heav'n suits in all,
Nor, Nature through, e'er violates this sweet
Eternal concord on her tuneful string.
Is man the sole exception from her laws?
Eternity struck off from human hope,
(I speak with truth, but veneration too)
Man is a monster, the reproach of Heav'n,
A stain, a dark impenetrable cloud
On Nature's beauteous aspect, and deforms,
(Amazing blot!) deforms her with her lord.
If such is man's allotment, what is heav'n?
Or own the soul immortal, or blaspheme.
Or own the soul immortal, or invert
All order. Go, Mock-majesty! go, Man!
And bow to thy superiours of the stall,
Thro' ev'ry scene of sense superiour far:
They graze the turf untill'd, they drink the stream
Unbrew'd, and ever full, and unimbitter'd
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With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despairs,
Mankind's peculiar! Reason's precious dower!
No foreign clime they ransack for their robes,
Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar;
Their good is good eutire, unmix'd, unmarr'd;
They find a paradise in ev'ry field,
On boughs forbidden where no curses hang:
Their ill no more than strikes the sense, unstretch'd
By previous dread, or murmur in the rear:
When the worst comes, it comes unfear'd; one stroke
Begins and ends their wo: they die but once;
Bless'd, incommunicable privilege! for which
Proud man, who rules the globe and reads the stars,
Philosopher or hero, sighs in vain.
Account for this prerogative in brutes,
No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot,
But what beams on it from eternity.
O sole and sweet solution! that unties
The difficult, and softens the severe;
The cloud on Nature's beauteous face dispels;
Restores bright order; casts the brute beneath,
And reinthrones us in supremacy
Of joy, ev'n here. Admit immortal life,
And virtue is knight-errantry no more;
Each virtue brings in hand a golden dower,
Far richer in reversion: hope exults,
And tho' much bitter in our cup is thrown,
Predominates, and gives the taste of heav'n.
O wherefore is the Deity so kind?
Astonishing beyond astonishment!
Heav'n our reward---for heav'n enjoy'd below.
Still unsubdu'd thy stubborn heart?---for there The traitor lurks who doubts the truth I sing. Reason is guiltless: will alone rebels. What, in that stubborn heart, if I should find New unexpected witnesses against thee? Ambition, Pleasure, and the Love of gain! Canst thou suspect that these, which make the soul The slave of earth, should own her heir of heav'n? Canst thou suspect what makes us disbelieve Our immortality should prove it sure?
First, then, Ambition summon to the bar. Ambition's shame, extravagance, disgust,
And inextinguishable nature, speak:
Each much deposes; hear them in their turn.
Thy soul, how passionately fond of fame!
How anxious that fond passion to conceal!
We blush, detected in designs on praise,
Tho' for best deeds, and from the best of men;
And why? because immortal. Art divine
Has made the body tutor to the soul;
Heav'n kindly gives our blood a moral flow,
Bids it ascend the glowing cheek, and there
Upbraid that little heart's inglorious aim
Which stoops to court a character for man,
While o'er us, in tremendous judgment, sit
Far more than man, with endless praise and blame. Ambition's boundless appetite outspeaks
The verdict of its shame. When souls take fire
At high presumptions of their own desert,
One age is poor applause: the mighty shout,
The thunder by the living few begun,
Late Time must echo, worlds unborn resound.
We wish our names eternally to live;
Wild dream! which ne'er had haunted human thought,
Had not our natures been eternal too.
Instinct points out an int'rest in hereafter,
But our blind reason sees not where it lies,
Or, seeing, gives the substance for the shade.
Fame is the shade of immortality,
And in itself a shadow: scon as caught
Contemn'd, it shrinks to nothing in the grasp.
Consult th' ambitious, 'tis ambition's cure.
"And is this all?" cry'd Cæsar, at his height,
Disgusted. This third proof Ambition brings
Of immortality. The first in fame,
Observe him near, your envy will abate:
Sham'd at the disproportion vast between
The passion and the purchase, he will sigh
At such success, and blush at his renown.
And why? because far richer prize invites
His heart; far more illustrious glory calls;
It calls in whispers, yet the deafest hear.
And can Ambition a fourth proof supply?
It can, and stronger than the former three,
Yet quite o'erlook'd by some reputed wise.
Tho' disappointments in ambition pain,
And tho' success disgusts, yet still, Lorenzo!
In vain we strive to pluck it from our hearts,
By Nature planted for the noblest ends.
Absurd the fam'd advice to Pyrrhus giv'n,
More prais'd 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,
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.
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