Ye gods! what justice rules the ball!
Freedom and arts together fall;
Fools grant whate'er ambition craves,
And men, once ignorant, are slaves.
O cursed effects of civil hate,
In every age, in every state!
Still, when the lust of tyrant power succeeds,
Some Athens perishes, some Tully bleeds.
CHORUS OF YOUTHS AND VIRGINS.
O tyrant Love! hast thou possess'd
The prudent, learn'd, and virtuous breast?
Wisdom and wit in vain reclaim,
And arts but soften us to feel thy flame.
Love, soft intruder, enters here,
But entering learns to be sincere :
Marcus with blushes owns he loves,
And Brutus tenderly reproves.
Why, Virtue, dost thou blame desire,
Which Nature has impress'd;
Why, Nature, dost thou soonest fire
The mild and generous breast?
Love's purer flames the gods approve ;
The gods and Brutus bend to love:
Brutus for absent Portia sighs,
And sterner Cassius melts at Junia's eyes.
What is loose love? a transient gust,
Spent in a sudden storm of lust;
A vapour fed from wild desire;
A wandering, self-consuming fire.
But Hymen's kinder flames unite,
And burn for ever one;
Chaste as cold Cynthia's virgin light,
Productive as the sun.
O, source of every social tie,
United wish, and mutual joy!
What various joys on one attend,
As son, as father, brother, husband, friend!
Whether his hoary sire he spies,
While thousand grateful thoughts arise;
Or meets his spouse's fonder eye;
Or views his smiling progeny ;-
What tender passions take their turns,
What home-felt raptures move!
His heart now melts, now leaps, now burns,
With reverence, hope, and love.
Hence guilty joys, distastes, surmises;
Hence false tears, deceits, disguises,
Dangers, doubts, delays, surprises,
Fires that scorch, yet dare not shine! 40
Purest love's unwasting treasure;
Constant faith, fair hope, long leisure,
Days of ease, and nights of pleasure;
Sacred Hymen! these are thine.
DESIGNED FOR MR. D'URFEY'S LAST PLAY.*
GROWN old in rhyme, 'twere barbarous to discard
Your persevering, unexhausted bard:
Damnation follows death in other men,
But your damn'd poet lives and writes again.
The adventurous lover is successful still,
Who strives to please the fair against her will :
Be kind, and make him in his wishes easy,
Who in your own despite has strove to please ye.
He scorn'd to borrow from the wits of yore;
But ever writ, as none e'er writ before.
You modern wits, should each man bring his claim,
Have desperate debentures on your fame;
And little would be left you, I'm afraid,
If all your debts to Greece and Rome were paid.
From this deep fund our author largely draws,
Nor sinks his credit lower than it was.
Though plays for honour in old time he made;
"Tis now, for better reasons,-to be paid.
Believe him, he has known the world too long,
And seen the death of much immortal song:
He says, poor poets lost, while players won,
As pimps grow rich while gallants are undone.
Though Tom the poet writ with ease and pleasure,
The comic Tom abounds in other treasure.
Fame is at best an unperforming cheat :
But 'tis substantial happiness to eat.
Let ease, his last request, be of your giving,
Nor force him to be damn'd to get his living.
* Tom D'Urfey, a playwright and song-writer.
TO THE THREE HOURS AFTER MARRIAGE.'
AUTHORS are judged by strange capricious rules; The great ones are thought mad, the small ones fools:
Yet sure the best are most severely fated;
For fools are only laugh'd at, wits are hated.
Blockheads with reason men of sense abhor;
But fool 'gainst fool, is barbarous civil war.
Why on all authors then should critics fall?
Since some have writ, and shown no wit at all.
Condemn a play of theirs, and they evade it ;
Cry, Damn not us, but damn the French, who
made it.'
By running goods these graceless owlers gain;
Theirs are the rules of France, the plots of Spain:
But wit, like wine, from happier climates brought,
Dash'd by these rogues, turns English common
draught:
They pall Molière's and Lopez' sprightly strain,
And teach dull harlequins to grin in vain.
How shall our author hope a gentler fate,
Who dares most impudently not translate?
It had been civil, in these ticklish times,
To fetch his fools and knaves from foreign climes :
Spaniards and French abuse to the world's end; 21
But spare old England, lest you hurt a friend.
If any fool is by our satire bit,
Let him hiss loud, to show you all he's hit.
Poets make characters, as salesmen clothes;
We take no measure of your fops and beaux;
But here all sizes and all shapes you meet,
And fit yourselves like chaps in Monmouth-street.
Gallants, look here! this fool's cap has an air,*
Goodly and smart, with ears of Issachar :+
Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two
Let no one fool engross it, or confine
A common blessing: now 'tis yours, now mine:
But poets in all ages had the care
To keep this cap for such as will, to wear.
Our author has it now, for every wit
Of course resign'd it to the next that writ;
And thus upon the stage 'tis fairly thrown :*
Let him that takes it wear it as his own.
TO MR. ADDISON'S TRAGEDY OF 'CATO.'
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold ;-
For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage,
Commanding tears to stream through every age:
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept,
And foes to virtue wonder'd how they wept.
Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move
The hero's glory or the virgin's love:
In pitying love, we but our weakness show;
And wild ambition well deserves its woe.
Here tears shall flow from a more generous cause;
Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws:
He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,
And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes:
Virtue confess'd in human shape he draws,
What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was :
No common object to your sight displays,
But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys ;--
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate, 21
And greatly falling with a falling state.
* Flings down the cap, and exit
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