Essay on Man | Page 8

their kind, and take some
virtue's name.

In lazy apathy let stoics boast
Their virtue fixed; 'tis fixed as in a frost;

Contracted all, retiring to the breast;
But strength of mind is
exercise, not rest:
The rising tempest puts in act the soul,
Parts it
may ravage, but preserves the whole.
On life's vast ocean diversely
we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale;
Nor God alone in
the still calm we find,
He mounts the storm, and walks upon the
wind.
Passions, like elements, though born to fight,
Yet, mixed and
softened, in his work unite:
These, 'tis enough to temper and employ;

But what composes man, can man destroy?
Suffice that Reason
keep to Nature's road,
Subject, compound them, follow her and God.

Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train,
Hate, fear, and
grief, the family of pain,
These mixed with art, and to due bounds
confined,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind;
The lights
and shades, whose well-accorded strife
Gives all the strength and
colour of our life.
Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes;
And
when in act they cease, in prospect rise:
Present to grasp, and future
still to find,
The whole employ of body and of mind.
All spread
their charms, but charm not all alike;
On different senses different
objects strike;
Hence different passions more or less inflame,
As
strong or weak, the organs of the frame;
And hence once master
passion in the breast,
Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.
As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath
Receives the lurking
principle of death;
The young disease that must subdue at length,

Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength:
So, cast
and mingled with his very frame,
The mind's disease, its ruling
passion came;
Each vital humour which should feed the whole,

Soon flows to this, in body and in soul:
Whatever warms the heart, or
fills the head,

As the mind opens, and its functions spread,

Imagination plies her dangerous art,
And pours it all upon the peccant
part.

Nature its mother, habit is its nurse;
Wit, spirit, faculties, but make it
worse;
Reason itself but gives it edge and power;
As Heaven's blest
beam turns vinegar more sour.
We, wretched subjects, though to lawful sway,
In this weak queen
some favourite still obey:
Ah! if she lend not arms, as well as rules,

What can she more than tell us we are fools?
Teach us to mourn our
nature, not to mend,
A sharp accuser, but a helpless friend!
Or from
a judge turn pleader, to persuade
The choice we make, or justify it
made;
Proud of an easy conquest all along,
She but removes weak
passions for the strong;
So, when small humours gather to a gout,

The doctor fancies he has driven them out.
Yes, Nature's road must ever be preferred;
Reason is here no guide,
but still a guard:
'Tis hers to rectify, not overthrow,
And treat this
passion more as friend than foe:
A mightier power the strong
direction sends,
And several men impels to several ends:
Like
varying winds, by other passions tossed,
This drives them constant to
a certain coast.
Let power or knowledge, gold or glory, please,
Or
(oft more strong than all) the love of ease;
Through life 'tis followed,
even at life's expense;
The merchant's toil, the sage's indolence,
The
monk's humility, the hero's pride,
All, all alike, find reason on their
side.
The eternal art, educing good from ill,
Grafts on this passion our best
principle:
'Tis thus the mercury of man is fixed,
Strong grows the
virtue with his nature mixed;
The dross cements what else were too
refined,
And in one interest body acts with mind.
As fruits, ungrateful to the planter's care,
On savage stocks inserted,
learn to bear;
The surest virtues thus from passions shoot,
Wild
nature's vigour working at the root.
What crops of wit and honesty
appear
From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear!

See anger, zeal
and fortitude supply;
Even avarice, prudence; sloth, philosophy;


Lust, through some certain strainers well refined,
Is gentle love, and
charms all womankind;
Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave,
Is
emulation in the learned or brave;
Nor virtue, male or female, can we
name,
But what will grow on pride, or grow on shame.
Thus Nature gives us (let it check our pride)
The virtue nearest to our
vice allied:
Reason the bias turns to good from ill
And Nero reigns
a Titus, if he will.
The fiery soul abhorred in Catiline,
In Decius
charms, in Curtius is divine:
The same ambition can destroy or save,

And makes a patriot as it makes a knave.
This light and darkness in our chaos joined,
What shall divide? The
God within the mind.
Extremes in nature equal ends produce,
In man they join to some
mysterious use;
Though each by turns the other's bound invade,
As,
in some well-wrought picture, light and shade,
And oft so mix, the
difference is too nice
Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.
Fools! who from hence into the notion fall,
That vice or virtue there
is none at all.
If white and black blend, soften, and unite
A thousand
ways, is there no black or white?
Ask your own heart, and nothing is
so plain;
'Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain.
Vice is