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النشر الإلكتروني

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.
Slaves build their little Babylons of straw,
Echo the proud Assyrian in their hearts,
And cry," Behold the wonders of my might!"
And why? because immortal as their lord;
And souls immortal must for ever heave
At something great; the glitter or the gold;
The praise of mortals, or the praise of heav'n.

Nor absolutelyvain is human praise,

When human is supported by divine.

I'll introduce Lorenzo to himself;

Pleasure and Pride (bad masters!) share our hearts.

As love of pleasure is ordain'd to guard

And feed our bodies, and extend our race,
The love of praise is planted to protect
And propagate the glories of the mind.
What is it, but the love of praise, inspires,
Matures, refines, embellishes, exalts
Earth's happiness? from that the delicate,
The grand, the marvellous, of civil life,
Want and convenience, underworkers, lay

The basis on which love of glory builds.
Nor is thy life, O Virtue! less in debt

To praise, thy secret-stimulating friend.

Were men not proud, what merit should we miss!
Pride made the virtues of the Pagan world.
Praise is the salt that seasons right to man,
And whets his appetite for moral good.
Thirst of applause is virtue's second guard;
Reason her first; but reason wants an aid;
Our private reason is a flatterer;
Thirst of applause calls public judgment in
To poise our own, to keep an even scale,
And give endanger d Virtue fairer play.
Here a fifth proof arises, stronger still.
Why this so nice construction of our hearts?
These delicate moralities of sense;

This constitutional reserve of aid

To succour Virtue when our reason fails,
If virtue, kept alive by care and toil,
And oft the mark of injuries on earth,
When labour'd to maturity (its bill
Of disciplines and pains unpaid) must die?
Why freighted rich to dash against a rock?
Were man to perish when most fit to live,
O how mispent were all these stratagems,
By skill divine inwoven in our frame!

Where are heaven's holiness and mercy fled?
Laughs heaven, at once, at virtue and at man?
If not, why that discourag'd, this destroy'd?

Thus far Ambition. What says Avarice?

This her chief maxim which has long been thine :
"The wise and wealthy are the same.”—I grant it.
To store up treasure with incessant toil,

This is man's province, this his highest praise:
To this great end keen Instinct stings him on:
To guide that Instinct, Reason, is thy charge;
"Tis thine to tell us where true treasure lies;
But Reason, failing to discharge her trust,
Or to the deaf discharging it in vain,

A blunder follows, and blind Industry,

Gall'd by the spur, but stranger to the course, (The course where stakes of more than gold are won) O'erloading with the care of distant age

The jaded spirits of the present hour,

Provides for an eternity below.

"Thou shalt not covet," is a wise command,
But bounded to the wealth the sun surveys.
Look farther, the command stands quite revers'd,
And av'rice is a virtue most divine.
Is faith a refuge for our happiness?

Most sure; and is it not for reason too?
Nothing this world unriddles, but the next.

Whence inextinguishable thirst of gain?
From inextinguishable life in man:

Man if not meant by worth to reach the skies,
Had wanted wing to fly so far in guilt.
Sour grapes, I grant, ambition, avarice;
Yet still their root is immortality:

These its wild growths, so bitter and so base,
(Pain and reproach!) religion can reclaim,
Refine, exalt, throw down their pois'nous lee,
And make them sparkle in the bowl of bliss.
See, the third witness laughs at bliss remote,
And falsely promises an Eden here:
Truth she shall speak for once, tho' prone to lie,
A common cheat, and Pleasure is her name.
To Pleasure never was Lorenzo deaf;

Then hear her now, now first thy real friend.
Since Nature made us not more fond than proud
Of happiness, (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,
E'en in the zenith of his earthly bliss:
Should reason take her infidel repose,
This honest instinct speaks our lineage high;
This instinct calls on darkness to conceal

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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.

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;
""Tis immortality decyphers man,

"And opens all the myst❜ries 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.

"What less than infinite makes unabsurd

"Passions, which all on earth but more inflames? "Fierce passions, so mismeasur'd to this scene, "Stretch'd out, like eagles' wings, beyond our nest, "Far, far beyond the worth of all below,

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