Heaven may not grant thee all thy mind; "You say that troubles intervene, "Of heaven ask virtue, wisdom, health, If soft the motions of thy soul, And a calm conscience crowns the whole; You can't in reason wish for more: Он The vision at the early dawn, HAPPINESS. FROM POPE'S ESSAY ON MAN. H Happiness! our being's end and aim! Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content! whate'er thy name; Where grows where grows it not? If vain our toil; Fix'd to no spot is Happiness sincere, 'Tis no where to be found, or ev'ry where; 'Tis never to be bought, but always free, And fled from monarchs, ST. JOHN, dwells with thee. Ask of the learn'd the way: the learn'd are blind; This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind. Some place the bliss in action, some in ease; To trust in ev'ry thing, or doubt of all. Take nature's path, and mad opinions leave; All states can reach it, and all heads conceive; Obvious her goods in no extreme they dwell; There needs but thinking right and meaning well; And, mourn our various portions as we please, Equal is common sense and common ease. Remember, man, "the Universal Cause Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws.” And makes what Happiness we justly call, Subsist not in the good of one, but all. There's not a blessing individuals find, But some way leans and hearkens to the kind; No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride, No cavern'd hermit rests self-satisfy'd. Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend, Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend: Abstract what others feel, what others think, All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink: Each has his share; and who would more obtain, Shall find the pleasure pays not half the pain. Order is Heaven's first law; and this confest, Some are, and must be, greater than the rest; More rich, more wise: but who infers from hence That such are happier, shocks all common sense. Heaven to mankind impartial we confess, If all are equal in their happiness: But mutual wants this happiness increase, In him who is, or him who finds a friend: Heaven breathes throngh every member of the whole Fortune her gifts may variously dispose, But future views of better or of worse. Oh sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise, Know, all the good that individuals find, SWEETNESS. AN ODE. BY MR. ROBERTSON. OF damask cheeks and radiant eyes, Let other poets tell; Within the bosom of the fair Superior beauties dwell. There all the sprightly powers of wit, In blithe assemblage play; Its intellectual ray. But as the sun's refulgent light Heaven's wide expanse refines; With sov'reign lustre through the soul This mental beam dilates the heart, It harmonizes every thought, And heightens every grace. I |