Though each may feel increases and decays, And see now clearer and now darker days. Regard not then if wit be old or new, 406 But blame the false, and value still the true. Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own, But catch the spreading notion of the town; They reason and conclude by precedent, 410 And own stale nonsense which they ne'er in vent. Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. Of all this servile herd the worst is he That in proud dullness joins with quality. 415 A constant critic at the great man's board, To fetch and carry nonsense for my lord. What woeful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starved hackney sonneteer, or,me? But let a lord once own the happy lines, 420 How the wit brightens; how the style refines! Before his sacred name flies every fault, And each exalted stanza teems with thought! The vulgar thus through imitation err; As oft the learned by being singular; 425 So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng By chance go right, they purposely go Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head, Zoilus again would start up from the dead. Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue; But like a shadow, proves the substance true; For envied wit, like Sol eclipsed, makes known The opposing body's grossness, not its own. When first that sun too powerful beams displays, 470 It draws up vapors which obscure its rays; But ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way, Reflect new glories, and augment the day. Be thou the first true merit to defend, His praise is lost, who stays till all commend. 475 Short is the date, alas; of modern rhymes, And 'tis but just to let them live betimes. No longer now that golden age appears, When patriarch-wits survived a thousand years: Now length of fame (our second life) is lost, 480 And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast; Our sons their fathers' failing language see, When love was all an easy Monarch's care; Nay, wits had pensions, and young lords had wit: The fair sat panting at a courtier's play, 540 The following license of a foreign reign And taught more pleasant methods of salvation; Where Heaven's free subjects might their rights dispute, Lest God himself should seem too absolute: Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare And vice admired to find a flatterer there! Encouraged thus, wit's Titans braved the skies, 552 And the press groaned with licensed blasphemies. These monsters, critics! with your darts THE RAPE OF THE LOCK CANTO I What dire offense from amorous causes springs, What mighty contests rise from trivial things, I sing This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due: This, even Belinda may vouchsafe to view: Slight is the subject, but not so the praise, If she inspire, and he approve my lays. 6 Say what strange motive, goddess! could compel A well-bred lord to assault a gentle belle? Oh, say what stranger cause, yet unexplored, Could make a gentle belle reject a lord? 10 Sol through white curtains shot a timorous ray, And oped those eyes that must eclipse the day: Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake, 15 And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake: Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knocked the ground, And the pressed watch returned a silver sound. Belinda still her downy pillow pressed, Hear and believe! thy own importance know, 35 Nor bound thy narrow views to things below. Some secret truths, from learned pride concealed, To maids alone and children are revealed: What though no credit doubting wits may give? The fair and innocent shall still believe. 40 Know, then, unnumbered spirits round thee fly, The light militia of the lower sky: These, though unseen, are ever on the wing, Hang o'er the box, and hover round the Ring, Think what an equipage thou hast in air, 45 And view with scorn two pages and a chair. As now your own, our beings were of old, And once enclosed in woman's beauteous mould; 50 Thence, by a soft transition, we repair That all her vanities at once are dead; Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive, 55 61 In search of mischief still on earth to roam. The light coquettes in sylphs aloft repair, 65 And sport and flutter in the fields of air. 'Know further yet; whoever fair and chaste Rejects mankind, is by some sylph embraced: For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with sight, Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light. Loose to the wind their airy garments flew, Thin glittering textures of the filmy dew, Dipt in the richest tincture of the skies, 65 Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes, While every beam new transient colors flings, Colors that change whene'er they wave their wings. Amid the circle, on the gilded mast, Superior by the head, was Ariel placed; 70 His purple pinions opening to the sun, He raised his azure wand, and thus begun. 'Ye sylphs and sylphids, to your chief give ear! Fays, fairies, genii, elves, and demons, hear! Ye know the spheres, and various tasks assigned 75 By laws eternal to the aërial kind. Or roll the planets through the boundless sky. 80 Some less refined, beneath the moon's pale light Pursue the stars that shoot athwart the night, Or suck the mists in grosser air below, Of these the chief, the care of nations own, And guard with arms divine the British throne. 90 |