Some place the bliss in action, some in ease; Those call it pleasure, and contentment these: Some, sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain ; Some, swell'd to gods, confess even virtue vain ; Or indolent, to each extreme they fall, To trust in every thing, or doubt of all.
II. Who thus define it, say they more or less Than this, that happiness is happiness?
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 general, 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-satisfied: 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; All nature's difference keeps all nature's peace.
II. Condition, circumstance, is not the thing: Bliss is the same in subject or in king; In who obtain defence, or who defend, In him who is, or him who finds, a friend : Heaven breathes through ev'ry member of the whole One common blessing, as one common soul. But fortune's gifts if each alike possess'd And each were equal, must not all contest? If then to all men happiness was meant, God in externals could not place content.
KNOW, all the good that individuals find, Or God and nature meant to mere mankind, Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Si Lie in three words, health, peace and competence; Se But health consists with temperance alone; A And peace, O virtue! peace is all thy own. The good or bad the gifts of fortune gain; But these less taste them as they worse obtain.
II. Say, in pursuit of profit or delight Who risk the most, that take wrong means or right? Of vice or virtue, whether blest or curst, Which meets contempt, or which compassion first? Count all th' advantage prosperous vice attains, 'Tis but what virtue flies from, and disdains And grant the bad what happiness they would, One they must want, which is, to pass for good..
Oh blind to truth, and God's whole scheme below, Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe!
Who sees and follows that great scheme the best, Best knows the blessing, and will most be blest,
WHATEVER is, is right-This world, 'tis true, Was made for Casar-but for Titus too;
And which more blest? who chain'd his country, say, Or he whose virtue sigh'd to lose a day?
"But sometimes virtue starves while vice is fed." What then? is the reward of virtue bread? That vice may merit; 'tis the price of tail The knave deserves it when he tills the soil. The knave deserves it when he tempts the main, Where folly fights for kings, or dives for gain. The good man may be weak, be indolent; Nor is his claim to plenty, but content. But grant him riches, your demand is o'er : "No-shall the good want health, the good want power ?? II. Add health and power and every earthly thing; "Why bounded power? why private? why no king?" Nay, why external for internal given ?
Why is not man a god, and earth a heaven? Who ask and reason thus, will scarce conceive God gives enough, while he has more to give ; Immense the power, immense were the demand Say, at what part of nature will they stand?
SEE the sole bliss heaven could on all bestow ! Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know !
Yet poor with fortune, and with learning blind, The bad must miss, the good, untaught, will find; Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through nature up to nature's God; Pursues that chain which links the immense design, Joins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine; Sees that no being any bliss can know, But touches some above and some below; Learns, from this union of the rising whole, The first, last purpose of the human soul; And knows where faith, law, morals, all began, All end, in love of God, and love of man.
EACH PLEASED WITH HIS OWN CONDITION.
WHATE'ER the passion, knowledge, fame or pelf, Not one will change his neighbour with himself. The learn'd is happy nature to explore;
The fool is happy that he knows no more; The rich is happy in the plenty given; The poor contents him with the care of heaven. See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing, The sot a hero, lunatick a king;
The starving chymist in his golden views Supremely blest! the poet in his muse. See some strange comfort every state attend, And pride, bestow'd on all, a common friend : See some fit passion every age supply;
Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.
BEHOLD the child, by nature's kindly law, Pleas'd with a rattle, tickled with a straw ;-
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite ;
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer books are the toys of age; Pleas'd with this bauble still, as that before, 'Till tir'd he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er.
II. Meanwhile opinion gilds with varying rays. Those painted clouds that beautify our days; Each want of happiness, by hope supplied, And each vacuity of sense, by pride: These build as fast as knowledge can destroy; In folly's cup still laughs the bubble joy : One prospect lost, another still we gain; And not a vanity is given in vain.
E'en mean self-love becomes, by force divine, The scale to measure others' wants by thine. See! and confess, one comfort still must rise; 'Tis this-Though man's a fool, yet God is wise.
HONOUR and shame from no condition rise; Act well your part, there all the honour lies. Fortune in men has some small difference made; One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade: The cobbler apron'd, and the parson gown'd, The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd. "What differ more (you say) than crown and cowl ?"" I'll tell you, friend; a wise man and a fool.
II. You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk, Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,
Worth makes the man, and want of it, the fellow : The rest is all but leather or prunella.
Go! if your ancient, but ignoble, blood
Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood,
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