LV.
Dear child of joy, who read thy soul shall find,
That all things shifting, man must vary too;
Sometimes in thunder, earthquake, and in wind,
Nature will mourn, so grief her sons should woo;
But when the winning breeze coys with the sail,
That bears thy bark along the flowing wave;
Then, know, perfection lives not in the pale
Of that small space, where thy mad fancies rave:
If there’s no happiness, then conquer time,
And grandly dare to build, scorning blind Fate;
Fate lives enshrined within the spirit sublime,
Which o’er a faltering world asserts its weight.
Let fools of circumstance wither and yield,
Some in themselves foster the fate they wield.
LVI.
Men err, and blindly happiness propose,
Whither their steps and fortunes should aspire;
Alas! they seek, what Earth no longer knows;
Once haply clasp’d, the wanton’s waxing shier;
For, now, it hath ascended to the heavens,
And sits commingling Nature’s shapes and dyes:
Who’s rash to seek it, him, ill fortune leavens
With sick acquirement of unworthy sighs:
Youth courts the sunshine to his vigorous wings;
Sees Hope, that beckons, thinks himself a God;
Rivals the lark, acting the joy it sings;
Till age desponds at Life’s too real rod:
Let youth abandon hope, and court content,
Now bliss mocks hope, then joys were blessings lent.
LVII.
O ye, the eastern glory of whose hope,
Laughs at the shadow, which your phantom shames,
Abase the aery tenour of your scope,
E’er woe involve its promise, earth your frames:
Who ponder, reckon vain all reason’s forts;
Who think not, live, but know not joy’s true tones:
They wander, vacant, through high Nature’s courts;
Their spirit seems unworthy, even of groans:
Intrusion of vain tears but mocks the woe,
Whose dregs are tasteless of the former draught;
Time was, when the harp wrung the tears that flow,
Grateful, since needful, then the people quafft.
But time rolls on, and in its changes brings
The age that scoffs at its ancestors’ wings.