Angelic worth, soon shuffled in the dark
With every vice, and swept to brutal dust?
Merit is madness; virtue is a crime;
A crime to reason, if it costs us pain
Unpaid: what pain, amidst a thousand more,
To think the most abandon’d, after days 713
Of triumph o’er their betters, find in death
As soft a pillow, nor make fouler clay!
“Duty! Religion!—these, our duty done,
Imply reward. Religion is mistake.