O treacherous Conscience! while she seems to sleep
On rose and myrtle, lull’d with syren song;
While she seems, nodding o’er her charge, to drop 258
On headlong appetite the slacken’d rein,
And give us up to licence, unrecall’d,
Unmark’d;—see, from behind her secret stand,
The sly informer minutes every fault,
And her dread diary with horror fills.
Not the gross act alone employs her pen;
She reconnoitres fancy’s airy band,