Sometimes 'tis grateful to the rich to try
A short vicissitude and fit of Poverty;
A savoury dish, a homely treat,
Where all is plain, where all is neat,
Without the stately spacious room,
The Persian carpet or the Tyrian loom
Clear up the cloudy foreheads of the great.
The Sun is in the Lion mounted high,
The Syrian star
Barks from afar,
And with his sultry breath infects the sky;
The ground below is parched, the heavens above us fry;
The shepherd drives his fainting flock
Beneath the covert of a rock
And seeks refreshing rivulets nigh.
The Sylvans to their shade retire,
Those very shades and streams new streams require,
And want a cooling breeze of wind to fan the raging fire.
Thou, what befits the new Lord May'r,
And what the City Faction dare,
And what the Gallique arms will do,
And what the quiverbearing foe,
Art anxiously inquisitive to know.
But God has wisely hid from human sight
The dark decrees of future fate,
And sown their seeds in depth of night:
He laughs at all the giddy turns of state
When mortals search too soon and learn too late.
Enjoy the present smiling hour,
And put it out of Fortune's power.
The tide of business, like the running stream,
Is sometimes high and sometimes low,
A quiet ebb or a tempestuous flow,
And always in extreme.
Now with a noiseless gentle course
It keeps within the middle bed,
Anon it lifts aloft its head
And bears down all before it with tempestuous force;
And trunks of trees come rolling down,
Sheep and their folds together drown,
Both house and homestead into seas are borne,
And rocks are from their old foundations torn,
And woods, made thin with winds, their scattered honours mourn.
Happy the man—and happy he alone,—
He who can call to-day his own,
He who, secure within, can say
'To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day:
Be fair or foul or rain or shine,
The joys I have possessed in spite of Fate are mine,
Not Heaven itself upon the Past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.'
Fortune, that with malicious joy
Does Man, her slave, oppress,
Proud of her office to destroy,
Is seldom pleased to bless;
Still various and unconstant still,
But with an inclination to be ill,
Promotes, degrades, delights in strife
And makes a lottery of life.
I can enjoy her while she's kind,
But when she dances in the wind,
And shakes the wings and will not stay,
I puff the prostitute away.
The little or the much she gave is quietly resigned:
Content with poverty my soul I arm,
And Vertue, tho' in rags, will keep me warm.
What is't to me,
Who never sail in her unfaithful sea,
If storms arise and clouds grow black,
If the mast split and threaten wrack?
Then let the greedy merchant fear
For his ill-gotten gain,
And pray to gods that will not hear,
While the debating winds and billows bear
His wealth into the main.
For me, secure from Fortune's blows,
Secure of what I cannot lose,
In my small pinnace I can sail,
Contemning all the blustering roar:
And running with a merry gale
With friendly stars my safety seek
Within some little winding creek,
And see the storm ashore.