Sends their forerunner (conscious of th' event)
Printing, his most pernicious instrument!
Wild controversy then, which long had slept,
Into the press from ruin'd cloisters leap'd;
No longer by implicit faith we err,
Whilst every man's his own interpreter;
No more conducted now by Aaron's rod,
Lay-elders from their ends create their god.
But seven wise men the ancient world did know,
We scarce know seven who think themselves not so.
When man learn'd undefiled religion,
We were commanded to be all as one;
Fiery disputes that union have calcined;
Almost as many minds as men we find,
And when that flame finds combustible earth,
Thence fatuus fires, and meteors take their birth;
Legions of sects and insects come in throngs;
To name them all would tire a hundred tongues.
So were the Centaurs of Ixion's race,
Who a bright cloud for Juno did embrace;
And such the monsters of Chimæra's kind,
Lions before, and dragons were behind.
Then from the clashes between popes and kings,
Debate, like sparks from flints' collision, springs:
As Jove's loud thunderbolts were forged by heat,
The like our Cyclops on their anvils beat;
All the rich mines of learning ransack'd are,
To furnish ammunition for this war:
Uncharitable zeal our reason whets,
And double edges on our passion sets;
'Tis the most certain sign the world's accursed,
That the best things corrupted are the worst;
'Twas the corrupted light of knowledge hurl'd
Sin, death, and ignorance o'er all the world;
That sun like this (from which our sight we have), 179
Gazed on too long, resumes the light he gave;
And when thick mists of doubts obscure his beams,
Our guide is error, and our visions, dreams;
'Twas no false heraldry when madness drew
Her pedigree from those who too much knew ;
Who in deep mines for hidden knowledge toils,
Like guns o'ercharged, breaks, misses, or recoils;
When subtle wits have spun their thread too fine,
'Tis weak and fragile, like Arachne's line:
True piety, without cessation toss'd
By theories, the practic part is lost,
And like a ball bandied 'twixt pride and wit,
Rather than yield, both sides the prize will quit:
Then whilst his foe each gladiator foils,
The atheist looking on enjoys the spoils.
Through seas of knowledge we our course advance,
Discov'ring still new worlds of ignorance;
And these discov'ries make us all confess
That sublunary science is but guess;
Matters of fact to man are only known,
And what seems more is mere opinion;
The standers-by see clearly this event;
All parties say they're sure, yet all dissent;
With their new light our bold inspectors press,
Like Cham, to show their fathers' nakedness,
By whose example after ages may
Discover we more naked are than they;
All human wisdom to divine is folly;
This truth the wisest man made melancholy;
Hope, or belief, or guess, gives some relief,
But to be sure we are deceived brings grief:
Who thinks his wife is virtuous, though not so,
Is pleased and patient till the truth he know.
Our God, when heaven and earth he did create,
Form'd man who should of both participate;
If our lives' motions theirs must imitate,
Our knowledge, like our blood, must circulate.
When like a bridegroom from the east, the sun
Sets forth, he thither, whence he came, doth run;
Into earth's spongy veins the ocean sinks,
Those rivers to replenish which he drinks;
So learning, which from reason's fountain springs,
Back to the source some secret channel brings.
'Tis happy when our streams of knowledge flow
To fill their banks, but not to overthrow.
Ut metit Autumnus fruges quas parturit Estas,
Sic ortum Natura, dedit Deus his quoque finem.
ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF HENRY LORD HASTINGS, 1650.
READER, preserve thy peace: those busy eyes
Will weep at their own sad discoveries,
When every line they add improves thy loss,
Till, having view'd the whole, they seem a cross,
Such as derides thy passions' best relief,
And scorns the succours of thy easy grief;
Yet lest thy ignorance betray thy name
Of man and pious, read and mourn; the shame
Of an exemption from just sense doth show
Irrational, beyond excess of woe.
Since reason, then, can privilege a tear,
Manhood, uncensured, pay that tribute here
Upon this noble urn. Here, here remains
Dust far more precious than in India's veins;
Within these cold embraces, ravish'd, lies
That which completes the age's tyrannies;
Who weak to such another ill appear,
For what destroys our hope secures our fear.
What sin, unexpiated in this land
Of groans, hath guided so severe a hand?
The late great victim that your altars knew,
Ye angry gods! might have excused this new
Oblation, and have spared one lofty light
Of virtue, to inform our steps aright;
By whose example good, condemnèd, we
Might have run on to kinder destiny.
But as the leader of the herd fell first
A sacrifice, to quench the raging thirst
Of inflamed vengeance for past crimes, so none
But this white, fatted youngling could atone,
By his untimely fate, that impious smoke,
That sullied earth, and did Heaven's pity
choke.
Let it suffice for us that we have lost
In him more than the widow'd world can boast
In any lump of her remaining clay.
Fair as the gray-eyed morn he was; the day,
Youthful, and climbing upwards still, imparts
No haste like that of his increasing parts.
Like the meridian beam, his virtue's light
Was seen as full of comfort, and as bright.
Had his noon been as fixed, as clear-but he,
That only wanted immortality
To make him perfect, now submits to night,
In the black bosom of whose sable spite
He leaves a cloud of flesh behind, and flies,
Refined, all ray and glory, to the skies.
1Great victim': Charles I.
Great saint! shine there in an eternal sphere,
And tell those powers to whom thou now draw'st near,
That by our trembling sense, in Hastings dead,
Their anger and our ugly faults are read,
The short lines of whose life did to our eyes
Their love and majesty epitomise;
Tell them, whose stern decrees impose our laws;
The feasted grave may close her hollow jaws.
Though Sin search Nature, to provide her here
A second entertainment half so dear,
She'll never meet a plenty like this hearse,
Till Time present her with the universe!
THOUGH all the actions of your life are crown'd
With wisdom, nothing makes them more renown'd,
Than that those years, which others think extreme,
Nor to yourself nor us uneasy seem;
Under which weight most, like th' old giants, groan,
When Etna on their backs by Jove was thrown.
CATO. What you urge, Scipio, from right reason flows;
All parts of age seem burthensome to those
Who virtue's and true wisdom's happiness
Cannot discern; but they who those possess,
In what's impos'd by Nature find no grief,
Of which our age is (next our death) the chief,
Which though all equally desire t' obtain,
Yet when they have obtain❜d it, they complain;
1 This piece is adapted from Cicero, ' De Senectute.'
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