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As full, as perfect, in vile Man that mourns,
As the rapt Seraph that adores and burns:
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

Cease then, nor order imperfection name:
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.
Submit. In this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as bless'd as thou canst bear:
Safe in the hand of one disposing power,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;

All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;
All Discord, Harmony not understood;
All partial Evil, universal Good:

And, spite of pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

44.-Self-Knowledge.

KNOW thou thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer ;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
'Alike in igorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl'd;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

Pope.

Go, wond'rous creature! mount where Science guides; Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;

Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old Time, and regulate the Sun;
Go, soar with Plato to the empyreal sphere,
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;
Or tread the mazy round his followers trod,
And, quitting sense, call imitating God;
As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,
And turn their heads to imitate the Sun.
Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule-
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!

45.-Vice and Virtue.

FOOLS but too oft into the notion fall,
That Vice or Virtue there is none at all.
If white and black, blend, soften, and unite
A thousand ways, is there no black or white?
Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain;
'Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain.
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Pope.

But where the Extreme of Vice, was ne'er agreed:
Ask where's the North? at York, 'tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,

At Greenland, Zembla, or I know not where.
No creature owns it in the first degree,

But thinks his neighbour farther gone than he;
E'en those who dwell beneath its very zone,
Or never feel the rage, or never own:
What happier natures shrink at with affright,
The hard inhabitant contends is right.

Virtuous and vicious every Man must be,
Few in th' extreme, but all in the degree;
The rogue and fool by fits are fair and wise;
And e'en the best, by fits, what they despise.
'Tis but by parts we follow good or ill;
For, Vice or Virtue, Self directs it still;
Each individual seeks a several goal;

But Heaven's great view is One, and that the Whole.

Pope.

46.-On the Plain of Marathon.

WHERE'ER we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground,
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould!
But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,
Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon :
Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold,
Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone:
Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon.
The sun-the soil-but not the slave the same,
Unchang'd in all except its foreign lord,

Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame,
The battle-field-where Persia's victim horde
First bow'd beneath the brunt of Hella's sword,
As on the morn to distant Glory dear,
When Marathon became a magic word-
Which utter'd-to the hearer's eye appear
The camp-the host-the fight-the conqueror's
career!

The flying Mede-his shaftless broken bow,
The fiery Greek-his red pursuing spear,
Mountains above-Earth's-Ocean's plain below,
Death in the front-destruction in the rear!
Such was the scene-what now remaineth here?
What sacred trophy marks the hallow'd ground
Recording Freedom's smile and Asia's tear?-
The rifled arn-the violated mound-

The dust-thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns around.

Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past,
Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng;
Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast,
Hail the bright clime of battle and of song;
Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue
Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore;
Boast of the aged! lesson of the young!
Which sages venerate and bards adore,
As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.

The parted bosom clings to wonted home, If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth; He that is lonely hither let him roam, And gaze complacent on congenial earth. Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth; But he whom sadness sootheth may abide, And scarce regret the region of his birth, When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side, Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died. Byron.

47.-On the Present State of Athens.

ANCIENT of days! august Athena! where,

Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone-glimmering through the dream of things

that were,

First in the race that led to Glory's goal,

They won, and pass'd away-is this the whole? A school-boy's tale, the wonder of an hour! The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower, Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power. Son of the morning, rise! approach you here! Come-but molest not yon defenceless urn: Look on this spot-a nation's sepulchre ! Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn. Even gods must yield-religions take their turn: 'Twas Jove's-'tis Mahomet's-and other creeds Will rise with other years, till man shall learn Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds; Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds.

Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heavenIs't not enough, unhappy thing! to know Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given, That being, thou wouldst be again, and go, Thou know'st not, reck'st not to what region, so On earth no more, but mingled with the skies? Still wilt thou dream on future joy and woe? Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies: That little urn saith more than thousand homilies.

Or burst the vanish'd Hero's lofty mound;
Far on the solitary shore he sleeps:

He fell, and falling nations mourn'd around; But now not one of saddening thousands weeps, Nor warlike-worshipper his vigil keeps Where demi-gods appear'd, as records tell. Remove yon skull from out the scatter'd heapsIs that a temple where a god may dwell? Why ev'n the worm at last disdains her shatter'd cell! Look on its broken arch, its ruin'd wall, Its chambers desolate, and portals foul: Yes, this was once Ambition's airy hall, The dome of Thought, the palace of the Soul: Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole, The gay recess of Wisdom and of Wit, And Passion's host, that never brook'd control: Can all, saint, sage, or sophist ever writ, People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?

Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son! "All that we know is, nothing can be known." Why should we shrink from what we cannot shun? Each has his pang, but feeble sufferers groan With brain-born dreams of evil all their own. Pursue what Chance or Fate proclaimeth best ; Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron : There no forc'd banquet claims the sated guest, But Silence spreads the couch of ever welcome rest. Yet if, as holiest men have deem'd, there be A land of souls beyond that sable shore, To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee And Sophists, madly vain of dubious lore; How sweet it were in concert to adore With those who made our mortal labours light! To hear each voice we fear'd to hear no more! Behold each mighty shade reveal'd to sight, The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the

right.

Byron.

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