What is this absorbs me quite, Steals my senses, shuts my sight, Drowns my spirits, draws my breath? Tell me, my soul, can this be death?

The world recedes; it disappears;
Heaven opens on my eyes; my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:

Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O grave! where is thy victory?

O death! where is thy sting?

FROM "ELOÏSA TO ABELARD.”

In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heavenly-pensive Contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing Melancholy reigns;

What means this tumult in a vestal's veins?
Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?
Yet, yet I love!—From Abelard it came,
And Eloisa yet must kiss the name.

Dear, fatal name! rest ever unrevealed,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence sealed:
Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise,
Where, mixed with God's, his loved idea lies:
Oh, write it not, my hand--the name appears
Already written-wash it out, my tears!
In vain lost Eloïsa weeps and prays,
Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys.
Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains
Repentant sighs and voluntary pains:

Ye rugged rocks! which holy knees have worn;
Ye grots and caverns shagged with horrid thorn!
Shrines! where their vigils pale-eyed virgins keep;
And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep!
Though cold like yon, unmoved and silent grown,
I have not yet forgot myself to stone.
All is not Heaven's while Abelard has part,
Still rebel Nature holds out half my heart;
Nor prayers nor fasts its stubborn pulse restrain,
Nor tears, for ages taught to flow in vain.

Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose,
That well-known name awakens all my woes.
Oh, name forever sad! forever dear!

Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear.
I tremble too, where'er my own I find,
Some dire misfortune follows close behind.
Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow,
Led through a sad variety of woe:

Now warm in love, now withering in my bloom,
Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!

There stern Religion quenched th' unwilling flame, There died the best of passions, love and fame.

Yet write, oh write me all, that I may join Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine. Nor foes nor Fortune take this power away; And is my Abelard less kind than they? Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare, Love but demands what else were shed in prayer; No happier task these faded eyes pursue; To read and weep is all they now can do.

Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief; Ah, more than share it, give me all thy grief. Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid, Some banished lover, or some captive maid; They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,

Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires,

The virgin's wish without her fears impart,
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.

CONCLUSION OF THE "ESSAY ON MAN."
What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,
The soul's calm sunshine, and the heart-felt joy,
Is Virtue's prize: A better would you fix?
Then give Humility a coach and six,
Justice a conqueror's sword, or Truth a gown,
Or Public Spirit its great cure, a crown.
Weak, foolish man! will Heaven reward us there
With the same trash mad mortals wish for here?
The boy and man an individual makes,
Yet sigh'st thou now for apples and for cakes?
Go, like the Indian, in another life

Expect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife;
As well as dream such trifles are assigned,
As toys and empires, for a godlike mind;
Rewards, that either would to virtue bring
No joy, or be destructive of the thing;
How oft by these at sixty are undone
The virtues of a saint at twenty-one!
To whom can riches give repute, or trust,
Content, or pleasure, but the good and just?
Judges and senates have been bought for gold;
Esteem and love were never to be sold.

O fool! to think God hates the worthy mind,
The lover and the love of human-kind,
Whose life is healthful, and whose conscience

clear,

Because he wants a thousand pounds a year!

Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.
Fortune in men has some small difference made,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade ;
The cobbler aproned, and the parson gowned,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned.
"What differ more," you cry, "than crown and
cowl!"

I'll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,
Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;
The rest is all but leather or prunella.

A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod:
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
Fame but from death a villain's name can save,
As Justice tears his body from the grave;
When what t' oblivion better were resigned,
Is hung on high to poison half mankind.
All fame is foreign, but of true desert;
Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart:
One self-approving hour whole years outweighs
Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas;
And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,
Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels.

In parts superior what advantage lies?
Tell (for you can) what is it to be wise?
"Tis but to know how little can be known;

Look next on greatness; say, where greatness lies:

"Where but among the heroes and the wise?"
Heroes are much the same, the point's agreed,
From Macedonia's madman to the Swede;
The whole strange purpose of their lives, to find,
Or make, an enemy of all mankind!

Not one looks backward, onward still he goes,
Yet ne'er looks forward further than his nose.
No less alike the politic and wise:

All sly slow things, with circumspective eyes:
Men in their loose, unguarded hours they take;
Not that themselves are wise, but others weak.
But grant that those can conquer, these

cheat:

'Tis phrase absurd to call a villain great;
Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave,
Is but the more a fool, the more a knave.
Who noble ends by noble means obtains,
Or, failing, smiles in exile or in chains,
Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed
Like Socrates, that man is great indeed.

can

What's fame? a fancied life in others' breath,
A thing beyond us, ev'n before our death.
Just what you hear, you have; and what's un-
known,

The same, my lord, if Tully's, or your own.
All that we feel of it begins and ends
In the small circle of our foes or friends;
To all beside as much an empty shade
An Eugene living, as a Cæsar dead;

Alike or when, or where they shone, or shine,
Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine.

Condemned in business or in arts to drudge,
Without a second, or without a judge:
Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land?
All fear, none aid you, and few understand.
Painful pre-eminence! yourself to view
Above life's weakness, and its comforts too.

Bring, then, these blessings to a strict account :
Make fair deductions; see to what they mount:
How much of other each is sure to cost;
How much for other oft is wholly lost;
How inconsistent greater goods with these;
How sometimes life is risked, and always ease:
Think, and if still the things thy envy call,
Say, wouldst thou be the man to whom they fall?
To sigh for ribbons, if thou art so silly,
Mark how they grace Lord Umbra, or Sir Billy.
Is yellow dirt the passion of thy life?
Look but on Gripus, or on Gripus' wife.
If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined,
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind:
Or, ravished with the whistling of a name,
See Cromwell, damned to everlasting fame!

Know, then, this truth (enough for man to know),
"Virtue alone is happiness below:"
The only point where human bliss stands still,
And tastes the good without the fall to ill;
Where only merit constant pay receives,
Is blest in what it takes, and what it gives;
The joy unequalled, if its end it gain,
And if it lose, attended with no pain;
Without satiety, though e'er so blest,

And but more relished as the more distressed:
The broadest mirth unfeeling Folly wears,

Less pleasing far than Virtue's very tears;
Good, from each object, from each place, acquired,
Forever exercised, yet never tired;

Never elated while one man's oppressed;
Never dejected while another's blest;
And where no wants, no wishes can remain,
Since but to wish more virtue is to gain.

See the sole bliss Heaven could on all bestow! Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know?

Yet poor with fortune, and with learning blind,
The bad must miss, the good, untaught, will find;
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through Nature up to Nature's God;
Pursues that chain which links th' immense design,
Joins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine;
Sees that no being any bliss can know
But touches some above and some below;
Learns from this union of the rising whole
The first, last purpose of the human soul;
And knows where faith, law, morals all began,
All end in love of God and love of man.
For him alone Hope leads from goal to goal,
And opens still, and opens on his soul;
Till, lengthened on to Faith, and unconfined,
It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind.
He sees why Nature plants in man alone
Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown
Nature, whose dictates to no other kind

Are given in vain, but what they seek they find):
Wise is her present; she connects in this
His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss;
At once his own bright prospect to be blest,
And strongest motive to assist the rest.

Self-love, thus pushed to social, to divine,
Gives thee to make thy neighbor's blessing thine.
Is this too little for the boundless heart?
Extend it, let thy enemies have part.
Grasp the whole worlds of reason, life, and sense
In one close system of benevolence;
Happier as kinder, in whate'er degree,
And height of bliss but height of charity.

God loves from whole to parts; but human soul Must rise from individual to the whole. Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake: The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds, Another still, and still another spreads; Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace; His country next, and next all human race; Wide and more wide, th' o'erflowings of the mind Take every creature in, of every kind; Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest, And Heaven beholds its image in his breast.

Come, then, my friend! my genius! come along! Oh master of the poet and the song!

And while the Muse now stoops, or now ascends,
To man's low passions, or their glorious ends,
Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise,
To fall with diguity, with temper rise;
Formed by thy converse, happily to steer,
From grave to gay, from lively to severe;
Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease;
Intent to reason, or polite to please.
Oh, while along the stream of time thy name
Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame,
Say, shall my little bark attendant sail,
Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale?
When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose,
Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes,
Shall then this verse to future age pretend
Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend?
That, urged by thee, I turned the tuneful art,
From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart?
For Wit's false mirror held up Nature's light;
Showed erring Pride, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT;
That reason, passion, answer one great aim;
That true self-love and social are the same;
That virtue only makes our bliss below;
And all our knowledge is ourselves to know?1

OF THE CHARACTERS OF WOMEN.
FROM "TO A LADY," EPISTLE II.

Ah! friend, to dazzle let the vain design;
To raise the thought and touch the heart be thine!
That charm shall grow, while what fatigues the ring
Flaunts and goes down, an unregarded thing:
So, when the Sun's broad beam has tired the sight,
All mild ascends the Moon's more sober light,
Serene in virgin modesty she shines,
And unobserved the glaring orb declines.

Oh! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray
Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day:
She, who can love a sister's charms, or hear
Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear;
She who ne'er answers till a husband cools,
Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules;
Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,
Yet has her humor most when she obeys;
Lets fops or fortune fly which way they will,
Disdains all loss of tickets or codille;
Spleen, vapors, or small-pox, above them all,
And mistress of herself, though china fall.

And yet, believe me, good as well as ill, Woman's at best a contradiction still.

1 The "Essay on Man" is in four epistles, addressed to Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke.

Heaven, when it strives to polish all it can
Its last best work, but forms a softer man;
Picks from each sex, to make the favorite blest,
Your love of pleasure, our desire of rest:
Blends, in exception to all general rules,
Your taste of follies with our scorn of fools:
Reserve with frankness, art with truth allied,
Courage with softness, modesty with pride;
Fixed principles, with fancy ever new;
Shakes all together, and produces-you.
Be this a woman's fame! with this unblest,
Toasts live a scorn, and queens may die a jest.
This Phoebus promised (I forget the year)
When those blue eyes first opened on the sphere;
Ascendant Phoebus watched that hour with care,
Averted half your parents' simple prayer;
And gave you beauty, but denied the pelf
That buys your sex a tyrant o'er itself.

The generous god, who gold and wit refines,
And ripens spirits as he ripens mines,

Kept dross for duchesses, the world shall know it,
To you gave sense, good humor, and a poet.

Even when proud Cæsar midst triumphal cars,
The spoils of nations, and the pomp of wars,
Ignobly vain, and impotently great,
Showed Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state;
As her dead father's reverend image past,
The pomp was darkened, and the day o'ercast;
The triumph ceased, tears gushed from every eye;
The world's great victor passed unheeded by;
Her last good man dejected Rome adored,
And honored Cæsar's less than Cato's sword.
Britons, attend: be worth like this approved,
And show you have the virtue to be moved.
With honest scorn the first famed Cato viewed
Rome learning arts from Greece, whom she subdued;
Your scene precariously subsists too long
On French translation, and Italian song.
Dare to have sense yourselves; assert the stage,
Be justly warmed with your own native rage;
Such plays alone should win a British ear,
As Cato's self had not disdained to hear.

PROLOGUE TO MR. ADDISON'S TRAGEDY OF "CATO."

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold:
For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage,
Commanding tears to stream through every age;
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept,
And foes to Virtue wondered how they wept.
Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move
The hero's glory, or the virgin's love;
In pitying Love, we but our weakness show,
And wild Ambition well deserves its woe.
Here tears shall flow from a more generous cause,
Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws:
He bids your breasts with ancient ardor rise,
And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes.
Virtue confessed in human shape he draws,
What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was :
No common object to your sight displays.
But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys,
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling with a falling state.
While Cato gives his little senate laws,
What bosom beats not in his country's cause?
Who sees him act, but envies every deed?
Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed?

THE MOON.

TRANSLATED FROM HOMER.

As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene,
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole;
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies:
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.

FROM "THE TEMPLE OF FAME."

Nor Fame I slight, nor for her favors call:
She comes unlooked for, if she comes at all.
But if the purchase cost so dear a price
As soothing folly, or exalting vice,-
Oh! if the muse must flatter lawless sway,
And follow still where fortune leads the way,-
Or if no basis bear my rising name,

But the fallen ruins of another's fame,-
Then teach me, Heaven! to scorn the guilty bays,
Drive from my breast that wretched lust of praise;
Unblemished let me live, or die unknown:

| Oh, grant an honest fame, or grant me none!

LINES ON ADDISON.

When Pope first came to town, a boy and little known, he courted Addison, and wrote an admirable prologue for his "Cato." Gradually a coolness arose between them. Some think that Addison was jealous of Pope's brightening fame; but it is far more probable that Pope, whose peevish temper was the accompaniment of a sickly frame, took offence at fancied wrongs. His "portrait" of Addison must, therefore, be regarded more as a literary curiosity than as an honest likecess. The lines are from the "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot." Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires; Blest with each talent and each art to please, And born to write, couverse, and live with ease: Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike; Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserved to blame or to commend, A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend; Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging that he ne'er obliged; Like Cato, give his little senate laws, And sit attentive to his own applause; Whilst wits and Templars every sentence raise, And wonder with a foolish face of praise :Who but must laugh if such a one there be? Who would not weep if Atticus were he?

CONCLUSION OF "THE DUNCIAD."

She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold
Of Night primeval, and of Chaos old!
Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying rainbows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sickening stars fade off the ethereal plain;
As Argus' eye, by Hermes' wand opprest,
Closed one by one to everlasting rest;
Thus, at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after art goes out, and all is night.
See skulking Truth, to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head!
Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of metaphysic begs defence,
And metaphysic calls for aid on sense!

ra.

See mystery to mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,

And unawares morality expires.

Nor public flame, nor private dares to shine:
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored;
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all.

John Gay.

A Devonshire man of good family (1688-1732), Gay was first apprenticed to a silk-mercer in London. Not liking the business, he got his discharge, and commenced writing poetry. As domestic secretary to the Duchess of Monmouth, he found leisure for literary pursuits. He is best known by his "Fables" and his "Beggars' Ope"This last, produced in 1727, was the great success of his life. Swift had suggested to Gay the idea of a Newgate pastoral. This gave rise to the "Beggars' Opera." It was offered to Cibber, at Drury Lane, and refused. It was then offered to Rich, at Covent Garden, and accepted. Its success gave rise to the saying that "it made Rich gay, and Gay rich." It was composed in ridicule of the Italian Opera, and had such a run that it drove the Italians away for that season.

As a poet, Gay hardly rises above mediocrity; but he was the inventor of the English Ballad Opera, and some of his "Fables" are excellent, having a philosophical and moral purpose far beyond that of ordinary verses. His "Trivia, or The Art of Walking the Streets of London," has some witty lines; and his "Epistle to Pope on the Completion of his Translation of Homer's Iliad " is still worth reading as a rapid sketch of Pope's fashionable acquaintances. The fable of "The Hare and Many Friends" is supposed to be drawn from Gay's own experience; for he sought court favor, and was grievously disappointed.

Pope says that Gay "was a natural man, without design, who spoke what he thought, and just as he thought it." Swift was deeply attached to him, and Pope characterizes Gay as

"Of manners gentle, of affections mild;

In wit, a man; simplicity, a child."

Gay's mortal remains were interred in Westminster Ab bey, where a handsome monument was erected to his memory by the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry.

SWEET WILLIAM'S FAREWELL TO BLACK-
EYED SUSAN.

All in the Downs the fleet was moored,
The streamers waving in the wind,
When black-eyed Susan came aboard.
"Oh, where shall I my true love find?