Classic Poem

Fragment I.

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Truss with your falsehoods, ye dogmatic fools!
Refuse of colleges, and dregs of schools!
Why buds the olive, and why grows the vine?
To glad our hearts, and make our faces shine:
In vain before us has th' Almighty plac'd
Delicious viands, if we dare not taste;
If 'tis damnation to admire the fair,
Why has he deck'd them with such curious care?
Their graceful limbs in nice proportion drest,
Flush'd the red cheek, and rais'd the panting breast?
Look, rev'rend dotards! say, has he devis'd
Such striking beauties but to be despis'd?
Say, for their ruin has he giv'n to all
Th' instinctive impulse, and the vig'rous call?
Ungrateful thought! where'er we cast our eyes
Scenes of his bounty and his goodness rise!
The spring her various mantle does unsold,
And autumn gilds the waving fields with gold;
Disporting fishes people ev'ry flood,
And birds melodious carrol in the wood;
Whate'er in water, air, or earth we see,
In life rejoices, why not therefore we?
Will God to man what all enjoy deny?
Has God been more indulgent to a fly?
Absurd to think! ungenerous mistrust!
No; God is merciful, and God is just.
M UCH injur'd man! in prejudice's spite,
Awake, arise, assert thy native right;
With chcicest viands store the genial board,
Thy labour's wages, and thy toil's reward;
Make merry with thy friends, and boldly join
The joys of women, and the joys of wine;
Enjoy thyself , by no false terrors aw'd;
The voice of Nature is the voice of God

Fragment II.

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To thinking sages be this truth reveal'd,
But be't for ever from the croud conceal'd:
Virtue is vanity, and vice is vain;
Wisdom and folly profit not a man;
And if to honour men of wisdom rise,
To chance they owe it; not that they are wise:
Tis only chance we providence miscall,
And good and ill promiscuous flows to all;
Alike their fortune, and alike their fare,
The sons of Belial, and the sons of pray'r;
The grov'ling blockhead, and the lofty bard;
The doubting deist, and sequacious herd;
The fanatic, who fears to pledge his troth,
And libertine, who glories in an oath;
Alike the follies which they act and see,
So like, they hardly differ in degree;
Alike they flourish; and alike they grow,
Till crampt with gout, and crown'd with age's snew;
Alike in madness to the grave descend,
And life and vanity together end;
Alike their wisdom in the silent dust,
Who know but little, or who know the most,
Shut from the knowledge of whatever's done,
Below the cheering influence of the fun.

Presumptuous man! who arrogates thy rise
From the blest Ruler of the distant skies;
Waste not the age of wantonness and love
In fond reliance on the bliss above;
But, lull'd on pleasure's lap, enjoy thy life,
With a fair mistress, or a fruitful wife:
Love's genial raptures, and the goblet's glow,
Is all the pleasure that a man can know;
For, dead, our pleasure and our pain is done;
And all is vanity below the sun.