Kind souls! to teach their tenantry to prize And truth, propos'd to reas'ners wise as they, They die.-Death lends them, pleas'd and as in sport, All the grim honours of his ghastly court. Far other paintings grace the chamber now, 260 With mournful scutcheons, and dim lamps be tween; Proclaim their titles to the crowd around, But they that wore them move not at the sound; The coronet, placed idly at their head, Adds nothing now to the degraded dead, And ev❜n the star, that glitters on the bier, Peace to all such-'twere pity to offend By useless censure, whom we cannot mend; 270 'Twas there we found them, and must leave them there. As, when two pilgrims in a forest stray, Both may be lost, yet each in his own way; In vain Opinion's waste and dang'rous wild; 279 Each man's belief is right in his own eyes; And he that blames, what they have blindly chose, Incurs resentment for the love he shows. Say, botanist, within whose province fall The cedar and the hyssop on the wall, Of all that deck the lanes, the fields, the bow'rs, What parts the kindred tribes of weeds and flow'rs? Sweet scent, or lovely form, or both combin'd, Distinguish ev'ry cultivated kind; The want of both denotes a meaner breed, And Chloe from her garland picks the weed. 291 Esteem them, sow them, rear them, and protect, 300 (Oh cast them from thee!) are weeds, arrant weeds. Ethelred's house, the centre of six ways, Diverging each from each, like equal rays, Himself as bountiful as April rains, Lord paramount of the surrounding plains, Would give relief of bed and board to none, But guests that sought it in th' appointed ONE, And they might enter at his open door, Ev'n till his spacious hall would hold no more. He sent a servant forth by ev'ry road, To sound his horn, and publish it abroad, 310 That all might mark-knight, menial, high, and low, An ord'nance it concern'd them much to know. If after all some headstrong hardy lout No! the decree was just and without flaw; And he that made, had right to make, the law; His sov'reign pow'r and pleasure unrestrain'd, 320 The wrong was his, who wrongfully complain'd. Yet half mankind maintain a churlish strife Because the deed, by which his love confirms Compliance with his will your lot ensures, As with a frown to say, Do this, and live. He will give freely, or he will withhold; His soul abhors a mercenary thought, 331 And him as deeply who abhors it not; He stipulates indeed, but merely this, Of all the ways that seem to promise fair, To place you where his saints his presence share, In terms as plain, Himself has shut the rest. All speakers, yet all language at a loss. 341 |