As if by nature they'd been served More gently, than their fate deserved, Take pains, in justice, to invent, And study their own punishment; That, as their crimes should greater grow, So might their own inflictions too. Hence bloody wars at first began, The artificial plague of man,
That from his own invention rise, To scourge his own iniquities;
That if the heavens should chance to spare Supplies of constant poisoned air, They might not, with unfit delay, For lingering destruction stay; Nor seek recruits of death so far,
But plague themselves with blood and war. And if these fail, there is no good, Kind nature e'er on man bestowed,
But he can easily divert
To his own misery and hurt;
Make that, which heaven meant to bless
Th' ungrateful world with, gentle peace, With luxury and excess, as fast
As war and desolation, waste;
Promote mortality, and kill,
As fast as arms, by sitting still:
Like earthquakes slay without a blow, And only moving, overthrow; Make law and equity as dear, As plunder and free-quarter were, And fierce encounters at the bar Undo as fast, as those in war; Enrich bawds, whores, and usurers, Pimps, scriveners, silenced ministers, That get estates by being undone For tender conscience, and have none; Like those, that with their credit drive A trade without a stock, and thrive;
Advance men in the church and state For being of the meanest rate, Raised for their double-guiled deserts, Before integrity and parts;
Produce more grievous complaints For plenty, than before for wants, And make a rich and fruitful year A greater grievance than a dear; Make jests of greater dangers far, Than those they trembled at in war; Till, unawares, they've laid a train To blow the public up again; Rally with horror, and in sport, Rebellion and destruction court, And make fanatics, in despite Of all their madness, reason right, And vouch to all they have foreshown, As other monsters oft have done, Although from truth and sense as far, As all their other maggots are: For things said false, and never meant, Do oft prove true by accident.
That wealth, that bounteous fortune sends
As presents to her dearest friends, Is oft laid out upon a purchase
Of two yards long in parish churches; And those too happy men that bought it Had lived, and happier too, without it: For what does vast wealth bring, but cheat, Law, luxury, disease, and debt, Pain, pleasure, discontent, and sport, An easy-troubled life, and short?
For men ne'er digged so deep into The bowels of the earth below, For metals that are found to dwell Near neighbour to the pit of hell, And have a magic power to sway The greedy souls of men that way,
But with their bodies have been fain To fill those trenches up again, When bloody battles have been fought For sharing that which they took out. For wealth is all things that conduce To man's destruction or his use; A standard both to buy and sell All things from heaven down to hell.* But all these plagues are nothing near Those, far more cruel and severe, Unhappy man takes pains to find, T' inflict himself upon his mind: And out of his own bowels spins A rack and torture for his sins; Torments himself, in vain, to know That most, which he can never do; And the more strictly 'tis denied, The more he is unsatisfied; Is busy in finding scruples out, To languish in eternal doubt, See spectres in the dark, and ghosts, And starts, as horses do at posts; And, when his eyes assist him least, Discerns such subtle objects best; On hypothetic dreams and visions Grounds everlasting disquisitions, And raises endless controversies On vulgar theorems and hearsays; Grows positive and confident, In things so far beyond th' extent Of human sense, he does not know Whether they be at all, or no;
And doubts as much in things, that are As plainly evident, and clear;
*The fourteen lines terminating here were written by Butler on the opposite page of the MS. Mr. Thyer consigns them to a note; but as they were clearly intended to form a part of the poem, they are here inserted in the text.
Disdains all useful sense, and plain, T' apply to th' intricate and vain; And cracks his brains in plodding on That, which is never to be known; To pose himself with subtleties, And hold no other knowledge wise; Although the subtler all things are, They're but to nothing the more near; And the less weight they can sustain, The more he still lays on in vain; And hangs his soul upon as nice And subtle curiosities,
As one of that vast multitude,
That on a needle's point have stood;* Weighs right and wrong, and true and false, Upon as nice and subtle scales,
As those that turn upon a plane With th' hundredth part of half a grain ; And still the subtiler they move, The sooner false and useless prove. So man, that thinks to force and strain Beyond its natural sphere, his brain, In vain torments it on the rack, And, for improving, sets it back; Is ignorant of his own extent, And that to which his aims are bent, Is lost in both, and breaks his blade Upon the anvil, where 'twas made: For as abortions cost more pain Than vigorous births; so all the vain And weak productions of man's wit, That aim at purposes unfit, Require more drudgery, and worse
Than those of strong and lively force.
* A joke at the expense of the schoolmen. The origin of it may be found in St. Thomas Aquinas, where he discusses the question whether a spiritual being is confined, punctualiter, to a place, and, therefore, whether two or more angels can be in one point at once. Summa
ON THE LICENTIOUSNESS OF THE AGE.
IS a strange age we've lived in, and a lewd,
As e'er the sun in all his travels viewed; An age as vile as ever justice urged, Like a fantastic lecher, to be scourged; Nor has it 'scaped, and yet has only learned, The more 'tis plagued to be the less concerned. Twice have we seen two dreadful judgments rage, Enough to fright the stubborn'st-hearted age; The one to mow vast crowds of people down, The other, as then needless, half the town; And two as mighty miracles restore, What both had ruined and destroyed before;+ In all as unconcerned as if they'd been But pastimes for diversion to be seen,
Or, like the plagues of Egypt, meant a curse, Not to reclaim us, but to make us worse.
Twice have men turned the world, that silly block
The wrong side outward, like a juggler's pocket,
Shook out hypocrisy, as fast and loose,
As e'er the devil could teach, or sinners use,
And on the other side at once put in
As impotent iniquity, and sin.
As skulls, that have been cracked, are often found, Upon the wrong side to receive the wound,
And, like tobacco-pipes at one end hit, To break at th' other still that's opposite; So men, who one extravagance would shun, Into the contrary extreme have run; And all the difference is, that as the first Provokes the other freak to prove the worst,
Theologica, Pars Prima, Quæstio lii. De comparatione Angelorum ad loca. Articulus iii. Utrum plures Angeli possint simul esse in eodem loco.
* The Great Plague of 1665, and the Fire of London, which broke out on the 2nd September, 1666.
† Mr. Thyer conjectures that by the two mighty miracles' are meant the rapid rebuilding of the city, and the healthy season that followed.
« ZurückWeiter » |