A fool, with more of wit than half mankind,
  Too rash for thought, for action too refin’d: 
  A tyrant to the wife his heart approves;
  A rebel to the very King he loves;
  He dies, sad out-cast of each church and state,
  And, harder still! flagitious, yet not great. 
  Ask you why Wharton broke thro’ ev’ry rule? 
  ’Twas all for fear the Knaves should call him Fool.

Pope’s Works, Vol.  III.  The duke is author of two volumes of poems, of which we shall select the following as a specimen.

  The fear of death.

Say, sov’reign queen of awful night,
Dread tyrant say! 
Why parting throes this lab’ring frame distend,
Why dire convulsions rend,
And teeming horrors wreck th’ astonish’d sight? 
Why shrinks the trembling soul,
Why with amazement full
Pines at thy rule, and sickens at thy sway? 
Why low’r the thunder of thy brow,
Why livid angers glow,
Mistaken phantom, say? 
Far hence exert thy awful reign,
Where tutelary shrines and solemn busts
Inclose the hallow’d dust: 
Where feeble tapers shed a gloomy ray,
And statues pity feign;
Where pale-ey’d griefs their wasting vigils keep,
There brood with sullen state, and nod with downy sleep. 
Advance ye lurid ministers of death! 
And swell the annals of her reign: 
Crack every nerve, sluice every vein;
And choak the avenues of breath. 
Freeze, freeze, ye purple tides! 
Or scorch with seering flames, AEra’s nature flows in tepid streams,
And life’s meanders glide. 
Let keen despair her icy progress make,
And slacken’d nerves their talk forsake;
Years damp the vital fire. 
Yawn all ye horrors of the flood;
And curl your swelling surges higher. 
Survey the road! 
Where desolating storms, and vengeful fates,
The gawdy scene deface;
Ambition in its widest havock trace
Thro’ widow’d cities, and unpeopl’d states. 
And is this all! 
Are these the threaten’d terrors of your reign? 
O dream of fancy’d power! 
Quit, quit, th’ affected shew,
This pageantry of grief, and labour’d pomp of woe. 
Draw the pleasing scene,
Where dreadful thunders never rowl, nor giddy tempests low’r. 
Scenes delighting! 
Peace inviting,
Passions sooth’d, and tumult dying;
Aera’s rowling,
Fears controuling,
Always new, and always flying. 
We dread we know not what, we fear we know not why,
Our cheated fancy shrinks, nor sees to die
Is but to slumber into immortality. 
All reconciling name! 
In space unbounded as in power;
Where fancy limits cannot frame;
Nor reason launch beyond the shore: 
An equal state from all distinction free,
Spread like the wide expanse of vast immensity. 
Seditious tumults there obey,
And feuds their zeal forget: 
Debated empires own one common sway,
There learn’d disputes unite;
Nor crowded volumes the long war maintain: 
There rival chiefs combine
To fill the gen’ral chorus of her reign. 
So streams from either pole,
Thro’ diff’rent tracks their wat’ry journies rowl;
Then in the blending ocean lose their name,
And with consenting waves and mingl’d tides forever flow the same.