With many a heavenly song
Of nature and of art, of deep philosophy and love;
While angels tune the voice, and God inspires the tongue.
In vain she catches at the empty sound,
In vain pursues the music with her longing eye,
And courts the wanton echoes as they fly.
III
Pardon, ye great unknown, and far-exalted men,
The wild excursions of a youthful pen;
Forgive a young and (almost) virgin Muse,
Whom blind and eager curiosity
(Yet curiosity,
they say,
Is in her sex a crime needs no excuse)
Has forced to
grope her uncouth way,
After a mighty light that leads her wandering eye:
No wonder then she quits the narrow path of sense
For a dear ramble through impertinence;
Impertinence! the scurvy of mankind.
And all we fools, who are the greater part of it,
Though we be of two different factions
still,
Both the good-natured and
the ill,
Yet wheresoe’er you look, you’ll
always find
We join, like flies and wasps, in buzzing about wit.
In me, who am of the first sect of these,
All merit, that transcends the humble
rules
Of my own dazzled scanty sense,
Begets a kinder folly and impertinence
Of admiration and of praise.
And our good brethren of the surly sect,
Must e’en all herd us with their
kindred fools:
For though possess’d of present
vogue, they’ve made
Railing a rule of wit, and obloquy a trade;
Yet the same want of brains produces each effect.
And you, whom Pluto’s helm does
wisely shroud
From us, the blind and thoughtless
crowd,
Like the famed hero in his mother’s
cloud,
Who both our follies and impertinences see,
Do laugh perhaps at theirs, and pity mine and me.
IV
But censure’s
to be understood
Th’authentic
mark of the elect,
The public stamp Heaven sets on all that’s great
and good,
Our shallow search and judgment to direct.
The war, methinks,
has made
Our wit and learning narrow as our trade;
Instead of boldly sailing far, to buy
A stock of wisdom and philosophy,
We fondly stay
at home, in fear
Of every censuring
privateer;
Forcing a wretched trade by beating down the sale,
And selling basely
by retail.
The wits, I mean the atheists of the age,
Who fain would rule the pulpit, as they do the stage,
Wondrous refiners of philosophy,
Of morals and divinity,
By the new modish system of reducing all to sense,
Against all logic, and concluding laws,
Do own th’effects of
Providence,
And yet deny the cause.