Complete Works of Matthew Prior

by Matthew Prior

  With one great death deform the dreary ground;

  The echoed woes from distant rocks resound.

  And now what impious ways, my wishes took,

  How they the monarch and the man forsook,

  And how I follow’d an abandon’d will

  Through crooked paths and sad retreats of ill;

  By turns my prostituted bed receives,

  Through tribes of women how I loosely ranged

  Impatient, liked to-night, to-morrow changed,

  And by the instinct of capricious lust

  Enjoy’d, disdain’d, was grateful or unjust;

  O, be these scenes from human eyes conceal’d,

  In clouds of decent silence justly veil’d!

  O, be the wanton images convey’d

  To black oblivion and eternal shade!

  Or let their sad epitome alone

  And outward lines to future ages be known,

  Enough to propagate the sure belief

  That vice engenders shame, and folly broods o’er grief.

  Buried in sloth and lost in ease I lay;

  The night I revell’d, and I slept the day.

  New heaps of fuel damp’d my kindling fires,

  And daily change extinguish’d young desires,

  By its own force destroy’d, fruition ceased;

  And always wearied, I was never pleased.

  No longer now does my neglected mind

  Its wonted stores and old ideas find.

  Fix’d judgement there no longer does abide

  To take the true or set the false aside,

  No longer does swift Memory trace the cells

  Where springing Wit or young Invention dwells,

  Frequent debauch to habitude prevails;

  Patience of toil and love of virtue fails.

  By sad degrees impair’d my vigour dies,

  Till I command no longer e’en in vice.

  The women on my dotage build their sway:

  In regal garments now I gravely stride,

  Awed by the Persian damsels’ haughty pride;

  Now with the looser Syrian dance and sing,

  In robes tuck’d up, opprobrious to the king.

  Charm’d by their eyes, their manners I acquire,

  And shape my foolishness to their desire;

  Seduced and awed by the Philistine dame,

  At Dagon’s shrine I kindle impious flame.

  With the Chaldean’s charms her rites prevail,

  And curling frankincense ascends to Baal.

  To each new harlot I new altars dress,

  And serve her god whose person I caress.

  Where, my deluded sense, was reason flown?

  Where the high majesty of David’s throne?

  Where all the maxims of eternal truth,

  With which the living God inform’d my youth,

  When with the lewd Egyptian I adore

  Vain idols, deities that ne’er before

  In Isreal’s land had fix’d their dire abodes,

  Beastly divinities, and droves of gods;

  Osiris, Apis, powers that chew the cud,

  And dog Anubis, flatterer for his food?

  When in the woody hill’s forbidden shade

  I carved the marble and invoked its aid:

  When in the fens to snake and flies, with zeal

  Unworthy human thought, I prostrate fell;

  To shrubs and plants my vile devotion paid,

  And set the bearded leek to which I pray’d;

  When to all beings sacred rites were given,

  forgot the Arbiter of earth and heaven?

  Through these sad shades, this chaos in my soul,

  Some seeds of light at length began to roll:

  The rising motion of an infant ray

  Shot glimmering through the cloud, and promised day.

  And now one moment able to reflect,

  I found the king abandon’d to neglect,

  Seen without awe, and served without respect.

  I found my subjects amicably join

  To lessen their defects by citing mine.

  The priest with pity prays for David’s race,

  And left his text to dwell on my disgrace.

  The father, whilst he warn’d his erring son,

  The sad examples which he ought to shun,

  Described, and only named not, Solomon.

  Each bard, each sire, did to his pupil sing,

  A wise child better than a foolish king.

  Into myself my reason’s eye I turn’d,

  And as I much reflected much I mourn’d.

  A mighty king I am, an earthly god;

  Nations obey my word and wait my nod:

  I raise or sink, imprison or set free,

  And life or death, depends on my decree.

  Fond of the idea, and the thought is vain;

  O’er Judah’s king ten thousand tyrants reign,

  Legions of lust and various powers of ill

  Insult the master’s tributary will;

  And he from whom the nations should receive

  Justice and freedom, lies himself a slave,

  Tortured by cruel change of wild desires,

  Lash’d by mad rage, and scorch’d by brutal fires.

  O Reason! once again to thee I call;

  Accept my sorrow and retrieve my fall.

  Wisdom, thou say’st, from heaven received her birth,

  Her beams transmitted to the subject earth:

  Yet thi great empress of the human soul

  Does only with the imagined power control,

  If restless passion, by rebellious sway,

  Compels the weak usurper to obey.

  O troubled, weak, and coward, as thou art,

  Without thy poor advice the labouring heart

  To worse extremes with swifter steps would run,

  Not saved by virtue, yet vice undone.

  Oft have I said, the praise of doing well

  Is to the ear as ointment to the smell.

  Now if some flies perchance, however small,

  Into the alabaster urn should fall,

  The odours of the sweets enclosed would die,

  And stench corrupt (sad change) their place supply:

  So the least faults, if mixed with fairest deed,

  Of future ill become the fatal seed;

  Into the balm of purest virtue cast,

  Annoy all life with one contagious blast.

  Lost Solomon! pursue this thought no more;

  Of thy past errors recollect the store;

  And silent weep, that while the deathless Muse

  Shall sing the just, shall o’er their head diffuse

  Perfumes with lavish hand, she shall proclaim

  Thy crimes alone, and to thy evil fame

  Impartial, scatter damps and poisons on thy name.

  Awaking therefore, as who long had dream’d,

  Much of my women and their gods ashamed,

  From this abyss of exemplary vice

  Resolved, as time might aid my thought, to rise,

  Again I bid the mournful goddess write

  Of human hope by cross event destroy’d,

  Of useless wealth and greatness enjoy’d;

  Of lust and love, with their fantastic train,

  Their wishes, smiles, and looks, deceitful all and vain.

  BOOK III.

  The Argument

  Solomon considers man through the several stages and conditions of life, and concludes, in general, that we are all miserable. He reflects more particularly upon the trouble and uncertainty of greatness and power; gives some instances thereof from Adam down to himself; and still concludes that All Is Vanity. He reasons again upon life, death, and a future being; finds human wisdom too imperfect to resolve his doubts; has recourse to religion; is informed by an angel what shall happen to himself, his family, and his kingdom, till the redemption of Israel; and, upon the whole, resolves to submit his inquiries and anxiet
ies to the will of his Creator.

  Come then, my soul: I call thee by that name,

  Thou busy thing, from whence I know I am;

  For, knowing that I am, I know thou art,

  Since that must needs exist which can impart:

  But how thou camest to be, or whence thy spring,

  For various of thee priests and poets sing.

  Hearest thou submissive, but a lowly birth,

  Some secret particles of finer earth,

  A plain effect which Nature must beget,

  As motion orders, and as atoms meet,

  Companion of the body’s good or ill,

  From force of instinct more than choice of will,

  Conscious of fear or valour, joy or pain,

  As the wild courses of the blood ordain;

  Who, as degrees of heat and cold prevail,

  In youth dost flourish, and with age shalt fail,

  Till, mingled with thy partner’s latest breath,

  Thou fliest, dissolved in air and lost in death.

  Or, if thy great existence would aspire

  To causes more sublime, of heavenly fire

  Wert thou a spark struck off, a separate ray,

  Ordain’d to mingle with terrestrial clay,

  With it condemn’d for certain years to dwell,

  To grieve its frailties, and its pains to feel,

  To teach it good and ill, disgrace or fame,

  Pale it with rage, or redden it with shame,

  To guide its actions with informing care,

  In peace to judge, to conquer in the war;

  Render it agile, witty, valiant, sage,

  As fits the various course of human age,

  Till, as the earthly part decays and falls,

  The captive breaks her prison’s mouldering walls,

  Hovers awhile upon the sad remains,

  Which now the pile or sepulchre contains,

  And thence, with liberty unbounded, flies,

  Impatient to regain her native skies?

  Whate’er thou art, where’er ordain’d to go,

  (Points which we rather may dispute than know)

  Come on, thou little inmate of this breast,

  Which for thy sake from passions’l divest

  For these, thou say’st, raise all the stormy strife,

  Which hinder thy repose, and trouble life;

  Be the fair level of thy actions laid

  As temperance wills and prudence may persuade

  By thy affections undisturb’d and clear,

  Guided to what may great or good appear,

  And try if life be worth the liver’s care.

  Amass’d in man, there justly is beheld

  What through th whole creation has excell’d,

  The angel’s forecast and intelligence:

  Say, from these glorious seeds what harvest flows?

  Recount our blessings, and compare our woes:

  In its true light let clearest reason see

  The man dragg’d out to act, and forced to be;

  Helpless and naked, on a woman’s knees,

  To be exposed or rear’d as she may please,

  Feel her neglect, and pine from her disease:

  His tender eye by too direct a ray

  Wounded, and flying from unpractised day;

  His heart assaulted by invading air,

  And beating fervent to the vital war;

  To his young sense how various forms appear,

  That strike this wonder, and excite his fear;

  By his distortions he reveals his pains;

  He by his tears and by his sighs complains,

  Till time and use assist the infant wretch,

  By broken words, and rudiments of speech,

  His wants in plainer characters to show,

  And paint more perfect figures of his wo,

  Condemn’d to sacrifice his childish years

  To babbling ignorance, and to empty fears;

  To pass the riper period of his age,

  Acting his part upon a crowded stage;

  To lasting toils exposed, and endless cares,

  To open dangers, and to secret snares;

  To malice which the vengeful foe intends,

  And the more dangerous love of seeming friends:

  His deeds examined by the people’s will.

  Prone to forget the good, and blame the ill;

  Or, sadly censured in their cursed debate,

  Who, in the scorner’s or the judge’s seat

  Dare to condemn the virtue which they hate:

  Or would he rather leave this frantic scene,

  And trees and beasts prefer to courts and men,

  In the remotest wood and lonely grot

  Certain to meet that worst of evils, thought,

  Different ideas to his memory brought,

  Some intricate, as are the pathless woods,

  Impetuous some, as the descending floods;

  With anxious doubts, with raging passions torn,

  No sweet companion near with whom to mourn,

  He hears the echoing rock return his sighs,

  And from himself the frighted hermit flies.

  Thus, through what path soe’er of life we rove,

  Rage companies our hate, and grief our love;

  Vex’d with the present moment’s heavy gloom,

  Why seek we brightness from the years to come?

  Disturb’d and broken, like a sick man’s sleep,

  Our troubled thoughts to distant prospects leap,

  Desirous still what flies us to o’ertake;

  For hope is but the dream of those that wake:

  But looking back we see the dreadful train

  Of woes, anew, which, were we to sustain,

  We should refuse to tread the path again:

  Still adding grief, still counting from the first,

  Judging the latest evil still the worst,

  And sadly finding each progressive hour

  Heighten their number and augment their power,

  Till by one countless sum of woes oppress’d,

  Hoary with cares, and ignorant of rest,

  We find the vital springs relax’d and worn,

  Compell’d our common impotence to mourn:

  Thus, through the round of age, to childhood we return;

  Reflecting find, that naked, from the womb

  We yesterday came forth; that in the tomb

  Naked again we must to-morrow lie,

  Born to lament, to labour, and to die.

  Pass we the ills which each man feels or dreads,

  The weight or fall’n or hanging o’er our heads;

  The bear, the lion, terrors of the plain,

  The sheepfold scatter’d, and the shepherd slain;

  The frequent errors of the pathless wood,

  The giddy precipice, and the dangerous flood;

  The noisome pestilence, that in open war

  Terrible, marches through the mid-way air,

  And scatters death; the arrow that by night

  Cuts the dank mist, and fatal wings its flight;

  The billowing snow, and violence of the shower,

  That from the hills disperse their dreadful store,

  And o’er the vales collected ruin pour;

  The worm that gnaws the ripening fruit, sad guest,

  Canker or locust, hurtful to infest

  The blade; while husks elude the tiller’s care,

  And eminence of want distinguishes the year.

  Pass we the slow disease, and subtile pain

  Which our weak frame is destined to sustain;

  The cruel stone with congregated war,

  Tearing his bloody way; the cold catarrh,

  With frequent impulse, and continued strife

  Weakening the wasted seeds of irksome life;

  The gout’s fierce rack, the burning fever’s rage,

  The sad experience of decay and age,

  Herself
the sorest ill, while death and ease,

  Oft and in vain invoked, or to appease

  Or end the grief, with hasty wings recede

  From the vex’d patient and the sickly bed.

  Nought shall it profit that the charming fair,

  Angelic, softest work of Heaven, draws near

  To the cold shaking paralytic hand,

  Senseless of Beauty’s touch, or Love’s command,

  No longer apt or able to fulfil

  The dictates of its feeble master’s will.

  Nought shall the psaltery and the harp avail,

  The pleasing song, or well-repeated tale,

  When the quick spirits their warm march forbear,

  And numbing coldness has unbraced the ear.

  The verdant rising of the flowery hill,

  The vale enamell’d, and the crystal rill,

  The ocean rolling, and the shelly shore,

  Beautiful objects, shall delight no more,

  When the lax’d sinews of the weaken’d eye

  Day follows night; the clouds return again

  After the falling of the latter rain;

  But to the aged blind shall ne’er return

  Grateful vicissitude; he still must mourn,

  The sun, and moon, and every starry light,

  Eclipsed to him, and lost in everlasting night.

  Behold where Age’s wretched victim lies;

  See his head trembling, and his half-closed eyes;

  Frequent for breath his panting bosom heaves;

  To broken sleeps his remnant sense he gives,

  And only by his pains awaking finds he lives.

  Loosed by devouring Time, the silver cord

  Dissever’d lies; unhonour’d from the board

  The crystal urn, when broken, is thrown by,

  And apter utensils their place supply.

  These things and thou must share one equal lot;

  Die and be lost, corrupt and be forgot;

  While still another and another race

  Shall now supply and now give up the place.

  From earth all came, to earth must all return,

  Frail as the cord, and brittle as the urn.

  But the terror of these ills suppress’d,

  And view we man with health and vigour bless’d.

  Home he returns with the declining sun,

  His destined task of labour hardly done;

  Goes forth again with the ascending ray,

  Again his travail for his bread to pay,

  And find the ill sufficient to the day.