Oh! Fashion, caprice, pride--whate'er we call-- Thou something, nothing, dear attractive all; Thou serious trifle of the gentle Soul, Worship'd, yet changing, varying to controul; Sweet Child of wanton fancy, artful whim, Bred in an instant, born in an Extreme; Folly's best friend, and luxury's ally, Who, dying always, prov'st thou canst not die; Attend us here; let us grow mad in Form, 300 Rage with an Air, and elegantly storm; Invoke destruction with a Grace divine, And call for Satan as a child of thine; Genteely stagger from the common road; And ape the brute, but ape him in the mode; With a Court-grace make every action known, For who'd be d----n'd for sins they blush to own? Far as the power of human vice extends[11], Her scale of sensual vanity ascends; Mark how it rises to the gilded Throne, 310 From the poor wretch who dully topes alone. What modes of folly, each in one extreme, The sots dim sense, th' Epicurean's dream; Of scent, what difference 'twixt the pungent rum And noxious vapours of fermenting stum; Of hearing, to Champain's decanted swell From the dull gurgle of expiring ale? The touch, how distant in the mean and great, Who feel all roughness, or who feed from plate; In the nice Lord, behold what arts produce; 320 From vases carv'd is quaff'd the balmy juice; How palates vary in the poor Divine, Compar'd, half-reasoning Nobleman! with thine. Thus every sense is fill'd in due degree, And proper barriers bound his Grace and me; Here every Passion is at length display'd, Nations are ruin'd, Ministers betray'd; And what, ye Fair, concerns your pleasures most, Intrigues are plan'd, and Reputations lost: By you persuaded, Man was overcome, 330 And conquer'd once, received a general doom; Requite the deed, partake a general Curse; We fell with you, and you should fall with us. FOOTNOTES: [5] "Awake, my St. John, leave all meaner things To low ambition, and the pride of Kings; Let us (since Life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die) Expatiate free o'er all this scene of Man, A mighty maze, but not without a plan; A Wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot Or Garden, tempting with forbidden fruit. Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert yield; The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore, Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar; Eye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies, And catch the Manners, living as they rise; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, But vindicate the ways of God to Man." Pope's Essay on Man.--