’Tis the great art of life to manage well The restless mind. For ever on pursuit 85 Of knowledge bent it starves the grosser powers. Quite unemploy’d, against its own repose Its turns its fatal edge, and sharper pangs Than what the body knows embitter life. Chiefly where Solitude, sad nurse of care, 90 To sickly musing gives the pensive mind. There madness enters; and the dim-ey’d Fiend, Sour Melancholy, night and day provokes Her own eternal wound. The sun grows pale; A mournful visionary light o’erspreads 95 The chearful face of nature: earth becomes A dreary desart, and heaven frowns above. Then various shapes of curs’d illusion rise; Whate’er the wretched fears, creating Fear Forms out of nothing; and with monsters teems 100 Unknown in hell. The prostrate soul beneath A load of huge imagination heaves. And all the horrors, that the guilty feel, With anxious flutterings wake the guiltless breast. Such phantoms Pride in solitary scenes, 105 Or Fear, on delicate Self-love creates. From other cares absolv’d, the busy mind Finds in yourself a theme to pore upon; It finds you miserable, or makes you so. For while yourself you anxiously explore, 110 Timorous Self-love, with sick’ning Fancy’s aid, Presents the danger that you dread the most, And ever galls you in your tender part. Hence some for love, and some for jealousy, For grim religion some, and some for pride, 115 Have lost their reason: some for fear of want Want all their lives; and others every day For fear of dying suffer worse than death. Ah! from your bosoms banish, if you can, Those fatal guests: and first the Demon Fear; 120 That trembles at impossible events, Lest aged Atlas should resign his load And heaven’s eternal battlements rush down. Is there an evil worse than fear itself? And what avails it that indulgent heaven 125 From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come, If we, ingenious to torment ourselves, Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own? Enjoy the present; nor with needless cares, Of what may spring from blind Misfortune’s womb, 130 Appal the surest hour that life bestows. Serene, and master of yourself, prepare For what may come; and leave the rest to heaven.