While Choler works, good Friend, you may be wrong; Distrust yourself, and sleep before you fight. ’Tis not too late to morrow to be brave; 460 If Honour bids, to morrow kill or die. But calm advice against a raging fit Avails too little; and it tries the power Of all that ever taught in Prose or Song, To tame the Fiend that sleeps a gentle Lamb, 465 And wakes a Lion. Unprovok’d and calm, You reason well, see as you ought to see, And wonder at the madness of mankind: Seiz’d with the common rage, you soon forget The speculations of your wiser hours. 470 Beset with Furies of all deadly shapes, Fierce and insidious, violent and slow; With all that urge or lure us on to Fate; What refuge shall we seek? what arms prepare? Where Reason proves too weak, or void of wiles, 475 To cope with subtle or impetuous Powers, I would invoke new Passions to your aid: With Indignation would extinguish Fear, With Fear or generous Pity vanquish Rage, And Love with Pride; and force to force oppose. 480 There is a Charm: a Power that sways the breast; Bids every Passion revel or be still; Inspires with Rage, or all your Cares dissolves; Can sooth Distraction, and almost Despair. That Power is Music: Far beyond the stretch 485 Of those unmeaning warblers on our stage; Those clumsy Heroes, those fat-headed Gods, Who move no Passion justly but Contempt: Who, like our dancers (light indeed and strong!) Do wond’rous feats, but never heard of grace. 490 The fault is ours; we bear those monstrous arts, Good Heaven! we praise them: we, with loudest peals, Applaud the fool that highest lifts his heels; And, with insipid shew of rapture, die Of ideot notes, impertinently long. 495 But he the Muse’s laurel justly shares, A Poet he, and touch’d with Heaven’s own fire; Who, with bold rage or solemn pomp of sounds, Inflames, exalts, and ravishes the soul; Now tender, plaintive, sweet almost to pain, 500 In Love dissolves you; now in sprightly strains Breathes a gay rapture thro’ your thrilling breast; Or melts the heart with airs divinely sad; Or wakes to horror the tremendous strings. Such was the bard, whose heavenly strains of old 505 Appeas’d the fiend of melancholy Saul. Such was, if old and heathen fame say true, The man who bade the Theban domes ascend, And tam’d the savage nations with his song; And such the Thracian, whose harmonious lyre, 510 Tun’d to soft woe, made all the mountains weep; Sooth’d even th’ inexorable powers of Hell, And half redeem’d his lost Eurydice. Music exalts each Joy, allays each Grief, Expells Diseases, softens every Pain, 515