I would hire me a string-quartett not an automaton car, You blame equally both our tastes for luxury, indeed His shows more of a use. If man's propensity is vain, Vulgar, inane, unworthy; 'tis also vain to bewail it: Think you to change his skin? 'Twere scale by scale to regraft it With purer traditions; and who shall amend the amenders? Nay let bé the bubbles, till man grow more solid in mind, Condemn not the follies: My neighbour's foolery were worse, Sat he agape listening to Mozart, intently desiring 291 All that time to be rattling alóng on a furious engine In caoutchouc carapace, with a trail of damnable oilstench. Yea, blame not the pleasures; they are not enough; pleasure only Makes this life liveable: nor scout that doctrine as unsound: Consider if mankind from puling birth to bitter death Knew nought but the sorrows, endured unrespited always Those agonizing assaults which no flesh wholly can escape; Were his hunger a pang like his starvation, alievement Thereof a worse torture, like that which full many die with; Did love burn his soul as fire his skin; did affections 300 Rend his will, as Turks rend men with horses asunder; Were his labour a breathless effort; his slumber occasion For visiting Furies to repair his temple of anguish; Were thoughts all mockeries; slow intelligence a deception; His mind's far ventures, her voyages into the unseen But horror & terrified nightmare; None then had ever heard Praise of a Crēator, nor seen any Dēity worshipped. 'Twas for heav'nly Pleasure that God did first fashion all thing, Nor with other benefit would holy Religion attract us 310 Picturing of Paradise. Consult our Lady's Evangel, Where Saint Luke,--colouring (was it unconsciously, suppose you?) Fact and fable alike,--contrasts a beggar with a rich man, And from holding a fool's happiness too greatly in esteem Makes pleasure ēternal the balance of temporal evil, And the reverse; nor shrinks, ascribing thus to the next world Vaster inequalities, harsher perversity than this. _You_ have a soul's paradise, its entry the loop of a needle, Come hither & prithy tell me what I must do to be savèd I, that feeding on Idēals in temperat' estate 320 Seem so wealthy to poor Lazarus, so needy to Dives: What from my heav'n-bound schooner's dispensable outfit Has to be cast o'erboard? What see yoū here that offends you? These myriad volumes, these tons of music:--allow them Or disallow? Fiddle and trichord?--Must all be relinquished? Such toys have not a place in your socīety; you say Nobody shall make them, nor made may justly acquire them. Yet, should a plea be alleged for life's most gracious adornment, For contemplative art's last transcendental achievement,