And from each other's ruin are begot: For life is not confined to him or thee; 'Tis given to all for use, to none for property. Consider former ages past and gone, Whose circles ended long ere thine begun, Then tell me, fool, what part in them thou hast? Thus may'st thou judge the future by the past. What horror seest thou in that quiet state, What bugbear dreams to fright thee after fate? No ghost, no goblins, that still passage keep; But all is there serene, in that eternal sleep. For all the dismal tales, that poets tell, Are verified on earth, and not in hell. No Tantalus looks up with fearful eye, Or dreads the impending rock to crush him from on high; But fear of chance on earth disturbs our easy hours, Or vain imagined wrath of vain imagined powers. No Tityus torn by vultures lies in hell; } Nor could the lobes of his rank liver swell } To that prodigious mass, for their eternal meal; } Not though his monstrous bulk had covered o'er } Nine spreading acres, or nine thousand more; } Not though the globe of earth had been the giant's floor; } Nor in eternal torments could he lie, Nor could his corpse sufficient food supply. But he's the Tityus, who, by love opprest, } Or tyrant passion preying on his breast, } And ever anxious thoughts, is robbed of rest. } The Sisyphus is he, whom noise and strife Seduce from all the soft retreats of life, To vex the government, disturb the laws; Drunk with the fumes of popular applause, He courts the giddy crowd to make him great, And sweats and toils in vain, to mount the sovereign seat. For, still to aim at power, and still to fail, Ever to strive, and never to prevail, What is it, but, in reason's true account, To heave the stone against the rising mount? Which urged, and laboured, and forced up with pain, Recoils, and rolls impetuous down, and smokes along the plain. Then, still to treat thy ever-craving mind With every blessing, and of every kind, Yet never fill thy ravening appetite, Though years and seasons vary thy delight, Yet nothing to be seen of all the store, But still the wolf within thee barks for more; This is the fable's moral, which they tell Of fifty foolish virgins damned in hell To leaky vessels, which the liquor spill; To vessels of their sex, which none could ever fill. As for the dog, the furies, and their snakes, The gloomy caverns, and the burning lakes, And all the vain infernal trumpery, They neither are, nor were, nor e'er can be. But here, on earth, the guilty have in view The mighty pains to mighty mischiefs due; Racks, prisons, poisons, the Tarpeian rock, Stripes, hangmen, pitch, and suffocating smoke;