Why whispers Nature lies on Virtue's part? Or if blind Instinct (which assumes the name Of sacred conscience) plays the fool in man, Why Reason made accomplice in the cheat? Why are the wisest loudest in her praise? Can man by Reason's beam be led astray? Or, at his peril, imitate his God? 190 Since virtue sometimes ruins us on earth, Or both are true, or man survives the grave. Or man survives the grave, or own, Lorenzo, Thy boast supreme, a wild absurdity. Dauntless thy spirit; cowards are thy scorn. Grant man immortal, and thy scorn is just. The man immortal, rationally brave, Dares rush on death--because he cannot die. But if man loses all, when life is lost, He lives a coward, or a fool expires. 200 A daring infidel (and such there are, From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge, Or pure heroical defect of thought), 203 Of all earth's madmen, most deserves a chain. When to the grave we follow the renown'd For valour, virtue, science, all we love, And all we praise; for worth, whose noontide beam, Enabling us to think in higher style, Mends our ideas of ethereal powers; Dream we, that lustre of the moral world 210 Goes out in stench, and rottenness the close? Why was he wise to know, and warm to praise, And strenuous to transcribe, in human life, The Mind Almighty? Could it be, that Fate, Just when the lineaments began to shine, And dawn the Deity, should snatch the draught, With night eternal blot it out, and give The skies alarm, lest angels too might die? If human souls, why not angelic too Extinguish'd? and a solitary God, 220 O'er ghastly ruin, frowning from his throne? Shall we this moment gaze on God in man? The next, lose man for ever in the dust? From dust we disengage, or man mistakes; And there, where least his judgment fears a flaw. Wisdom and worth, how boldly he commends! Wisdom and worth, are sacred names; revered, Where not embraced; applauded; deified; Why not compassion'd too? If spirits die, Both are calamities, inflicted both, 230 To make us but more wretched: Wisdom's eye Acute, for what? to spy more miseries; And worth, so recompensed, new-points their stings. Or man surmounts the grave, or gain is loss, And worth exalted humbles us the more. Thou wilt not patronise a scheme that makes 236 Weakness and vice the refuge of mankind. "Has virtue, then, no joys?"--Yes, joys dear-bought. Talk ne'er so long, in this imperfect state, Virtue and vice are at eternal war, Virtue's a combat; and who fights for nought? Or for precarious, or for small reward? Who virtue's self-reward so loud resound, 243 Would take degrees angelic here below,