And virtue, while they compliment, betray, By feeble motives, and unfaithful guards. The crown, th' unfading crown, her soul inspires: 'Tis that, and that alone, can countervail The body's treacheries, and the world's assaults: On earth's poor pay our famish'd virtue dies. 250 Truth incontestible! in spite of all A Bayle has preach'd, or a Voltaire believed. In man the more we dive, the more we see Heaven's signet stamping an immortal make. Dive to the bottom of his soul, the base Sustaining all; what find we? knowledge, love. As light and heat, essential to the sun, These to the soul. And why, if souls expire? How little lovely here? how little known? Small knowledge we dig up with endless toil; 260 And love unfeign'd may purchase perfect hate. Why starved, on earth, our angel appetites; While brutal are indulged their fulsome fill? Were then capacities divine conferr'd, As a mock-diadem, in savage sport, Rank insult of our pompous poverty, Which reaps but pain, from seeming claims so fair? In future age lies no redress? and shuts Eternity the door on our complaint? If so, for what strange ends were mortals made! 270 The worst to wallow, and the best to weep; The man who merits most, must most complain: Can we conceive a disregard in heaven, What the worst perpetrate, or best endure? This cannot be. To love, and know, in man Is boundless appetite, and boundless power; And these demonstrate boundless objects too. Objects, powers, appetites, Heaven suits in all; Nor, nature through, e'er violates this sweet, Eternal concord, on her tuneful string. 280 Is Man the sole exception from her laws? Eternity struck off from human hope (I speak with truth, but veneration too), Man is a monster, the reproach of Heaven, A stain, a dark impenetrable cloud On Nature's beauteous aspect; and deforms (Amazing blot!), deforms her with her lord. If such is man's allotment, what is heaven? Or own the soul immortal, or blaspheme. Or own the soul immortal, or invert 290 All order. Go, mock-majesty! go, man! And bow to thy superiors of the stall; Through every scene of sense superior far: They graze the turf untill'd; they drink the stream Unbrew'd, and ever full, and unembitter'd With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despairs; Mankind's peculiar! reason's precious dower! No foreign clime they ransack for their robes; Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar; Their good is good entire, unmix'd, unmarr'd; 300 They find a paradise in every field, On boughs forbidden where no curses hang: Their ill no more than strikes the sense; unstretch'd By previous dread, or murmur in the rear: 304 When the worst comes, it comes unfear'd; one stroke