What conscience has Venus drunk? Our inebriated beauties
Can't tell head from tail at those midnight oyster suppers
When the best wine's laced with perfume, and tossed down neat
From a foaming conch-shell, while the dizzy ceiling
Spins round, and the tables dance, and each light shows double.
Why, you may ask yourself, does the notorious Maura
Sniff at the air in that knowing, derisive way
As she and her dear friend Tullia pass by the ancient altar
Of Chastity? and what is Tullia whispering to her?
Here, at night, they stagger out of their litters

Some ask for Envy'd Pow'r; which publick Hate
Pursues, and hurries headlong to their Fate:
Down go the Titles; and the Statue Crown'd,
Is by base Hands in the next River Drown'd.
The Guiltless Horses, and the Chariot Wheel
The same Effects of Vulgar Fury feel:
The Smith prepares his Hammer for the Stroke,
While the Lung'd Bellows hissing Fire provoke;
Sejanus almost first of Roman Names,
The great Sejanus crackles in the Flames:
Form'd in the Forge, the Pliant Brass is laid
On Anvils; and of Head and Limbs are made,

"Life! length of life!' for this, with earnest cries,
Or sick or well, we supplicate the skies.
Pernicious prayer! for mark, what ills attend
Still on the old, as to the grave they bend:
A ghastly visage to themselves unknown,
For a smooth skin, a hide with scurf o'ergrown,
And such a flabby cheek as an old ape,
In Tabraca's thick woods, might haply scrape.
In youth a thousand different features strike;
All have their charms, but have not charms alike:
While age presents one universal face--
A faultering voice, a weak and trembling pace,

In Saturn's reign, at Nature's early birth,
There was that thing called chastity on earth;
When in a narrow cave, their common shade,
The sheep, their shepherds and their gods were laid:
When reeds and leaves, and hides of beasts were spread
By mountain huswives for their homely bed,
And mossy pillows raised, for the rude husband's head.
Unlike the niceness of our modern dames
(Affected nymphs with new affected names),
The Cynthias and the Lesbias of our years,
Who for a sparrow's death dissolve in tears,
Those first unpolished matrons, big and bold,

Produce the urn that Hannibal contains,
And weigh the mighty dust which yet remains:
And is this all! Yet THIS was once the bold,
The aspiring chief, whom Afric could not hold,
Afric, outstretch'd from where the Atlantic roars,
To Nilus; from the Line, to Lybia's shores!
Spain conquer'd, o'er the Pyrenees he bounds;
Nature oppos'd her everlasting mounds,
Her Alps, and snows: through these he bursts his way,
And Italy already owns his sway--
Still thundering on,--"think nothing done,' he cries,
"Till low in dust our haughty rival lies;

Give store of days, good Jove, give length of years,
Are the next vows; these with religious fears,
And constancy we pay; but what's so bad,
As a long, sinful age? what cross more sad
Than misery of years? how great an ill
Is that, which doth but nurse more sorrow still?
It blacks the face, corrupts, and dulls the blood,
Benights the quickest eye, distates the food,
And such deep furrows cuts i'the chequered skin
As in the old oaks of Tabraca are seen.
Youth varies in most things; strength, beauty, wit,
Are several graces; but where age doth hit,

Must hapless man, in ignorance sedate,
Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?
Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise,
No cries invoke the mercies of the skies?
Inquirer, cease: petitions yet remain,
Which Heaven may hear: nor deem religion vain.
Still raise for good the supplicating voice,
But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice.
Safe in his power, whose eyes discern afar
The secret ambush of a specious prayer,
Implore his aid, in his decisions rest,
Secure, whate'er he gives, he gives the best.
Yet when the sense of sacred presence fires,

But of all plagues, the greatest is untold,
The book-learned wife in Greek and Latin bold,
The critic-dame, who at her table sits,
Homer and Virgil quotes, and weights their wits;
And pities Dido's agonizing fits.
She has so far th'ascendant of the board,
The prating pedant puts not in one word,
The man of law is nonplussed, in his suit;
Nay every other female tongue is mute.
Hammers, and beating anvils, you would swear,
And Vulcan with his whole militia there.
Tabours and trumpets cease; for she alone
Is able to redeem the lab'ring moon.

1. Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream;
For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem.
2. Life is real! life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul!

3. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end and way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us further than today.

4. Lives of true men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Foot-prints on the sands of time;

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;--

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.