Yes, you deservedly despise
The wealth that use ne'er taught to shine,
That rusting in the coffer lies
Like ore yet buried in the mine;
For gold, my friend, no lustre knows
But what a wise well-tempered use bestows.

Thee, Proculeius! distant days
Will bless, and make thy virtues known,
Conspiring tongues will sound thy praise,
A father's love to brethren shown:
Transcendent worth, like thine, will fly
On Fame's unflagging pinions through the sky.

A monarch far more potent he
Who subject keeps his wayward soul;
Who lives from sordid avarice free,
And dares each fiercer lust control,
Than he whose universal sway
Wide earth's extremes, her East and West obey.

That sensual self-indulgent wretch
Whose skin the panting dropsy strains,
Still must the watery languor stretch,
And only Temperance ease his veins;
So growing wealth prompts new desire,
And Fortune's breeze but fans the wasting fire.

The Persian hails the public voice
Decked with the crown that Cyrus wore;
But virtue sanctions not the choice;
She calls Phraates, blest no more:
Can tyrant hands, defiled with sin,
The fair, the spotless mind of virtue win?

Virtue, their rule perverse, shall own
Which bliss to wealth and grandeur leaves,
From virtue he and he alone,
The wreath and diadem receives
Who dares the glittering heap pass by
With steadfast mien and unreverted eye.