Unlike the triflers whose contracted view
Ne'er looks beyond a glitt'ring outside show,
In this machine with moral eyes survey
How gliding life steals silently away,
And, mindful of it's short determin'd space,
Improve the flying moments, as they pass.
See rolling years, with quick dispatch, decide
The transient date of sublunary pride:
See beauty, genius, fortune, fair, sublime,
Borne headlong down the rapid stream of time:
O'er their sad wrecks, along the fatal shore,
Rapacious death asserts his tyrant pow'r;
There all their momentary glories fade,
In dull oblivion's everlasting shade.
Is all that nature or that art can boast,
In undistinguish'd, final ruin lost?
Must all partake the same unalter'd doom,
The sport of time, and victims of the tomb?
One only good secure, unchang'd, defies
The giddy whirl of sublunary skies;
Which see, uninfluenc'd by their wild controul,
Offspring of heav'n, the undecaying Soul .
To this unfailing excellence devote
The morn of reason, and the prime of thought.
Tho' youth and beauty diff'rent tasks persuade,
That youth must languish, and that beauty fade:
Destructive years no graces leave behind,
But those, which virtue fixes in the mind.
How vain, the want of real worth to hide,
Each flatter'd talent's superficial pride!
It's touch in vain the mimic pencil tries,
And sounds harmonious from the lyre arise.
As some fair structure, rais'd by skilful hand,
But weakly founded on the shaking sand,
Securely stands, in sculptur'd foliage gay,
While vernal airs around it's columns play:
But soon the rains descend, the tempests beat,
And each unsolid ornament defeat:
The faithless base betrays it's feeble trust,
And all the beauteous trifle sinks in dust:
So sinks each grace of nature, and of art,
Unprop'd by strong integrity of heart!
Let idle flutt'rers, miserably gay,
In dress and trifling waste their useless day;
That day, for nobler exercises giv'n,
T' adorn the soul for happiness and heav'n:
Beyond the triumph of these shadowy charms,
Which ev'ry beating pulse of time alarms,
To fairer views let thy ambition tend,
Our nature's glory, and our being's end;
And seek from beauties form'd on virtue's rules,
Th' applause of angels, not the gaze of fools.
Ne'er looks beyond a glitt'ring outside show,
In this machine with moral eyes survey
How gliding life steals silently away,
And, mindful of it's short determin'd space,
Improve the flying moments, as they pass.
See rolling years, with quick dispatch, decide
The transient date of sublunary pride:
See beauty, genius, fortune, fair, sublime,
Borne headlong down the rapid stream of time:
O'er their sad wrecks, along the fatal shore,
Rapacious death asserts his tyrant pow'r;
There all their momentary glories fade,
In dull oblivion's everlasting shade.
Is all that nature or that art can boast,
In undistinguish'd, final ruin lost?
Must all partake the same unalter'd doom,
The sport of time, and victims of the tomb?
One only good secure, unchang'd, defies
The giddy whirl of sublunary skies;
Which see, uninfluenc'd by their wild controul,
Offspring of heav'n, the undecaying Soul .
To this unfailing excellence devote
The morn of reason, and the prime of thought.
Tho' youth and beauty diff'rent tasks persuade,
That youth must languish, and that beauty fade:
Destructive years no graces leave behind,
But those, which virtue fixes in the mind.
How vain, the want of real worth to hide,
Each flatter'd talent's superficial pride!
It's touch in vain the mimic pencil tries,
And sounds harmonious from the lyre arise.
As some fair structure, rais'd by skilful hand,
But weakly founded on the shaking sand,
Securely stands, in sculptur'd foliage gay,
While vernal airs around it's columns play:
But soon the rains descend, the tempests beat,
And each unsolid ornament defeat:
The faithless base betrays it's feeble trust,
And all the beauteous trifle sinks in dust:
So sinks each grace of nature, and of art,
Unprop'd by strong integrity of heart!
Let idle flutt'rers, miserably gay,
In dress and trifling waste their useless day;
That day, for nobler exercises giv'n,
T' adorn the soul for happiness and heav'n:
Beyond the triumph of these shadowy charms,
Which ev'ry beating pulse of time alarms,
To fairer views let thy ambition tend,
Our nature's glory, and our being's end;
And seek from beauties form'd on virtue's rules,
Th' applause of angels, not the gaze of fools.