Love, hope, and joy, fair Pleasure's smiling train,
Hate, fear, and grief, the family of Pain,

These mixed with art, and to due bounds confined,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind:1
The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife
Gives all the strength and color of our life.
Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes;2

120

And when in act they cease, in prospect rise:
Present to grasp, and future still to find,
The whole employ of body and of mind.3

125

All spread their charms, but charm not all alike;
On different senses, different objects strike;
Hence different passions more or less inflame,
As strong or weak the organs of the frame;
And hence one Master Passion in the breast,
Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.1

130

As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath,5
Receives the lurking principle of death;

The young disease, that must subdue at length;

135

Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength;

So, cast and mingled with his very frame,

The mind's disease, its Ruling Passion, came;

Each vital humor which should feed the whole,
Soon flows to this, in body and in soul:
Whatever warms the heart, or fills the head,
As the mind opens, and its functions spread,
Imagination plies her dangerous art,

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Whether we pursue virtue or vice, pleasure

4 Alluding to the contest in magic between Moses and the magicians of Pharaoh. The former seems to have been more accomplished in magic. (Cf. Exod. vii.)

5 "The moment of his breath," i.e., with his first breath; at birth.

Nature its mother, habit is its nurse;

Wit, spirit, faculties, but make it worse;

Reason itself but gives it edge and power;

As Heaven's blessed beam turns vinegar more sour.
We, wretched subjects, though to lawful sway,

In this weak queen

some favorite still obey:
Ah! if she lend not arms, as well as rules,2
What can she more than tell us we are fools?
Teach us to mourn our nature, not to mend,
A sharp accuser, but a helpless friend!
Or from a judge turn pleader, to persuade
The choice we make, or justify it made;
Proud of an easy conquest all along,

145

150

155

She but removes weak passions for the strong:
So, when small humors gather to a gout,
The doctor fancies he has driven them out.
Yes, Nature's road must ever be preferred;
Reason is here no guide, but still a guard;
'Tis hers to rectify, not overthrow,

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And treat this passion more as friend than foe;
A mightier power 3 the strong direction sends,
And several men impels to several ends:
Like varying winds, by other passions tossed,
This 5 drives them constant to a certain coast.
Let power or knowledge, gold or glory, please,
Or (oft more strong than all) the love of ease;
Through life 'tis followed, even at life's expense;
The merchant's toil, the sage's indolence,

The monk's humility, the hero's pride,
All, all alike, find reason on their side.

The Eternal Art, educing good from ill,
Grafts on this passion our best principle:

1 Reason.

2 If she does not defend as well as direct.
4 Different.

3 The "Ruling Passion." 5 The " mightier power."

165

170

175

1

'Tis thus the mercury of man 1 is fixed,
Strong grows the virtue with his nature mixed:
The dross cements what else were too refined,
And in one interest body acts with mind.

As fruits, ungrateful to the planter's care,
On savage stocks inserted learn to bear;
The surest virtues thus from passions shoot,
Wild Nature's vigor working at the root.
What crops of wit and honesty appear
From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear!
See anger, zeal, and fortitude supply;
Ev'n avarice, prudence; sloth, philosophy;

180

185

Lust, through some certain strainers well refined,
Is gentle love, and charms all womankind;
Envy, to which the ignoble mind's a slave,
Is emulation in the learned or brave;

190

Nor virtue, male or female, can we name,

But what will grow on pride, or grow on shame.

Thus Nature gives us (let it check our pride)

195

The virtue nearest to our vice allied:

Reason the bias turns to good from ill,

And Nero 2 reigns a Titus,3 if he will.

The fiery soul abhorred in Catiline, 4

In Decius 5 charms, in Curtius 6 is divine:7

1 " Mercury of man," i.e., his instability.

200

"the delight

2 Nero (A.D. 54-68), Roman emperor, noted for his tyranny. 3 Titus Vespasianus (A.D. 40–81), Roman emperor, called of mankind."

4 See Note 3, p. 64.

5 P. Decius Mus, a Roman consul who, in B. C. 337, rushed to his death in battle because victory was foretold for the army whose general should fall.

6 Marcus Curtius, one of Rome's legendary heroes. A chasm having been opened in the Forum by an earthquake in B.C. 362, it was announced by the soothsayers that it could not be closed till Rome's greatest treasure was cast in. Curtius, declaring that a brave citizen in arms was the greatest treasure the state could possess, leaped into the chasm, which closed after him.

7 "There is no special propriety of allusion in lines 198-200; hence the

The same ambition can destroy or save,

And makes a patriot as it makes a knave.

IV. This light and darkness in our chaos joined,
What shall divide? The God within the mind.1

Extremes in Nature equal ends produce,2
In man they join to some mysterious use;
Though each by turns the other's bounds invade,
As, in some well-wrought picture, light and shade,
And oft so mix, the difference is too nice
Where ends the virtue, or begins the vice.
Fools! who from hence into the notion fall
That vice or virtue there is none at all.
If white and black blend, soften, and unite
A thousand ways, is there no black or white?
Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain;
'Tis to mistake them costs the time and pain.
V. Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

205

210

215

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.3

220

But where the extreme of vice, was ne'er agreed:

Ask where's the North? at York, 'tis on the Tweed;4
In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,

At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where.5

No creature owns it in the first degree,

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But thinks his neighbor further gone than he :
Ev'n those who dwell beneath its very zone,

Or never feel the rage, or never own;

passage is weak. We feel that many other names would have served the purpose as well" (PATTISON).

1 "The God within the mind," i.e., conscience rather than reason.

2 Give some examples of this.

3 There are better men and greater poets than Pope who do not think so. Cf. Dryden's Hind and Panther, I. 33.

4 From this illustration Pope suggests that virtue and vice are not absolute, but only relative. 5" The Lord knows where" is in bad taste.

What happier natures shrink at with affright,
The hard inhabitant contends is right.

230

VI. Virtuous and vicious every man must be, Few in the extreme, but all in the degree;

The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise;

And ev❜n the best, by fits, what they despise.

'Tis but by parts we follow good or ill;

235

For, vice or virtue, self directs it still;

Each individual seeks a several goal;

But Heaven's great view is one, and that the whole.

That counterworks each folly and caprice;

That disappoints the effect of every vice;

240

That, happy1 frailties to all ranks applied,
Shame to the virgin, to the matron pride,
Fear to the statesman, rashness to the chief,
To kings presumption, and to crowds belief:
That, virtue's ends from vanity can raise,
Which seeks no interest, no reward but praise;
And build on wants, and on defects of mind,
The joy, the peace, the glory of mankind.

Heaven forming each on other to depend,

245

A master, or a servant, or a friend,

250

Bids each on other for assistance call,

Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all.

Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally

The common interest, or endear the tie.

To these we owe true friendship, love sincere,

255

Each home-felt joy that life inherits here;

Yet from the same we learn, in its decline,

Those joys, those loves, those interests to resign;
Taught half by reason, half by mere decay,
To welcome death, and calmly pass away.
Whate'er the passion, knowledge, fame, or pelf,
Not one will change his neighbor with himself.
1 Propitious, same as Latin felix, not beatus.

260