Poetical Works. Charles Churchill

powers

       Which kindly gave him grace to keep good hours. 30

       Good hours!—fine words—but was it ever seen

       That all men could agree in what they mean?

       Florio, who many years a course hath run

       In downright opposition to the sun,

       Expatiates on good hours, their cause defends

       With as much vigour as our prudent friends.

       The uncertain term no settled notion brings,

       But still in different mouths means different things;

       Each takes the phrase in his own private view;

       With Prudence it is ten, with Florio two. 40

       Go on, ye fools! who talk for talking sake,

       Without distinguishing, distinctions make;

       Shine forth in native folly, native pride,

       Make yourselves rules to all the world beside;

       Reason, collected in herself, disdains

       The slavish yoke of arbitrary chains;

       Steady and true, each circumstance she weighs,

       Nor to bare words inglorious tribute pays.

       Men of sense live exempt from vulgar awe,

       And Reason to herself alone is law: 50

       That freedom she enjoys with liberal mind,

       Which she as freely grants to all mankind.

       No idol-titled name her reverence stirs,

       No hour she blindly to the rest prefers;

       All are alike, if they're alike employ'd,

       And all are good if virtuously enjoy'd.

       Let the sage Doctor (think him one we know)

       With scraps of ancient learning overflow,

       In all the dignity of wig declare

       The fatal consequence of midnight air, 60

       How damps and vapours, as it were by stealth,

       Undermine life, and sap the walls of health:

       For me let Galen moulder on the shelf,

       I'll live, and be physician to myself.

       Whilst soul is join'd to body, whether fate

       Allot a longer or a shorter date,

       I'll make them live, as brother should with brother,

       And keep them in good humour with each other.

       The surest road to health, say what they will,

       Is never to suppose we shall be ill. 70

       Most of those evils we poor mortals know,

       From doctors and imagination flow.

       Hence to old women with your boasted rules,

       Stale traps, and only sacred now to fools;

       As well may sons of physic hope to find

       One medicine, as one hour, for all mankind!

       If Rupert after ten is out of bed,

       The fool next morning can't hold up his head;

       What reason this which me to bed must call,

       Whose head, thank Heaven, never aches at all? 80

       In different courses different tempers run;

       He hates the moon, I sicken at the sun.

       Wound up at twelve at noon, his clock goes right;

       Mine better goes, wound up at twelve at night.

       Then in oblivion's grateful cup I drown

       The galling sneer, the supercilious frown,

       The strange reserve, the proud, affected state

       Of upstart knaves grown rich, and fools grown great.

       No more that abject wretch[93] disturbs my rest,

       Who meanly overlooks a friend distress'd. 90

       Purblind to poverty, the worldling goes,

       And scarce sees rags an inch beyond his nose;

       But from a crowd can single out his Grace,

       And cringe and creep to fools who strut in lace.

       Whether those classic regions are survey'd

       Where we in earliest youth together stray'd,

       Where hand in hand we trod the flowery shore,

       Though now thy happier genius runs before;

       When we conspired a thankless wretch[94] to raise,

       And taught a stump to shoot with pilfer'd praise, 100

       Who once, for reverend merit famous grown,

       Gratefully strove to kick his maker down;

       Or if more general arguments engage—

       The court or camp, the pulpit, bar, or stage;

       If half-bred surgeons, whom men doctors call,

       And lawyers, who were never bred at all,

       Those mighty letter'd monsters of the earth,

       Our pity move, or exercise our mirth;

       Or if in tittle-tattle, toothpick way,

       Our rambling thoughts with easy freedom stray—110

       A gainer still thy friend himself must find,

       His grief suspended, and improved his mind.

       Whilst peaceful slumbers bless the homely bed

       Where virtue, self-approved, reclines her head;

       Whilst vice beneath imagined horrors mourns,

       And conscience plants the villain's couch with thorns;

       Impatient of restraint, the active mind,

       No more by servile prejudice confined,

       Leaps from her seat, as waken'd from a trance

       And darts through Nature at a single glance 120

       Then we our friends, our foes, ourselves, survey,

       And see by Night what fools we are by day.

       Stripp'd of her gaudy plumes, and vain disguise,

       See where ambition, mean and loathsome, lies;

       Reflection with relentless hand pulls down

       The tyrant's bloody wreath and ravish'd crown.

       In vain he tells of battles bravely won,

       Of nations conquer'd, and of worlds undone;

       Triumphs like these but ill with manhood suit,

       And sink the conqueror beneath the brute. 130

       But if, in searching round the world, we find

       Some generous youth, the friend of all mankind,

       Whose anger, like the bolt of Jove, is sped

       In terrors only at the guilty head,

       Whose mercies, like heaven's dew, refreshing fall

       In general love and charity to all,

       Pleased we behold such worth on any throne,

       And doubly pleased we find it on our own.

       Through a false medium things are shown by day;

       Pomp, wealth, and titles, judgment lead astray. 140

       How many from appearance borrow state,

       Whom Night disdains to number with the great!

       Must not we laugh to see yon lordling proud

       Snuff up