Society and the World

Say first, of God above or man below, What can we reason but from what we know?

Eye Nature’s walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise: Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere, In action faithful, and in honor clear; Who broke no promise, served no private end, Who gain’d no title, and who lost no friend.

She who ne’er answers till a husband cools, Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules; Charms by accepting, by submitting, sways, Yet has her humor most, when she obeys.

And mistress of herself, though china fall.

’Tis education forms the common mind: Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclin’d.

But when to mischief mortals bend their will, How soon they find fit instruments of ill!

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

At every word a reputation dies.

But where’s the man who counsel can bestow, Still pleas’d to teach, and yet not proud to know?

All seems infected that th’ infected spy, As all looks yellow to the jaundic’d eye.

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Some judge of authors’ names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.

Some praise at morning what they blame at night, But always think the last opinion right.

At ev’ry trifle scorn to take offense.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance. ’Tis not enough no harshness gives offense; The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

As some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there. These equal syllables alone require, Though oft the ear the open vowels tire; While expletives their feeble aid do join, And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

Such labored nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th’ unlearn’d, and make the learned smile.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.

Some are bewilder’d in the maze of schools, And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools.

Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well.