Page:The poetical works of William Cowper (IA poeticalworksof00cowp).pdf/153

All these belong to virtue, and all prove
 That virtue has a title to your love.
Have you no touch of pity, that the poor
 Stand starved at your inhospitable door?
Or if yourself too scantily supplied
 Need help, let honest industry provide.
Earn, if you want, if you abound, impart,
 These both are pleasures to the feeling heart.
No pleasure? Has some sickly eastern waste
 Sent us a wind to parch us at a blast?
Can British paradise no scenes afford
 To please her sated and indiff'rent lord?
Are sweet philosophy's enjoyments run
 Quite to the lees? And has religion none?
Brutes capable, should tell you 'tis a lye,
 And judge you from the kennel and the sty.
Delights like these, ye sensual and profane,
 Ye are bid, begg'd, besought to entertain;
 Called to these crystal streams, do ye turn off
 Obscene, to swill and swallow at a trough?
Envy the beast then, on whom heav'n bestows
 Your pleasures, with no curses in the close.
Pleasure admitted in undue degree,
 Enslaves the will, nor leaves the judgment free.
'Tis not alone the grapes enticing juice,
 Unnerves the moral powers, and marrs their use,
 Ambition, av'rice, and the lust of fame,
 And woman, lovely woman, does the same.
The heart, surrendered to the ruling power
 Of some ungoverned passion ev'ry hour,
 Finds by degrees, the truths that once bore sway,
 And all their deep impression wear away.
So coin grows smooth, in traffic current pass'd,
 'Till Caesar's image is effaced at last.
The breach, though small at first, soon op'ning wide,
 In rushes folly with a full moon tide.
Then welcome errors of whatever size,
 To justify it by a thousand lies.
As creeping ivy clings to wood or stone,
 And hides the ruin that it feeds upon,
 So sophistry, cleaves close to, and protects
 Sin's rotten trunk, concealing its defects.
Mortals whose pleasures are their only care,
 First wish to be imposed on, and then are.
And lest the fulsome artifice should fail,
 Themselves will hide its coarseness with a veil.
Not more industrious are the just and true
 To give to virtue what is virtue's due,
 The praise of wisdom, comeliness and worth,
 And call her charms to public notice forth,
 Than vice's mean and disingenuous race,
 To hide the shocking features of her face: