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COMPLEMENTAL VERSES.
The Pretensions of Poverty.
- Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch,
- To claim a station in the firmament
- Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub,
- Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue
- In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs,
- With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand,
- Tearing those humane passions from the mind,
- Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish,
- Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense,
- And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone.
- We not require the dull society
- Of your necessitated temperance,
- Or that unnatural stupidity
- That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc'd
- Falsely exalted passive fortitude
- Above the active. This low abject brood,
- That fix their seats in mediocrity,
- Become your servile minds; but we advance
- Such virtues only as admit excess,
- Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence,
- All-seeing prudence, magnanimity
- That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue
- For which antiquity hath left no name,
- But patterns only, such as Hercules,
- Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath'd cell;
- And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere,
- Study to know but what those worthies were.