The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell/Poem 26
DR. DONNE'S THIRD SATIRE VERSIFIED.
Compassion checks my spleen, yet scorn denies
The tears a passage through my swelling eyes:
To laugh or weep at sins, might idly show
Unheedful passion, or unfruitful woe.
Satire! arise, and try thy sharper ways,
If ever satire cur'd an old disease.
Is not Religion (Heaven-descended dame)
As worthy all our soul's devoutest flame,
As moral Virtue in her early sway,
When the best Heathens saw by doubtful day?
Are not the joys, the promis'd joys above,
As great and strong to vanquish earthly love,
As earthly glory, fame, respect, and show,
As all rewards their virtue found below?
Alas! Religion proper means prepares,
These means are ours, and must its end be theirs?
And shall thy father's spirit meet the sight
Of heathen sages cloth'd in heavenly light,
Whose merit of strict life, severely suited
To reason's dictates, may be faith imputed,
Whilst thou, to whom he taught the nearer road,
Art ever banish'd from the blest abode?
Oh! if thy temper such a fear can find,
This fear were valour of the noblest kind.
Dar'st thou provoke, when rebel souls aspire,
Thy Maker's vengeance, and thy monarch's ire;
Or live entomb'd in ships, thy leader's prey,
Spoil of the war, the famine, or the sea;
In search of pearl, in depth of ocean breathe,
Or live, exil'd the sun, in mines beneath,
Or, where in tempests icy mountains roll,
Attempt a passage by the northern pole?
Or dar'st thou parch within the fires of Spain,
Or burn beneath the line, for Indian gain?
Or for some idol of thy fancy draw
Some loose-gown'd dame? O courage made of straw!
Thus, desperate coward, wouldst thou bold appear,
Yet when thy God has plac'd thee sentry here,
To thy own foes, to his, ignoble yield,
And leave, for wars forbid, th' appointed field?
Know thy own foes; th' apostate angel; he
You strive to please, the foremost of the three;
He makes the pleasures of his realm the bait,
But can he give for love that acts in hate?
The world's thy second love, thy second foe,
The world, whose beauties perish as they blow,
They fly, she fades herself, and at the best,
You grasp a wither'd strumpet to your breast;
The flesh is next, which in fruition wastes,
High flush'd with all the sensual joys it tastes.
While men the fair, the goodly soul destroy,
From whence the flesh has power to taste a joy,
Seek thou Religion primitively sound—
Well, gentle friend, but where may she be found?
By faith implicit blind Ignaro led,
Thinks the bright seraph from his country fled,
And seeks her seat at Rome, because we know,
She there was seen a thousand years ago;
And loves her relic rags, as men obey
The foot-cloth where the prince sat yesterday.
These pageant forms are whining Obed's scorn,
Who seeks Religion at Geneva born,
A sullen thing, whose coarseness suits the crowd;
Though young, unhandsome; though unhandsome, proud;
Thus, with the wanton, some perversely judge
All girls unhealthy but the country drudge.
No foreign schemes make easy Cæpio roam,
The man contented takes his church at home;
Nay, should some preachers, servile bawds of gain,
Should some new laws, which like new fashions reign,
Command his faith to count salvation tied,
To visit his, and visit none beside;
He grants salvation centres in his own,
And grants it centres but in his alone;
From youth to age he grasps the proffer'd dame,
And they confer his faith, who give his name;
So from the guardian's hands the wards, who live
Enthrall'd to guardians, take the wives they give.
From all professions careless Airy flies,
"For all professions can't be good," he cries;
And here a fault, and there another views,
And lives unfix'd for want of heart to choose;
So men, who know what some loose girls have done,
For fear of marrying such, will marry none.
The charms of all obsequious Courtly strike;
On each he dotes, on each attends alike;
And thinks, as different countries deck the dame,
The dresses altering, and the sex the same:
So fares Religion, chang'd in outward show,
But, 'tis Religion still where'er we go:
This blindness springs from an excess of light,
And men embrace the wrong to choose the right.
But thou of force must one Religion own,
And only one, and that the right alone;
To find that right one, ask thy reverend sire,
Let his of him, and him of his inquire;
Though Truth and Falsehood seem as twins allied,
There's eldership on Truth's delightful side;
Her seek with heed—who seeks the soundest first,
Is not of no Religion, nor the worst.
T' adore, or scorn an image, or protest,
May all be bad; doubt wisely for the best,
'Twere wrong to sleep, or headlong run astray;
It is not wandering, to inquire the way.
On a large mountain, at the basis wide,
Steep to the top, and craggy at the side,
Sits sacred Truth enthron'd; and he who means
To reach the summit, mounts with weary pains,
Winds round and round, and every turn essays,
Where sudden breaks resist the shorter ways.
Yet labour so, that ere faint age arrive,
Thy searching soul possess her rest alive:
To work by twilight were to work too late,
And age is twilight to the night of fate.
To will alone, is but to mean delay,
To work at present is the use of day.
For man's employ much thought and deed remain,
High thoughts the soul, hard deeds the body strain,
And mysteries ask believing, which to view,
Like the fair Sun, are plain, bat dazzling too.
Be Truth, so found, with sacred heed possest,
Not kings have power to tear it from thy breast.
By no blank charters harm they where they hate,
Nor are they vicars, but the hands of fate.
Ah! fool and wretch, who lett'st thy soul be tied
To human laws! or must it so be tried?
Or will it boot thee, at the latest day,
When Judgment sits, and Justice asks thy plea,
That Philip that, or Gregory taught thee this,
Or John or Martin? All may teach amiss:
For every contrary in each extreme
This holds alike, and each may plead the same.
Wouldst thou to power a proper duty show?
'Tis thy first task the bounds of power to know;
The bounds once pass'd, it holds the same no more,
Its nature alters, which it own'd before,
Nor were submission humbleness exprest,
But all a low idolatry at best.
Power from above, subordinately spread,
Streams like a fountain from th' eternal head;
There, calm and pure, the living waters flow,
But roars a torrent or a flood below;
Each flower ordain'd the margins to adorn,
Each native beauty, from its roots is torn,
And left on deserts, rocks and sands, are tost,
All the long travel, and in ocean lost.
So fares the soul, which more that power reveres,
Man claims from God, than what in God inheres.