One end in both, and the design the same; Cordials are in their talk, while all they mean Is but the patient's death, and gain— Check in thy satire, angry Muse, Or a more worthy subject choose: Let not the outcasts of an outcast age Provoke the honour of my Muse's rage, Nor be thy mighty spirit rais'd, Since Heaven and Cato both are pleas'd— [The rest of the poem is lost.] [Footnote 1: Born Jan., 1616-17; died 1693. For his life, see "Dictionary of National Biography."—W. E. B.]
ODE TO THE HON. SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE
WRITTEN AT MOOR-PARK IN JUNE 1689
I Virtue, the greatest of all monarchies! Till its first emperor, rebellious man, Deposed from off his seat, It fell, and broke with its own weight Into small states and principalities, By many a petty lord possess'd, But ne'er since seated in one single breast. 'Tis you who must this land subdue, The mighty conquest's left for you, The conquest and discovery too: Search out this Utopian ground, Virtue's Terra Incognita, Where none ever led the way, Nor ever since but in descriptions found; Like the philosopher's stone, With rules to search it, yet obtain'd by none.
II We have too long been led astray; Too long have our misguided souls been taught With rules from musty morals brought, 'Tis you must put us in the way; Let us (for shame!) no more be fed With antique relics of the dead, The gleanings of philosophy; Philosophy, the lumber of the schools, The roguery of alchymy; And we, the bubbled fools, Spend all our present life, in hopes of golden rules.
III But what does our proud ignorance Learning call? We oddly Plato's paradox make good, Our knowledge is but mere remembrance all; Remembrance is our treasure and our food; Nature's fair table-book, our tender souls, We scrawl all o'er with old and empty rules, Stale memorandums of the schools: For learning's mighty treasures look Into that deep grave, a book; Think that she there does all her treasures hide, And that her troubled ghost still haunts there since she died; Confine her walks to colleges
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