Nor hope, nor pause, but magnify the sot;

Know not the weed, or train it as their flower.

Let these rejoice, yet happier, by far,

The silly brutes, that gorge at pleasure, are.

{48}

{48}

XLVIII.

All pleasures and all hopes are their own scorn,

And man’s a measure, filling, never fill’d;

Who’d not sell life, its promise something worn,

For one week’s bliss with no awakening chill’d?

It cannot be; and some, foil’d or despis’d,

Or craving peace, life’s courted joys all spann’d,

Have scouted all things which the world e’er prized;

Dreaming of life, through the dead cloister scann’d,

Fair sounds this, luring; yet, methinks, that shows

A creed nor hard, nor healthy, which unscrews

The rivets, that should pin us to the throes,

That nature in begetting man renews:

The earthly mind, fed on unearthly leaven,

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