Satires and Epistles Author:Alexander Pope Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SATIRES AND EPISTLES, in. To Lord Bolingbroke. (horace, 1 Ep. 1.) T. JOHN, whose love indulg'd my labours past, Matures my present, and shall bound ... more »my last! Why will you break the sabbath of my days? Now sick alike of envy and of praise. Public too long, ah let me hide my age 1 See modest Cibber now has left the stage : Our gen'rals now, retir'd to their estates, Hang their old trophies o'er the garden-gates, In life's cool ev'ning satiate of applause, Nor fond of bleeding, ev'n in Brunswick's cause, ic A voice there is, that whispers in my ear, ('Tis reason's voice, which sometimes one can hear) ' Friend Pope 1 be prudent, let your muse take breath, And never gallop Pegasus to death; Lest stiff, and stately, void of fire or force, You limp, like Blackmore on a Lord Mayor's horse.' Farewell then verse, and love, and ev'ry toy, The rhymes and rattles of the man or boy; £ What right, what true, what fit.we justly call, Let this be all my care—for this is all: 20 To lay this harvest up, and hoard with haste, What ev'ry day will want, and most, the last. But ask not, to what doctors I apply. Sworn to no master, of no sect am I: As drives the storm, at any door I knock: And house with Montagne now, or now with Locke. Sometimes a patriot, active in debate, Mix with the world, and battle for the state, Free as young Lyttelton, her cause pursue, Still true to virtue, and as warm as true: 30 Sometimes with Aristippus, or St. Paul, Indulge my candor, and grow all to all; Back to my native moderation slide, And win my way by yielding to the tide. Long, as to him who works for debt, the day, Long as the night to her whose love's away, Long as the year's dull circle seems to run, When the brisk minor pants for twenty-one: So slow th' unprofitable m...« less