What _steps_ we are through life to take:
Though thus, my friend, so long employed,
With so much midnight oil destroyed,
I must confess my searches past,
I've only learned _to doubt_ at last
I find the doctors and the sages
Have differed in all climes and ages,
And two in fifty scarce agree
On what is pure morality.
'Tis like the rainbow's shifting zone,
And every vision makes its own.
The doctors of the Porch advise,
As modes of being great and wise,
That we should cease to own or know
The luxuries that from feeling flow;
"Reason alone must claim direction,
"And Apathy's the soul's perfection.
"Like a dull lake the heart must lie;
"Nor passion's gale nor pleasure's sigh,
"Though Heaven the breeze, the breath, supplied,
"Must curl the wave or swell the tide!"
Such was the rigid Zeno's plan
To form his philosophic man;
Such were the modes _he_ taught mankind
To weed the garden of the mind;
They tore from thence some weeds, 'tis true,
But all the flowers were ravaged too!
Now listen to the wily strains,
Which, on Cyrene's sandy plains,
When Pleasure, nymph with loosened zone,
Usurped the philosophic throne,--
Hear what the courtly sage's[1] tongue
To his surrounding pupils sung:--
"Pleasure's the only noble end
"To which all human powers should tend,
"And Virtue gives her heavenly lore,
"But to make Pleasure please us more.
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