A long oblivion, a benumbing frost,
Constrains his head, and yesterday is lost.
Some nimbler juice would make him foam and rave,
Like that Cæsonia* to her Caius gave,
Who, plucking from the forehead of the foal
His mother's love,† infused it in the bowl;
The boiling blood ran hissing in his veins,
Till the mad vapour mounted to his brains.
The Thunderer was not half so much on fire,
When Juno's girdle kindled his desire.
What woman will not use the poisoning trade,
When Cæsar's wife the precedent has made?
Let Agrippina's mushroom‡ be forgot,
Given to a slavering, old, unuseful sot;
That only closed the driv'ling dotard's eyes,
And sent his godhead downward to the skies;
But this fierce potion calls for fire and sword,
Nor spares the commons, when it strikes the lord.
So many mischiefs were in one combined;
So much one single poisoner cost mankind.
If step-dames seek their sons-in-law to kill,
'Tis venial trespass-let them have their will;
But let the child, intrusted to the care
Of his own mother, of her bread beware;
Beware the food she reaches with her hand,-
The morsel is intended for thy land.
* Cæsonia, wife to Caius Caligula, the great tyrant. It is said she gave him a love-potion, which, flying up into his head, distracted him, and was the occasion of his committing so many acts of cruelty.
+ The hippomanes, a fleshy excrescence, which the ancients supposed grew in the forehead of a foal, and which the mare bites off when it is born. It was supposed to be a sovereign ingredient in philtres. EDITOR.
Agrippina was the mother of the tyrant Nero, who poisoned her husband Claudius, that Nero might succeed, who was her son, and not Britannicus, who was the son of Claudius by a former wife.
Thy tutor be thy taster, ere thou eat;
There's poison in thy drink and in thy meat.
You think this feign'd; the satire, in a rage,
Struts in the buskins of the tragic stage;
Forgets his business is to laugh and bite,
And will of deaths and dire revenges write.
Would it were all a fable that you read!
But Drymon's wife* pleads guilty to the deed.
I, she confesses, in the fact was caught,
Two sons dispatching at one deadly draught.
What, two! two sons, thou viper, in one day!
Yes, seven, she cries, if seven were in my way.
Medea's legend is no more a lie,
Our age adds credit to antiquity.
Great ills, we grant, in former times did reign, And murders then were done, but not for gain. Less admiration to great crimes is due,
Which they through wrath, or through revenge pur
For, weak of reason, impotent of will,
The sex is hurried headlong into ill;
And like a cliff, from its foundations torn
By raging earthquakes, into seas is borne.
But those are fiends, who crimes from thought begin,
And, cool in mischief, meditate the sin.
They read the example of a pious wife,
Redeeming, with her own, her husband's life;
Yet if the laws did that exchange afford,
Would save their lap-dog sooner than their lord.
Where'er you walk the Belidest you meet,
And Clytemnestras grow in every street;
*The widow of Drymon poisoned her sons, that she might succeed to their estate: This was done in the poet's time, or just before it.
+ The Belides were fifty sisters, married to fifty young men, their cousin-germans; and killed them all on their weddingnight, excepting Hipermnestra, who saved her husband Linus.
But here's the difference,-Agamemnon's wife
Was a gross butcher with a bloody knife;
But murder now is to perfection grown,
And subtle poisons are employ'd alone;
Unless some antidote prevents their arts,
And lines with balsam all the nobler parts.
In such a case, reserved for such a need,
Rather than fail, the dagger does the deed.
The Poet's design, in this divine Satire, is, to represent the various wishes and desires of mankind, and to set out the folly of them. He runs through all the several heads, of riches, honours, eloquence, fame for martial achievements, long life, and beauty; and gives instances in each, how frequently they have proved the ruin of those that owned them. He concludes, therefore, that, since we generally choose so ill for ourselves, we should do better to leave it to the gods to make the choice for us. All we can safely ask of heaven, lies within a very small compass-it is but health of body and mind; and if we have these, it is not much matter what we want besides; for we have already enough to make us happy.
LOOK round the habitable world, how few
Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue.
How void of reason are our hopes and fears!
What in the conduct of our life appears
So well designed, so luckily begun,
But when we have our wish, we wish undone ?
Whole houses, of their whole desires possest,
Are often ruin'd at their own request.
In wars and peace things hurtful we require,
When made obnoxious to our own desire.
With laurels some have fatally been crown'd
Some, who the depths of eloquence have found,
In that unnavigable stream were drown'd.
The brawny fool, who did his vigour boast,
In that presuming confidence was lost; *
But more have been by avarice opprest,
And heaps of money crowded in the chest:
Unwieldy sums of wealth, which higher mount
Than files of marshall'd figures can account;
To which the stores of Croesus, in the scale,
Would look like little dolphins, when they sail
In the vast shadow of the British whale.
For this, in Nero's arbitrary time,
When virtue was a guilt, and wealth a crime,
A troop of cut-throat guards were sent to seize
The rich men's goods, and gut their palaces :
The mob, commission'd by the government,
Are seldom to an empty garret sent.
The fearful passenger, who travels late,
Charged with the carriage of a paltry plate,
Shakes at the moonshine shadow of a rush,
And sees a red-coat rise from every bush ;
The beggar sings, even when he sees the place
Beset with thieves, and never mends his pace.
Of all the vows, the first and chief request
Of each, is to be richer than the rest :
And yet no doubts the poor man's draught controul,
He dreads no poison in his homely bowl;
Then fear the deadly drug, when gems divine
Enchase the cup, and sparkle in the wine.
* Milo, of Crotona; who, for a trial of his strength, going to rend an oak, perished in the attempt; for his arms were caught in the trunk of it, and he was devoured by wild beasts.
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