YCBA Collections Search

Lettered inside image: "10 | What numbers, once in fortune's lap high-fed, | Solicit the cold hand of charity-- | To shock us more--solicit it in vain! | Ye silken sons of pleasure! since in pains | You rue more modish visits, visit here, | And breathe from your debauch: give, and reduce | Surfeit's dominion o'er you--but so great | Your impudence, you blush at what is right. | Happy! did sorrow seize on such alone: | Not prudence can defend, or virtue save: | * Disease invades the chastest temperance, | And punishment the guiltless; and alarm, | Through thickest shades pursues the fond of peace. | Man's caution often into danger turns, | And, his guard falling, crushes him to death. | Not happiness itself makes good her name; | Our very wishes give us not our wish: | How distant oft the thing we doat on most, | From that for which we doat, felicity! | The smoothest course of nature has its pains; | And truest friends, through error, wound our rest. | Without misfortune--what calamities! | And what hostilities--without a foe! | Nor are foes wanting to the best on earth: | But endless is the list of human ills, | And sighs might sooner fail, than cause to sigh. | A part how small of the terraqueous globe | Is tenanted by man! the rest a waste; | Rocks, deserts, frozen seas, and burning sands-- | Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings, and death:"; lower left: "Pubd. June 27th 1796, by R. Edwards, No. 142 New Bond Street."