Pleasure, Or Wrong Or Rightly Understood, Our

What So Pure, Which Envious Tongues Will Spare? Some Wicked Wits Have Libell'd All The Fair, With Matchless Impudence They Style A Wife, The Dear-bought Curse, And Lawful Plague Of Life; A Bosom Serpent, A Domestic Evil, A Night Invasion, And A Mid-day Devil; Let Not The Wise These Sland'rous Words Regard, But Curse The Bones Of Ev'ry Living Bard.

To Wake The Soul By Tender Strokes Of Art, To Raise The Genius, And To Mend The Heart; To Make Mankind, In Conscious Virtue Bold, Live O'er Each Seene, And Be What They Behold: For This The Tragic Muse First Trod The Stage.

Why Did I Write? Whose Sin To Me Unknown Dipt Me In Ink, My Parents', Or My Own? As Yet A Child, Nor Yet A Fool To Fame, I Lisp'd In Numbers, For The Numbers Came.

Unthought-of Frailties Cheat Us In The Wise.

Sole Judge Of Truth, In Endless Error Hurled: / The Glory, Jest, And Riddle Of The World!