IN these gay thoughts the Loves and Graces shine, | |
| And all the writer lives in ev’ry line; | |
| His easy Art may happy Nature seem, | |
| Trifles themselves are elegant in him. | |
| Sure to charm all was his peculiar fate, | 5 |
| Who without flatt’ry pleas’d the Fair and Great; | |
| Still with esteem no less convers’d than read, | |
| With wit well-natured, and with books well-bred: | |
| His heart his mistress and his friend did share, | |
| His time the Muse, the witty, and the fair. | 10 |
| Thus wisely careless, innocently gay, | |
| Cheerful he play’d the trifle, Life, away; | |
| Till Fate scarce felt his gentle breath supprest, | |
| As smiling infants sport themselves to rest. | |
| Ev’n rival Wits did Voiture’s death deplore, | 15 |
| And the gay mourn’d who never mourn’d before; | |
| The truest hearts for Voiture heav’d with sighs, | |
| Voiture was wept by all the brightest eyes: | |
| The Smiles and Loves had died in Voiture’s death, | |
| But that for ever in his lines they breathe. | 20 |
| Let the strict life of graver mortals be | |
| A long, exact, and serious Comedy; | |
| In ev’ry scene some Moral let it teach, | |
| And, if it can, at once both please and preach. | |
| Let mine an innocent gay farce appear, | 25 |
| And more diverting still than regular, | |
| Have Humour, Wit, a native Ease and Grace, | |
| Tho’ not too strictly bound to Time and Place: | |
| Critics in Wit, or Life, are hard to please, | |
| Few write to those, and none can live to these. | 30 |
| Too much your Sex is by their forms confin’d, | |
| Severe to all, but most to Womankind; | |
| Custom, grown blind with Age, must be your guide; | |
| Your pleasure is a vice, but not your pride; | |
| By Nature yielding, stubborn but for fame, | 35 |
| Made slaves by honour, and made fools by shame; | |
| Marriage may all those petty tyrants chase; | |
| But sets up one, a greater, in their place; | |
| Well might you wish for change by those accurst, | |
| But the last tyrant ever proves the worst. | 40 |
| Still in constraint your suff’ring Sex remains, | |
| Or bound in formal, or in real chains: | |
| Whole years neglected, for some months ador’d, | |
| The fawning Servant turns a haughty Lord. | |
| Ah, quit not the free innocence of life, | 45 |
| For the dull glory of a virtuous Wife; | |
| Nor let false shows, or empty titles please; | |
| Aim not at Joy, but rest content with Ease. | |
| The Gods, to curse Pamela with her pray’rs, | |
| Gave the gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares, | 50 |
| The shining robes, rich jewels, beds of state, | |
| And, to complete her bliss, a fool for mate. | |
| She glares in Balls, front Boxes, and the Ring, | |
| A vain, unquiet, glitt’ring, wretched thing! | |
| Pride, Pomp, and State but reach her outward part; | 55 |
| She sighs, and is no Duchess at her heart. | |
| But, Madam, if the fates withstand, and you | |
| Are destin’d Hymen’s willing victim too; | |
| Trust not too much your now resistless charms, | |
| Those Age or Sickness soon or late disarms: | 60 |
| Good humour only teaches charms to last, | |
| Still makes new conquests, and maintains the past; | |
| Love, rais’d on Beauty, will like that decay, | |
| Our hearts may bear its slender chain a day; | |
| As flow’ry bands in wantonness are worn, | 65 |
| A morning’s pleasure, and at evening torn; | |
| This binds in ties more easy, yet more strong, | |
| The willing heart, and only holds it long. | |
| Thus Voiture’s early care still shone the same, | |
| And Montausier was only changed in name; | 70 |
| By this, ev’n now they live, ev’n now they charm, | |
| Their wit still sparkling, and their flames still warm. | |
| Now crown’d with myrtle, on th’ Elysian coast, | |
| Amid those lovers, joys his gentle Ghost: | |
| Pleas’d, while with smiles his happy lines you view, | 75 |
| And finds a fairer Rambouillet in you. | |
| The brightest eyes of France inspired his Muse; | |
| The brightest eyes of Britain now peruse; | |
| And dead, as living, ’t is our Author’s pride | |
| Still to charm those who charm the world beside. | 80 |
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