First follow Nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same:
Unerring nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
With sharpen'd sight pale Antiquaries pore, Th' inscription value, but the rust adore. This the blue varnish, that the green endears; The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years.
Chiefs who no more in bloody fights engage, But wise through time, and narrative with age, In summer-days like grasshoppers rejoice - A bloodless race, that send a feeble voice.
All Nature is but art, unknown to thee All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good.
Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, But vindicate the ways of God to man.
Our rural ancestors, with little blest, Patient of labor when the end was rest, Indulged the day that housed their annual grain, With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.
Atheists put on false courage and alacrity in the midst of their darkness and apprehensions, like children who, when they fear to go in the dark, will sing for fear.