Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 7.djvu/162

150 Pale Avarice and lurking Fraud, Stand in your sacred presence aw'd; Your hand alone from gold abstains, Which drags the slavish world in chains. Him for a happy man I own, Whose fortune is not overgrown; And happy he, who wisely knows To use the gifts that Heaven bestows; Or, if it please the Powers Divine, Can suffer want, and not repine. The man, who infamy to shun Into the arms of death would run; That man is ready to defend, With life, his country or his friend.

O you, whose virtues, I must own With shame, I have too lately known; To you, by art and nature taught To be the man I long have sought, Had not ill Fate, perverse and blind, Plac'd you in life too far behind: Or, what I should repine at more, Plac'd me in life too far before: To you the Muse this verse bestows, Which might as well have been in prose; No thought, no fancy, no sublime, But simple topicks told in rhyme. Talents for conversation fit Are humour, breeding, sense, and wit: The