Lest your own carcass catch the fatal blow
Intended for your unoffending foe;
For Jove's all-seeing eye can soon reveal
And punish crimes you would in vain conceal.—
Yet why should I or mine be honest when
Great rogues are praised, instead of honest men?
If wealth nor praise on honest toil depends,
And none but scoundrels may secure these ends,
While good men suffer, then confess we must,
'Twere less an evil to be wrong than just.—
But heaven forbid! we must be just to all.
Though rogues may triumph, and good men may fall.
And if the world would bear this rule in mind,
Injustice would be banished from mankind.
'Tis strange how they depend on brutal might,
When savage beasts in it so much delight.
Their souls kind Nature never deigned to lift
To light of reason, but bestowed that gift
On man to raise him from his low estate,
And fit his being for a nobler fate.
Beasts, birds, and fishes prey upon each other,
But man should love his neighbor as a brother.
Heaven's richest, choicest gifts to him belong
Who scorns by word or deed to do a wrong.
For him bright Ceres pours her golden ears,
And honor follows him through future years.
But who with false and treacherous tongue would blight
Respected fame, or wrong the cause of right,
Let heaven's just vengeance scathe his perjured soul,
And dark oblivion o'er his memory roll.
Plain is the path of virtue, yet 'tis twice
As hard to travel as the way of Vice,
