The whole strange purpose of their lives to find,
Or make an enemy of all mankind!
Not one looks backward, onward still he goes,
Yet ne'er looks foreward farther than his nose.
No less alike the politic and wise,225
All sly slow things, with circumspective eyes:
Men in their loose unguarded hours they take,
Not that themselves are wise, but others weak.
But grant that those can conquer, these can cheat,
'Tis phrase absurd to call a villain great:230
Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave,
Is but the more a fool, the more a knave,
Who noble ends by noble means obtains,
Or falling smiles in exile or in chains,
Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed235
Like Socrates, that man is great indeed.
What's fame? A fancy'd life in others' breath,
A thing beyond us, ev'n before our death,
Just what you hear, you have, and what's unknown
The same (my lord) if Tully's, or your own.240
All that we feel of it begins and ends
In the small circle of our foes or friends;
To all beside as much an empty shade,
An Eugene living, as a Cesar dead,
Alike or when or where they shone or shine,245
Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine.
A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod;
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
Fame
