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Pleas'd with your generous ardour in the chace,
And warm as you. Then tell me, for you know,
Does beauty ever deign to dwell where health350
And active use are strangers? Is her charm
Confess'd in aught, whose most peculiar ends
Are lame and fruitless? Or did nature mean
This awful stamp the herald of a lye;
To hide the shame of discord and disease,355
And catch with fair hypocrisy the heart
Of idle faith? O no! with better cares,
Th' indulgent mother, conscious how infirm
Her offspring tread the paths of good and ill,
By this illustrious image, in each kind360
Still most illustrious where the object holds
Its native pow'rs most perfect, she by this
Illumes the headstrong impulse of desire,
And sanctifies his choice. The generous glebe
Whose bosom smiles with verdure, the clear tract365
Of streams delicious to the thirsty soul,
The bloom of nectar'd fruitage ripe to sense,
And every charm of animated things,
Are only pledges of a state sincere,
Th' integrity and order of their frame,370
When all is well within, and every end
Accomplish'd. Thus was beauty sent from heav'n,
The lovely ministress of truth and good

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