No More Learning

There are tumble-down tenements with the buttresses ready to give;
there are top garrets where you may lose your life in a fire. You
could buy a nice rustic home for the price at which a dingy hovel is
let in Rome. Besides, the din of the streets is killing. Rome is bad
for the nerves. Folk die of insomnia. By day you get crushed, bumped,
and caked with mud. A soldier drives his hobnails into your toe. You
may be the victim of a street accident.

Heavens! should the axle crack, which bears a weight
Of huge Ligurian stone, and pour the freight
On the pale crowd beneath, what would remain,
What joint, what bone, what atom of the slain?
The body, with the soul, would vanish quite,
Invisible, as air, to mortal sight!
Meanwhile, unconscious of their master's fate,
At home they heat the water, scour the plate,
Arrange the strigils, fill the cruse with oil,
And ply their several tasks with fruitless toil.
But he, the mangled victim, now a ghost,
Sits pale and trembling on the Stygian coast,
A stranger shivering at the novel scene,
At Charon's threatening voice and scowling mien,
Nor hopes a passage thus abruptly hurled,
Without his farthing to the nether world.

In the dark there are equal perils.

Prepare for death if here at night you roam,
And sign your will before you sup from home.
Lucky if people throw only dirty water from their windows! Be thankful
to escape without a broken skull. A drunken bully may meet you.

There are who murder as an opiate take,
And only when no brawls await them, wake.

And what chance have you, without attendants, against a street rough?
Then there is the burglar; and the criminal classes are regularly
increased in town whenever the authorities grow active enough to clear
the main Italian roads of bandits.

The forge in fetters only is employed;
Our iron-mines exhausted and destroyed
In shackles; for these villains scarce allow
Goads for our teams or ploughshares for the plough.
Oh, happy ages of our ancestors,
Beneath the kings and tribunician powers!
One jail did all the criminals restrain,
Whom now the walls of Rome can scarce contain.


_III. --A Satire on the Vanity of Human Wishes_

Look round the habitable world; how few
Know their own good; or, knowing it, pursue.
To headlong ruin see whole houses driven,
Cursed with their prayers, by too indulgent heaven.

The several passions and aspirations of mankind, successively
examined in the light of legend and history, prove how hollow, if not
pernicious, are the principal objects of pursuit. Wealth is one of the
commonest aims.

But avarice spreads her deadly snare,
And hoards amassed with too successful care.
For wealth, in the black days, at Nero's word,
The ruffian bands unsheathed the murderous sword.