Trust Not Yourself, But Your Defects To

Of All The Causes Which Conspire To Blind Man's Erring Judgement, And Misguide The Mind, What The Weak Head With Strongest Bias Rules, Is Pride, The Never-failing Vice Of Fools.

Wise Wretch! With Pleasures Too Refined To Please, With Too Much Spirit To Be E'er At Ease, With Too Much Quickness Ever To Be Taught, With Too Much Thinking To Have Common Thought: You Purchase Pain With All That Joy Can Give, And Die Of Nothing But A Rage To Live.

There Various News I Heard Of Love And Strife,of Peace And War, Health, Sickness, Death, And Life,of Loss And Gain, Of Famine And Of Store,of Storms At Sea, And Travels On The Shore,of Prodigies, And Portents Seen In Air,of Fires And Plagues, And Stars With Blazing Hair,of Turns Of Fortune, Changes In The State,the Fall Of Favourites, Projects Of The Great,of Aid Mismanagements, Taxations New:all Neither Wholly False, Nor Wholly True.

Our Plenteous Streams A Various Race Supply, The Bright-eyed Perch With Fins Of Tyrian Dye, The Silver Eel, In Shining Volumes Roll'd, The Yellow Carp, In Scales Bedropp'd With Gold, Swift Trouts, Diversified With Crimson Stains, And Pikes, The Tyrants Of The Wat'ry Plains.

Of All Affliction Taught A Lover Yet, 'tis True The Hardest Science To Forget.