Numa Pompilius

No objects Numa to the muse supplies, But temples, priests, and pious mysteries. He check'd Bellona's rage; and dove-ey'd peace Saw superstition rise, and slaughter cease. For sacred ends, was sacred truth forgot, And hence the fiction of the Egerian grot; That Numa's holy visions might persuade, To the meek king descends the inspiring maid: None, to believe or to obey, repine, When human wisdom speaks by aid divine. Credulity, an easy yielding soil, Brought up new plants of faith with slender toil; A tale once told, the weak enquir'd no more, But fools believ'd what craft impos'd before. The pagan creed, with motley legends full, Amus'd the enlighten'd, and amaz'd the dull; A monstrous fable clumsily devis'd, Procession, pageants, pomp, and noise disguis'd; While sound and show the pleas'd attention kept, The senses only wak'd, and reason slept. Wisdom with joy the kind delusion saw, And turn'd the vulgar blindness into awe; So, by an engine which herself disdain'd, Dominion o'er the publick mind she gain'd: As serv'd her cause she play'd the mummery o'er, And left the crowd to wonder and adore. Salian and Fecial Flamens thus began, And Vestals, sacred from the embrace of man; Their task to quench the flame of love's desire, And unextinguish'd keep pale Vesta's fire. Sad institution! which austerely draws The female heart from nature's genial laws; Strangles heaven's bounty, and converts to woe The plenteous source whence joy and life should flow: As if the tree, whose pregnant boughs might yield The richest honours of Pomona's field, Should turn, perverted by the spoiler's hand, To the vile office of a smoky brand. Inhuman law! where reason must confess The sanction, not the breach, was wickedness. The maid, thus torn from the best joys of life, Denied to charm, a mistress, or a wife, To bless the sweetness of her infant's smile, Or the fond clasps which matron cares beguile, If mutual passion fired her to impart The illicit rapture of her glowing heart, Grim death, and priests more grim, with Stygian gloom Plung'd the warm breathing creature in the tomb. By such preposterous punishment they strove To avert the wrath her crime provok'd above. Had thunder crush'd the holy murderers round, Had earthquakes swallow'd the devoted ground, The righteous doom true sanctity had pleas'd; So truth had been reveal'd, and heav'n appeas'd. Go on, insensate law-makers! proceed; Frame statutes worse than the transgressor's deed; Wrest from Jove's hand the slow-avenging rod, And doubly die the sanguinary code; Ordain, coerce, prohibit at your will; Nature shall brave them all, and triumph still. Though no fierce combat on the ensanguin'd plain, Or added soil distinguish'd Numa's reign, A fairer palm his bloodless annals boast; Rome gain'd in virtue what in fame she lost. Not viol tun'd, or melting song, so finds The magick way to fierce untutor'd minds, Not on the thirsty glebe ambrosial rain So opes its bosom for the teeming grain, As sweet religion's heaven-descended dews Their mild effects o'er social life diffuse; Then holier shrines in mortal breasts are rear'd, And truth is sacred when a God's rever'd. Let hope and fear compact the moral chain, A stronger power than man may man restrain; These are the springs invisible above, The human will to good or ill to move: All virtue else in the tempestuous mind, Is weak, as Bibulus to Caesar join'd: Who, without these the passions would command, But holds a tyger in a flowery band.