A Satyre Against Mankind

Were I - who to my cost already am

One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man -

A spirit free to choose for my own share

What sort of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,

I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,

Or anything but that vain animal,

Who is so proud of being rational.

 

 

His senses are too gross; and he'll contrive

A sixth, to contradict the other five;

And before certain instinct will prefer

Reason, which fifty times for one does err.

 

Reason, an ignis fatuus of the mind,

Which leaving light of nature, sense, behind,

Pathless and dangerous wand'ring ways it takes,

Through Error's fenny bogs and thorny brakes;

Whilst the misguided follower climbs with pain

Mountains of whimsey's, heaped in his own brain;

Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down,

Into Doubt's boundless sea where, like to drown,

Books bear him up awhile, and make him try

To swim with bladders of Philosophy;

In hopes still to o'ertake the escaping light;

The vapour dances, in his dancing sight,

Till spent, it leaves him to eternal night. - John Wilmot

Done