For the Vase at Bath Easton: Dissipation

I.
IF Hope, the friend of Man, extend a ray
Along the sky of some far distant day;
Gay Dissipation boasts a friendlier pow'r,
She breaks the gloom that dims the present hour!
E'en painter-like she takes her ready stand,
A radiant pencil decks her skilful hand,
And with the colours of her magic art
She gilds the cloud that settles on the heart,

II.
This Proteus often takes a different frame:
To Heroes she assumes the shape of Fame;
To suckling Bards she rolls the river Cam;
To Dowagers she takes the form of Pam.

III.
Could CELIA long endure a country life;
The prim false-breeding of th' attorney's wife;
The parson's pun; the husband's duller joke;
The solitary walk; the raven's croak;
Did not the Goddess act the Prophet's part,
And to her mournful votary impart
The wish'd-for blessings that are doom'd to crown
The chearful hours that glide within the town,
And paint young Pleasure's gayly-vested train
With all the conquests of the next campaign?
And e'en in town could she endure the weight
Of the long after-dinner tête-à-tête,
Did not the Goddess to her mind recal
Th' approaching splendors of the evening ball?

IV.
Behold, encircled with Affliction's gloom,
BELINDA watches at her husband's tomb;
Beneath th' oppressive weight of grief she bends,
Like the pale lily when the rain descends:
But Dissipation, with her soothing aid,
Forbids the beauteous drooping flow'r to fade.
The Fair intends, in proof of her distress,
To wear the mourning of the days of Bess!
But in obedience to the present court,
Kind Dissipation bids her wear the short.
At her command, while tears bedew her cheeks,
BELINDA through the veil of mourning peeps;
Her pulse beats quicker as she then surveys
Th' approaching prospect of more happy days:
At length the change of mourning brings relief,
And at the change she loses half her grief.
Now on the joys that meet her on the way,
The mourner casts a fearful coy survey:
Now less reserv'd, a bolder view she sends,
And bolder still she Pleasure's bark ascends,
Where laughing HEBE grasps the glitt'ring helm,
To guide the vessel to th' Idalian realm.
Now soft recorders send a soothing sound,
And in the notes affliction's plaints are drown'd;
The sails grow pregnant with the wanton air,
Not unregarded by the conscious Fair,
Who glides obedient to the fav'ring wind,
And leaves the gloom of widowhood behind.