Distrust mankind; with your own heart confer;
And dread even there to find a flatterer.
The breath of others raises our renown;
Our own as surely blows the pageant down.
Take up no more than you by worth can claim,
Lest soon you prove a bankrupt in your fame.
But own I must, in this perverted age,
Who most deserve, can't always most engage.
So far is worth from making glory sure,
It often hinders what it should procure.
Whom praise we most? The virtuous, brave, and wise?
No; wretches, whom, in secret, we despise.
And who so blind, as not to see the cause?
No rivals rais'd by such discreet applause;
And yet, of credit it lays in a store,
By which our spleen may wound true worth the more.
Ladies there are who think one crime is all:
Can women, then, no way but backward fall?
So sweet is that one crime they don't pursue,
To pay its loss, they think all others few.
Who hold that crime so dear, must never claim
Of injur'd modesty the sacred name.
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