Heaven! ’tis a name, that as inconstant sways,
As fame or love, the changes of the moon,
Or, whatsoever wanders by dim ways
To a goal, fashioned by youth’s treacherous noon:
Heaven! ’tis a sound that in its uttering mocks
The hopes, reposing round that various base;
Adroitly differing, tempered to the shocks,
That mind the slow world of its desperate case!
The flattery of an echo from each heart,
A mirror, where each soul, reflected, shows
Unnatural choice of some unworthy part,
Which nature’s whole must loathingly depose:
Seek virtue for itself, or, seeking, lose
A Heaven apart, else Hell would Heaven confuse.