Spleen, The. 
By Finch, Anne (Countess of Winchilsea). 


A Pindaric Poem

What art thou, Spleen, which everything dost ape?
Thou Proteus to abused mankind,
Who never yet thy real cause could find,
Or fix thee to remain in one continued shape.
Still varying thy perplexing form,
Now a Dead Sea thou'lt represent,
A calm of stupid discontent,
Then, dashing on the rocks, with rage into a storm.
Trembling sometimes thou dost appear
Dissolved into a panic fear;
Or sleep intruding dost thy shadows spread
And crowd with boding dreams the melancholy head;
Or when the midnight hour is told,
And drooping lids thou still dost waking hold,
Thy fond delusions cheat the eyes;
Before them antic spectres dance,
Unusual fires their pointed heads advance
And airy phantoms rise.
Such was the monstrous vision seen
When Brutus (now beneath his cares oppressed
And all Rome's fortunes rolling in his breast
Before Philippi's latest field,
Before his fate did to Octavius yield)
Was vanquished by the Spleen.

Falsely the mortal part we blame
Of our depressed and ponderous frame,
Which, till the first degrading Sin
Let thee its dull attendant in,
Still with the other did comply,
Nor clogged the active soul, disposed to fly
And range the mansions of its native sky.
Nor whilst in his own heaven he dwelt
Whilst man his Paradise possessed,
His fertile garden in the fragrant east,
And all united odours smelt,
Nor armed sweets until thy reign
Could shock the sense, or in the face
A flushed, unhandsome colour place.
Now the jonquil o'ercomes the feeble brain;
We faint beneath the aromatic pain,
Till some offensive scent thy powers appease,
And pleasure we resign for short and nauseous ease.

In every one thou dost possess
New are thy motions and thy dress;
Now in some grove a listening friend
Thy false suggestions must attend,
Thy whispered griefs, thy fancied sorrows hear,
Breathed in a sigh and witnessed by a tear;
Whilst in the light and vulgar crowd
Thy slaves, more clamorous and loud,
By laughters unprovoked thy influence too confess.
In the imperious wife thou Vapours art,
Which from o'erheated passions rise
In clouds to the attractive brain
Until, descending thence again,
Through the o'ercast and showering eyes,
Upon her husband's softened heart,
He the disputed point must yield,
Something resign of the contested field;
Till lordly man, born to imperial sway,
Compounds for peace, to make that right away,
And woman, armed with spleen, does servilely obey.

The fool, to imitate the wits,
Complains of thy pretended fits,
And dullness, born with him, would lay
Upon thy accidental sway;
Because sometimes thou dost presume
Into the ablest heads to come:
That often men of thoughts refined,
Impatient of unequal sense,
Such slow returns where they so much dispense,
Retiring from the crowd, are to thy shades inclined.
O'er me, alas! thou dost too much prevail:
I feel thy force whilst I against thee rail:
I feel my verse decay, and my cramped numbers fail.
Through thy black jaundice I all objects see
As dark, as terrible as thee,
My lines decried, and my employment thought
An useless folly or presumptious fault:
Whilst in the Muses' paths I stray,
Whilst in their groves and by their secret springs
My hand delights to trace unusual things,
And deviates from the known and common way;
Now will in fading silks compose
Faintly the inimitable rose,
Fill up an ill-drawn bird, or paint on glass
The Sovereign's blurred and undistinguished face,
The threatening angel and the speaking ass.

Patron thou art to every gross abuse,
The sullen husband's feigned excuse
When the ill-humour with his wife he spends
And bears recruited wit and spirits to his friends.
The son of Bacchus pleads thy power
And to the glass he still repairs,
Pretends but to remove thy cares,
Snatch from thy shades one gay and smiling hour
And drown thy kingdom in a purple shower.
When the coquette, whom every fool admires,
Would in variety be fair,
And changing hastily the scene
From light, impertinent and vain,
Assumes a soft, a melancholy air,
And of her eyes rebates the wandering fires,
The careless posture and the head reclined,
The thoughtful and composed face,
Proclaiming the withdrawn, the absent mind,
Allows the fop more liberty to gaze,
Who gently for the tender cause inquires.
The cause indeed is a defect in sense,
Yet is the spleen alleged and still the dull pretence.
But these are thy fantastic harms,
The tricks of thy pernicious stage,
Which do the weaker sort engage;
Worse are the dire effects of thy more powerful charms.
By thee Religion, all we know
That should enlighten here below,
Is veiled in darkness and perplexed.
With anxious doubts and endless scruples vexed
And some restraint implied from each perverted text;
Whilst Touch not, Taste not what is freely given
Is but thy niggard voice disgracing bounteous heaven.
From speech restrained, by thy deceits abused,
To deserts banished or in cells reclused,
Mistaken votaries to the Powers Divine,
Whilst they a purer sacrifice design,
Do but the spleen obey, and worship at thy shrine.
In vain to chase thee every art we try,
In vain all remedies apply,
In vain the Indian leaf infuse,
Or the parched Eastern berry bruise;
Some pass in vain these bounds and nobler liquors use.
Now harmony in vain we bring,
Inspire the flute and touch the string.
From harmony no help is had;
Music but soothes thee, if too sweetly sad,
And if too light, but turns thee gaily mad.
Though the Physician's greatest gains,
Although his growing wealth he sees
Daily increased by ladies' fees,
Yet dost thou baffle all his studious pains.
Not skilful Lower thy source could find,
Or through the well-dissected body trace
The secret, the mysterious ways,
By which thou dost surprise and prey upon the mind.
Though in the search, too deep for human thought,
With unsuccessful toil he wrought,
Till, thinking thee to have catched, himself by thee was caught,
Retained thy prisoner, thy acknowledged slave,
And sunk beneath thy chain to a lamented grave.