"Tis past conjecture; all things rise in proof.
While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread,*
What* though my soul fantastic measures trod
O'er fairy fields; or mourn'd along the gloom
Of pathless woods; or, down the craggy steep
Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantle pool;
Or scaled the cliff; or danced on hollow winds,
With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain?
Her ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her nature
Of subtler essence than the trodden' clod;
Active, aerial, towering, unconfined,
Unfetter'd with her gross companion's fall.
Even silent night proclaims my soul immortal:
Even silent night proclaims eternal day.
For human weal, Heaven husbands all events:
Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain.
Why then their loss deplore, that are not lost?
Why wanders wretched thought their tombs around
In infidel distress? Are angels there?
Slumbers, raked up in dust, etherial fire?
They live! they greatly live a life1 on earth
Unkindled, unconceiv'd; and from an eye
Of tenderness let heavenly pity fall
On me, more justly number'd with the dead.
This is the desert, this the solitude:
How populous, how vital, is the grave!
This is creation's melancholy vault,
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom;
The land of apparitions, empty shades!
All, all on earth, is shadow; all beyond
"What if, and what though are elliptical phrases. Some word or words can be supplied to complete the sentence; as what [sig nifies the fact?]
Is substance; the reverse is Folly's creed:
How solid all, where change shall be no more!
This is the bud of being, the dim dawn,
The twilight of our day, the vestibule:
Life's theatre as yet is shut, and death,
Strong death alone, can heave the massy bar,
This gross impediment of clay remove,
And make us, embryos of existence, free.
From real life, but little more remote
Is he, not yet a candidate for light,
The future embryo slumbering in his sire.
Embryos we must be, till we burst the shell,
Yon ambient azure shell, and spring to life,
The life of gods, oh transport! and of man.
"Yet man, fool man! here buries all his thoughts; Inters celestial hopes without one sigh.
Prisoner of earth, and pent beneath the moon,
Here pinions all his wishes: wing'd by Heaven
To fly at infinite; and reach it there,
Where seraphs gather immortality,
On life's fair tree, fast! by the throne of God.
What golden joys ambrosial clustering glow
In HIS full beam, and ripen for the just,
Where momentary ages are no more!
Where time, and pain, and chance, and death, expire !25
As is it in the flight of threescore years,
To push eternity from human thought,
And smother souls immortal in the dust?
A soul immortal spending all her fires,
Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness,
Thrown into tumult, raptured, or alarm'd,
At aught this scene can threaten or indulge,
Resembles ocean into tempest wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.
Where falls this censure? It o'erwhelms myself
How was my heart incrusted by the world!
Oh how self-fetter'd was my groveling soul.
How, like a worm, was I wrapt round and round
In silken thought, which reptile Fancy spun,
Till darken'd Reason lay quite clouded o'er
With soft conceit of endless comfort here,
Nor yet put forth her wings to reach the skies!
Night visions may befriend (as sung above:)
Our waking dreams are fatal. How I dreamt
Of things impossible! (Could sleep do more?)
Of joys perpetual in perpetual change!
The spider's most attenuated thread
Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie
On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze.
O ye blest scenes of permanent delight!
Full, above measure! lasting, beyond bound!
A perpetuity of bliss, is bliss.
Could you, so rich in rapture, fear an end;
That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy,
And quite unparadise the realms of light.
Safe are you lodged above these rolling spheres;
The baleful influence of whose giddy dance
Here teems with revolutions every hour;
Sheds sad vicissitude on all beneath.
And rarely for the better: or the best 1
More mortal than the common births of fate.
Each moment has its sickle, emulous
Of Time's enormous scythe, whose ample sweep
Strikes empires from the root: each moment plays
His little weapon in the narrower sphere
Of sweet domestic comfort, and cuts down
The fairest bloom of sublunary bliss.
Bliss! sublunary bliss!-proud words and vain! Implicit treason to divine decree!
A bold invasion of the rights of Heaven!
I clasp'd the phantoms, and I found them air:
Oh had I weigh'd it ere my fond embrace.
What darts of agony had miss'd my heart!
Death! great proprietor of all! 'tis thine
To tread out empire, and to quench the stars:
The sun himself by thy permission shines;
And, one day, thou shalt pluck him from his sphere.
Amid such mighty plunder, why exhaust
Thy partial quiver on a mark so mean?
Why thy peculiar rancour wreak'd on me?
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice; and thrice my peace was slain,
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn.
O Cynthia! why so pale? Dost thou lament
Thy wretched neighbor? grieve to see thy wheel
Of ceaseless change outwhirl'd in human life?
How wanes my borrow'd bliss! From fortune's smile,
Precarious courtesy!* not virtue's sure,
Self-given, solar ray of sound delight.
In every varied posture, place, and hour,
How widow'd every thought of every joy!
Thought, busy thought! too busy for my peace!
Through the dark postern of time long elapsed,
Led softly, by the stillness of the night,
Led like a murderer, (and such it proves!)
Strays (wretched rover!) o'er the pleasing past,
In quest of wretchedness perversely strays;
And finds all desert now; and meets the ghosts
Of my departed joys, a numerous train!
I rue the riches of former fate:
Sweet comfort's blasted clusters I lament:
remble at the blessings once so dear:
And every pleasure pains me to the heart.
Yet why complain? or why complain for one?
Hangs out the sun his lustre but for me,
The single man? Are angels all beside !1
I mourn for millions: 'tis the common lot:
In this shape, or in that, has fate entail'd
The mother's throes on all of woman born,
Not more the children, than sure heirs, of pain.
War, famine, pest, volcano, storm, and fire,
Intestine broils, oppression, with her heart
Wrapt up in triple brass, besiege mankind.
God's image, disinherited of day,
Here, plunged in mines, forgets a sun was made.
There, beings deathless as their haughty lord,
* Courtesy in this place appears to mean "tenure" by favor a fortune; i. e. tenure of bliss which fortune lends, [not gives] cor trasted with the enduring happiness which virtue confers.
1 Are all angels beside me?
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