Are hammer'd to the galling oar for life;
And plow the winter's wave, and reap despair.
Some, for hard masters, broken under arms,
In battle lopt away, with half their limbs,
Beg bitter bread through realm their valour saved,
If so the tyrant, or his minion, doom.
Want, and incurable disease, (fell pair!)
On hopeless multitudes remorseless seize
At once; and make a refuge of the grave.
How groaning hospitals eject their dead!
What numbers groan for sad admission there!
What numbers, once in fortune's lap high-fed,
Solicit the cold hand of charity!
To shock1 us more, solicit it in vain!
Ye silken sons of pleasure! since it pains
You rue more modish visits, visit here,
And breathe from your debauch: give, and reduce
Surfeit's dominion o'er you. But so great
Your impudence, you blush at what is right.
Happy, did sorrow seize on such alone.
Not prudence can defend, or virtue save:
Disease invades the chastest temperance;
And punishment the guiltless; and alarm,
Through thickest shades, pursues the fond of peace.
Man's caution often into danger turns,
And, his guard3 falling, crushes him to death.
Not Happiness itself makes good her name:
Our very wishes give us1 not our wish.
How distant oft the thing we dote on most
From that for which we dote, felicity!
The smoothest course of nature has its pains;
1 Rule XVIII, Rem. 9. ^ Rule XI, Note 2.
And truest friends, through error, wound our rest.
Without misfortune, what calamities.
And what hostilities, without a foe!
Nor are foes wanting to the best on earth.
But endless is the list of human ills,
And sighs might sooner fail, than cause to sigh.
A part how small of the terraqueous globe
Is tenanted by man! the rest a waste,
Rocks, deserts, f ɔzen seas, and burning sands;
Wild haunts of monsters, poisons stings, and death. 10 Such is earth's melancholy map! but, far
More sad! this earth is a true map of man.
So bounded are its haughty lord's delights
To woe's wide empire; where deep troubles toss,
Loud sorrows howl, envenomed passions bite,
Ravenous calamities our vitals seize,
And threatening fate wide opens to devour.
What then am I, who sorrow for myself?
In age, in infancy, from other's aid
Is all our hope; to teach us to be kind,
That nature's first, last lesson to mankind.
The selfish heart deserves the pain it feels:
More generous sorrow, while it sinks, exalts;
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang.
Nor virtue, more than prudence, bids me give
Swoln thought a second channel: who divide,
They weaken too, the torrent of their grief.
Take then, O World! thy much indebted tear
How sad a sight is human happiness,
To those whose thought can pierce beyond an hour! 30
O thou! whate'er thou art, whose heart exults!
Wouldst thou I should congratulate thy fate?
I know thou wouldst; thy pride demands it from me.
Let thy pride pardon, what thy nature needs,
The salutary censure of a friend.
Thou happy wretch! by blindness thou art blest
By dotage dandled to perpetual smiles.
Know, smiler! at thy peril art thou pleased,
Thy pleasure is the promise of thy pain.
Misfortune, like a creditor severe,
But rises in demand for her delay;
She makes a scourge of past prosperity,
To sting thee more, and double thy distress.
Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to thee:
Thy fond heart dances, while the Syren sings.
Dear is thy welfare: think me not unkind;
I would not damp, but to secure,1 thy joys.
Think not that fear is sacred to the storm:
Stand on thy guard against the smiles of fate.
Is Heaven tremendous in its frowns? Most sure;
And in its favours formidable too:
Its favours here are trials, not rewards;
A call to duty, not discharge from care;
And should alarm us, full as much as woes.
Ake us to their cause, and consequence;
O'er o scann'd conduct give a jealous eye,
And make is tremble, weigh'd with our desert;
Awe nature'snult, and chastise her joys,
Lest while we clas, we kill them; nay, invert
To worse than simple isery their charms.
Revolted joys, like foes in vil war,
Like bosom friendships to resc: tment sour'd,
With rage envenom'd rise against ur peace.
Beware what earth calls happiness: be vare
Rule XVIII, Rem. 5. But is used in the sense of only
All joys, but joys that never can expire.
Who builds on less than an immortal base,
Fond as he seems, condemns his joys to death.
Mine died with thee, Philander! thy last sigh
Dissolved the charm: the disenchanted earth
Lost all her lustre. Where her glittering towers?
Her golden mountains, where? all darken'd down
To naked waste; a dreary vale of tears;
The great magician's dead! Thou poor, pale piece
Of out-cast earth in darkness! what a change
From yesterday! Thy darling hope so near,
(Long-labour'd prize!) oh how ambition flush'd
Thy glowing cheek! Ambition truly great,
Of virtuous praise. Death's subtle seed within
(Sly, treacherous miner!) working in the dark,
Smiled at thy well-concerted scheme, and beckon'd
The worm to riot on that rose so red,
Unfaded ere it fell; one moment's prey!
Man's foresight is conditionally wise:
Lorenzo! wisdom into folly turns
Oft, the first instant its idea fair
To labouring thought is born. How dim our eye!
The present moment terminates our sight;
Clouds, thick as those on doomsday, drown the next,
We penetrate, we prophesy, in vain.
Time is dealt out by particles; and each,
Ere mingled with the streaming sands of life,
By fate's inviolable oath is sworn
Deep silence,1 "where eternity begins."
By nature's law, what may be, may be now: There's no prerogative in human hours.
1 Rule IX, Rem. Note 2; or some word can be supplied to gov ern silence.
Lhuman hearts what bolder thought can rise,
Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn?
Where is to-morrow? In another world.
For numbers this is certain; the reverse
Is sure to none; and yet on this perhaps,
Tuis peraventure, infamous for lies,
As on a rock of adamant, we build
Our mountain hopes; spin out eternal schemes,
As we the fatal sisters could out-spin,
And, big with life's futuritics, expire.
Not even Philander had bespoke his shroud,
Nor had he cause; a warning was denied:
How many fall as sudden, not as safe!
As sudden, though for years admonish'd home
Of human ills the last extreme beware:
Beware, Lorenzo! a slow sudden death.
How dreadful that deliberate surprise!
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer:
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on,
till wisdom is pusli'd out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the inercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.
Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears
The palm, “that all men are about to live,”
For ever on the brink of being born.
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel; and their pride.
On this reversion, takes up ready praise;
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