And puts Delusion's dusky train to flight,
Dispels the mist our sultry passions raise
From objects low, terrestrial, and obscene,
And shows the real estimate of things,
Which no man, unafflicted, ever saw :
Pulls off the veil from Virtue's rising charms;
Detects Temptation in a thousand lies.
Truth bids me look on men as autumn leaves,
And all they bleed for as the summer's dust
Driven by the whirlwind: lighted by her beams,
I widen my horizon, gain new powers,
See things invisible, feel things remote,
Am present with futurities; think nought
To man so foreign as the joys possess'd,
Nought so much his as those beyond the grave.
No folly keeps its colour in her sight;
Pale worldly Wisdom loses all her charms.
In pompous promise from her schemes profound,
If future fate she plans, 'tis all in leaves,
Like sibyl, unsubstantial, fleeting bliss!
At the first blast it vanishes in air.
Not so celestial. Wouldst thou know, Lorenzo! 350
How differ worldly Wisdom and divine?
Just as the waning and the waxing moon.
More empty worldly Wisdom every day,
And every day more fair her rival shines.
When later, there's less time to play the fool.
Soon our whole term for Wisdom is expired
(Thou know'st she calls no council in the grave,)
And everlasting fool is writ in fire,
Or real wisdom wafts us to the skies.
As worldly schemes resembles sibyls' leaves, The good man's days to sibyls' books compare (In ancient story read, thou know'st the tale,) In price still rising as in number less, Inestimable quite his final hour.
For that who thrones can offer, offer thrones;
Insolvent worlds the purchase cannot pay.
'Oh let me die his death.' all Nature cries.
'Then live his life.'-All Nature falters there Our great physicia. daily to consult,
To commune with the grave, our only cure.
What grave prescribes the best?-A friend's; and yet
From a friend's grave how soon we disengage
E'en to the dearest, as his marble, cold.
Why are friends ravish'd from us? 'tis to bind,
By soft Affection's ties, on human hearts
The thought of Death, which Reason, too supine,
Or misemploy'd, so rarely fastens there.
Nor Reason nor Affection, no, nor both
Combined, can break the witchcrafts of the world.
Behold the' inexorable hour at hand;
Behold the' inexorable hour forgot!
And to forget it the chief aim of life,
Though well to por ler it is life's chief end.
Is Death, that ever threatening, ne'er remote,
That all important, and that only sure,
(Come when he will) an unexpected guest?
Nay, though invited by the loudest calls
Of blind Imprudence, unexpected still?
Though numerous messengers are sent before,
To warn his great arrival? What the cause,
The wondrous cause, of this mysterious ill?
All Heaven looks down, astonish'd at the sight!
Is it that Life has sown her joys so thick,
We can't thrust in a single care between?
Is it that Life has such a swarm of cares,
The thought of Death can't enter for the throng?
Is it that Time steals on with downy feet,
Nor wakes Indulgence from her golden dream?
To-day is so like yesterday, it cheats;
We take the lying sister for the saine.
Life glides away, Lorenzo! like a brook,
For ever changing, unperceived the change.
In the same brook none ever bathed him twice;
To the same life none ever twice awoke.
We call the brook the same: the same we think 405
Our life, though still more rapid in its flow,
Nor mark the much irrevocably la, sed,
And mingled with the sea.
Or shall we say
(Retaining still the brook to bear us on)
That life is like a vessel on the stream?
In life embark'd, we smoothly down the tide
Of time descend, but not on time intent;
Ariused, unconscious of the gliding wave,
Till on a sudden we perceive a shock;
We start, awake, look out: what see we thero!
Our brittle bark is burst on Charon's shore.
Is this the cause Death flies all human thought›
Or is it Judgment, by the Will struck blind,
That domineering mistress of the soul!
Like him so strong, by Dalilah the fair?--
Or is it fear turns startled Reason back,
Frem looking down a precipice so steep-
'Tis dreadful; and the dread is wisely placed
By Nature, conscious of the make of man,
A dreadful friend it is, a terror kind,
A flaming sword to guard the tree of Life.
By that unawed, in Life's most smiling hour
The good man would repine; would suffer joys,
And burn impatient for his promised skies.
The bad, on each punctilious pique of pride,
Or gloom of humour, would give Rage the rein,
Bound o'er the barrier, rush into the dark,
And mar the scenes of Providence below.
What groan was that, Lorenzo-Furies! rise,
And drown in your less cxecrable yell,
Britannia's shame. There took her gloomy flight,
On wing impetuous, a black sullen soul,
Blasted from hell with horrid lust of death.
Thy friend, the brave, the gallant Altamont,
So call'd, so thought-and then he fled the field; 440 Less base the fear of death than fear of life.
O Britain infamous for suicide!
An island, in thy manners: far disjoin'd
From the whole world of rationals beside!
In ambient waves plunge thy polluted head,
Wash the dire stain, nor shock the continent.
But thou be shock'd, while I detect the cause
Of self-assault, expose the monster's birth,
And bid Abhorrence hiss it round the world.
Blame not thy clime, nor chide the distant Sun; 450
The Sun is innocent, thy clime absolved.
Immoral climes kind Nature never made.
The cause I sing, in Eden might prevail,
And proves it is thy folly, not thy fate.
The soul of man (let man in homage bow
Who names his soul,) a native of the skies!
Highborn and free, her freedom should maintain.
Unsold, unmortgaged for earth's little bribes.
The' illustrious stranger, in this foreign land,
Like strangers, jealous of her dignity,
Studious of home, and ardent to return,
Of earth suspicious, Earth's enchanted cup
With cool reserve light touching, should indulge
On immortality her godlike taste;
There take large draughts; make her chief banquet But some reject this sustenance divine,
To beggarly vile appetites descend,
Ask alms of Earth, for guests that came from Heaven!
Sink into slaves, and sell, for present hire,
Their rich reversion, and (what shares its fate) 470
Their native freedom, to the prince who sways
This nether world: and when his payments fail,
When his foul basket gorges them no more,
Are instantly, with wild demoniac rage,
Or their pall'd palates loathe the basket full,
For breaking all the chains of Providence,
And bursting their confinement, though fast barr'd
By laws divine and human, guarded strong
With horrors doubled to defend the pass,
The blackest Nature or dire guilt can raise,
And moated round with fathomless destruction,
Sure to receive and whelm them in their fall.
Such, Britons! is the cause, to you unknown,
Or worse, o'erlook'd; o'erlook'd by magistrates,
Thus criminals themselves! I grant the deed
Is madness; but the madness of the heart.
And what is that? our utmost bound of guilt.
A sensual, unreflecting life is big
With monstrous births, and Suicide, to crown
The black infernal brood. The bold to break
Heaven's law supreme, and desperately rush
Through sacred Nature's murder, on their own
Because they never think of death, they die.
'Tis equally man's duty, glory, gain,
At once to shun, and meditate his end
When by the bed of languishment we sit,
(The seat of Wisdom! if our choice, not fate)
Or o'er our dying friends in anguish hang,
Wipe the cold dew, or stay the sinking head;
Number their moments, and in every clock
Start at the voice of an eternity;
See the dim lamp of life just feebly lift
An agonizing beam, at us to gaze,
Then sink again, and quiver into death,
That most pathetic herald of our own :
How read we such sad scenes? As sent to man
In perfect vengeance? no; in pity sent,
To melt him down, like wax, and then impress,
Indelible, Death's image on his heart,
Bleeding for others, trembling for himself.
We bleed, we tremble, we forget, we smile.
The mind turns fool before the cheek is dry.
Our quick-returning folly cancels all,
As the tide rushing razes what is writ
In yielding sands, and smooths the letter'd shore. 515 Lorenzo! hast thou ever weigh'd a sigh?
Or studied the philosophy of tears?
(A science yet unlectured in our schools'
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