Young. MIDNIGHT. TIRED Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep! From short (as usual) and disturbed repose Tumultuous; where my wrecked desponding thought, At random drove, her helm of reason lost. Though now restored, 'tis only change of pain, (A bitter change!) severer for severe: The day too short for my distress; and night, Night, sable Goddess! from her ebon throne, In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Silence how dead; and darkness how profound! (That column of true majesty in man,) 119 The grave, your kingdom: there this frame shall fall, A victim sacred to your dreary shrine. But what are ye?— Thou, who didst put to flight Primæval silence, when the morning star O Thou! whose word from solid darkness struck 2 Nor let the phial of thy vengeance poured The bell strikes one. We take no note of time, Where are they? With the years beyond the flood. How much is to be done! My hopes and fears Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour? A worm! a God!—I tremble at myself, O what a miracle to man is man! Triumphantly distressed! What joy! what dread! Alternately transported and alarmed! What can preserve my life! or what destroy! An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; Legions of angels can't confine me there. PROCRASTINATION. Be wise to day; 'tis madness to defer: Next day the fatal precedent will plead; Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life! Procrastination is the thief of time; Year after year it steals, till all are fled, And to the mercies 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; At least their own; their future selves applaud: How excellent that life they ne'er will lead ! Time lodged in their own hands is Folly's vails; That lodged in Fate's, to wisdom they consign; The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone. Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool; And scarce in human wisdom to do more. All promise is poor dilatory man, And that through every stage. When young, indeed, Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same. And why? because he thinks himself immortal. All men think all men mortal but themselves; Themselves, when some alarming shock of Fate Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread; But their hearts wounded like the wounded air, Soon close; where past the shaft, no trace is found. As from the wing no scar the sky retains, The parted wave no furrow from the keel, So dies in human hearts the thought of death: Even with the tender tear which nature sheds O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave. |