Resenting rallies, and wakes ev'ry wo..
Snatch'd ere thy prime! and in thy bridal hour!
And when kind Fortune, with thy lover, finil'd!
And when high flavour'd thy fresh-op ning joys
And when blind man pronounc'd thy blifs complete!
And on a foreign shore! where strangers wept!
Strangers to thee, and, more furprising still,
Strangers to kindness, wept: their eyes let falt
Inhuman tears; strange tears! that trickled down
From marble hearts! obdurate tenderness!
A tenderness that call'd them more fevere;
In spite of Nature's foft perfuafion, steel'd:
While Nature melted, Superstition rav'd;
That mourn'd the dead; and this deny'd a grave.
Their fighs incens'd; fighs foreign to the will!
Their will the tyger fuck'd, outrag'd the storm.
For, oh! the curst ungodliness of zeal!
While finful flesh relented, spirit nurs'd
In blind Infallibility's embrace,
The fainted spirit, petrify'd the breast;
Deny'd the charity of dust, to spread
O'er dust! a charity their dogs enjoy.
What could I do? what succour? what resource?
With pious facrilege, a grave I stole;
With impious piety, that grave I wrong'd;
Short in my dimy! coward in my grief!
More like her murderer, than friend, I erept,
With soft-fufpended step: and muffled deep.
In midnight-darkness, whisper'd my laft figh,
I whisper'd what should echo through their realms,
Nor writ her name, whose tomb shou'd pierce the
Presumptuous fear! how durst I dread her foes,
While Nature's loudest dictates I obey'd?
Pardon néceffity, bless'd shade! Of grief
And indignation rival bursts I pour'd:
Half-execration mingled with my prayer;
Kindled at man, while I his God ador'd;
Sore-grudg'd the savage land her facred dust;
Stamp'd the curs'd foil; and with humanity.
(Deny'd NARCISSA) wish'd them all a grave.
Glows my resentment into guilt? What guilt
Can equal violations of the dead?
The dead how facred! facred is the dust
Of this heav'n-labour'd form, erect, divine!
This heav'n-aflum'd majestic robe of earth,
He deign'd to wear, who hung the vast expanse
With azure bright, ght, and cloth'd the fun in gold.
When ev'ry pation fleeps that can offend;
When strikes us ev'ry motive that can melt;
When man can wreak his rancour uncontroll'd,
That strongest curb on infult and ill-will;
Then, spleen to daft? the dust of innocence?
An angel's duft! - This Lucifer transcends:
When he contended for the Patriarch's bones,
'Twas not the strife of malice, but of pride;
The strife of pontiff pride, not pontiff gall.
Far less than this is shocking in a race
Most wretched, but from streams of mutual love,
And uncreated, but for love divine;
And but for love divine, this moment, loft,
By Fate reforb'd, and funk in endless night.
Man hard of heart to man! of horrid things
Most horrid! mid stupendous, highly strange!
Yet oft his courtefies are limoother wrongs;
Pride brandishes the favours he confers,
And contumelious his humanity.
What then his vengeance? Hear it not, ye stars!
And thou, pale moon! turn paler at the found;
Man is to man the foreft, surest ill.
A previous blaft foretells the rifing storm;
O'erwhelming turrets threaten ere they fall;
Volcanos bellow ere they difembogue;
Earth trembles ere her yawning jaws devour;
And smoke betrays the wide-confuming fire:
Ruin from man is most conceal'd when near,
And fends the dreadful tidings in the blow.
Is this the flight of Fancy! Would it were!
Heav'n's Sov'reign saves all beings but rimself,
That hideo: fight, a naked human heart.
Fir'd is the Muse? and let the Muse be fir'd: Who not inflam'd, when what he speaks peaks, he feels, And in the nerve most tender, in his friends? Shame to mankind! PHILANDER had his foes:
He felt the truths I fing, and I in him.
But he, nor I, feel more. Past ills, NARCISSA!
Are funk in thee, thou recent wound of heart!
Which bleeds with other cares, with other pangs;
Pangs num'rous, as the num'rous ills that swarım'd
O'er thy diftinguith'd fate, and cluft'ring there,
Thick as the locusts on the land of Nile,
Made death more deadly, and more dark the grave.
Reflect (if not forgot my touching tale)
How was each circumstance with aspics arm'd!
An afpic, each; and all, an hydra-wo.
What strong Herculean virtue could fuffice?-
Or is it virtue to be conquer'd here?
This hoary cheek a train of tears bedews;..
And each tear mourns its own distinct distress.;
And each distress, distinctly mourn'd, demands
Of grief still more, as heighten'd by the whole.
A grief like this proprietors excludes:
Not friends alone such obfequies deplore;
They make mankind the mourner; carry fighs
Far as the fatal Fame can wing her way,
And turn the gayeft thought of gayest age,
Down their right channel, through the vale of death.
The vale of death! that hush'd Cimmerian vale,
Where Darkness, brooding oler unfinith'd fates,..
With raven wing incumbent, waits the day
(Dread day!) that interdiéts all future change!
That fubterranean world, that land of ruin!
Fit walk, LORENZO, for proud human thought!
There let my thought expatiate; and explore
Balfamic truth, and healing sentiments,.
Of all most wanted, and most welcome, here.
For gay LORENZO'S fake, and for thy own,
My foul! "The fruits of dying friends survey
"Expose the vain of life; weigh life and death;
"Give Death his enlogy; thy fear fubdue;
And labour that first palm of noble minds,
A manly scorn of terror from the tomb."
This harvest reap from thy NARCISSA's grave.
As poets feign from Ajax streaming blood
Arose, with grief inferib'd, a mournful flow'r
Let wifdam bloflom from my mortal wound.
And, first, of dying friends: what fruit from these?
Rich fruit this tempeft in our bofom throws,
Few minds will gather in our life ferene :
It brings us more than triple aid; an aid
To chale our thoughtlessness, fear, pride, and guilt.
Our dying friends come o'er us like a cloud,
To damp our brainless ardours; and abate
That glare of life, which often blinds the wife.
Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth
Our rugged pass to death; to break those bars
Of terror and abhorrence Nature throws
Cross our obstructed way; and, thus, to make
Welcome, as safe, our port from ev'ry storm.
Each friend by fate snatch'd from us, is a plume
Pluck'd from the wing of human vanity,
Which makes us ftoop from our aëreal heights,
And, damp'd with omen of our own disease,
On drooping pinions of ambition lower'd,
Just skim earth's furface, ere we break it up,
O'er putrid pride to scratch a little dust,
And fave the world a nuisance. Smitten friends
Are angels sent on errands full of love;
For us they languish, and for us they die:
And thall they languisa, small they die in vain ?
Ungrateful shall we grieve their hov'ring shades,
Which wait the revolution in our hearts?
Shall we disdain their filent, foft address;
Their posthumous advice, and pious prayer?
Senseless, as herds that graze their hallow'd graves,
Tread under foot their agonies and groans;
Fruftrate their anguish, and deftroy their deaths?
LORENZO! no; the thought of death indulge;
Give it its wholesome empire, let it reign,
That kind chaftifer of the foul to joy!
Its reign will fpread thy glorious conquests far,
And ftill the tumults of thy ruffled breast;
Aufpicious ara! golden days begin!
The thought of death, shall, like a ged, inspire.
And why not think on death? is life the theme
Of every thought? and with of every hour?
And fong of every joy? surprising truth!
The beaten Spaniel's fondness not fo strange..
To wave the num'rous ills that seize on life As their own property, their lawful prey; / Ere man has measur'd half his weary flage, His luxuries have left him no referve, No maiden relishes, unbroach'd delights; On cold-ferv'd repetitions he subsists, And in the tasteless present chews the past: Disgusted chews, and scarce can swallow down. Like lavish ancestors, his earlier years Have disinherited his future hours, Which starve on orts, and glean their former field.
Live ever here, LORENZO! shocking thought! * So shocking, they who with, disown it too! Difown from shame, what they from folly crave. Live ever in the womb, nor fee the light? For what live ever here?-with labouring step To tread our former footsteps? pace the round Eternal? to climb daily Life's worn wheel, Which drawe up nothing new? to beat, and beat The beaten track? to bid each wretched day The former mock? to surfeit on the same, And yawn our joys? or thank a mifery For change, though sad? to see what we have feen? Hear, till unheard, the fame old flabber'd tale! To taste the tasted, and at each return Lefs tasteful? o'er our palates to decant Another vintage? ftrain a flatter year, Through loaded vessels, and a laxer tone?! Crazy machines to grind earth's wasted fruits! Ill-ground, and worse concocted; load, not life! The rational foul kennels of excess!
Still-ftreaming thorough-fairs of dull debauch!
Trembling each gulp, left Death should match the bowł.
Such of our fine ones is the with refin'd!
So would they have it: elegant defire!
Why not invite the bellowing stalls, and wilds?
But fuch examples might their riot awe.
Through want of virtue, that is, want of thought,
(Though on bright thought they father all their flights),
To what are they reduc'd? to love, and hate
The lame vain world; to cenfure, and espoufe
This painted firew of life, who calls them fool
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