Nor less than a plump god to fill the bowl;
A thousand phantoms, and a thousand spells,
A thousand opiates scatters, to delude,
To fascinate, inebriate, lay afleep,

And the fool'd mind delightfully confound.

Thus that which shock'd the judgment, shocks no

more;

That which gave Pride offence, no more offends.
Pleasure and Pride, by nature mortal foes,
At war eternal, which in man shall reign,
Bu Wit's address, patch up a fatal peace,
And hand in hand lead on the rank debauch,
From rank refin'd to delicate and gay.
Art, cursed Art! wipes off th' indebted blush
From Nature's cheek, and bronzes every shame.
Man smiles in ruin, glories in his guilt,
And Infamy stands candidate for praise.

All writ by man in favour of the foul,
These sensual ethics far, in bulk, transcend.
The flow'rs of eloquence, profufely pour'd
O'er spotted Vice, fill half the letter'd world.
Can pow'rs of genius exorcife their page,
And confecrate enormities with fong?

But let not these inexpiable strains
Condemn the muse that knows her dignity;
Nor meanly stops at time, but holds the world
As 'tis, in Nature's ample field a point,
A point in her esteem; from whence to start,
And run the round of univerfal space,
To visit being universal there,

And Being's Source, that utmost flight of mind!
Yet, spite of this so vast circumference,
Well knows, but what is moral, nought is great.
Sing fyrens only? do not angels fing?
There is in Poefy a decent pride,

Which well becomes her when she speaks to Profe,
Her younger fister; haply not more wife.

Think'ft thou, LORENZO! to find pastimes here!

No guilty passion blown into a flame,
No foible flatter'd, dignity disgrac'd,
No fairy field of fiction all on flower,

No rainbow colours, here, or filken tale;

But folemn counsels, images of awe,
Truths, which eternity lets fall on man
With double weight, thro' these revolving spheres,
This death-deep filence, and incumbent shade:
Thoughts such as shall revisit your last hour;
Visit uncall'd, and live when life expires;
And thy dark pencil, midnight! darker still
In melancholy dipt, embrowns the whole.

Yet this, ev'n this, my laughter-loving friends!
LORENZO! and thy brothers of the smile!
If what imports you most, can most engage,
Shall steal your ear, and chain you to my fong.
Or if you fail me, know the wise shall taste
The truths I fing; the truths I sing shall feel;
And, feeling, give afsent; and their affent
Is ample recompence; is more than praife.
But chiefly thine, O LITCHFIELD! nor mistake;
Think not unintroduc'd I forc'd my way;
NARCISSA, not unknown, not unally'd,
By virtue, or by blood, illustrious youth!
To thee, from blooming amaranthine bowers,
Where all the language harmony, descends
Uncall'd, and asks admittance for the muse :
A muse that will not pain thee with thy praise;
Thy praise she drops, by nobler still inspir'd.

O thou! blest Spirit! whether, the fupreme, Great antemundane Father! in whose breaf Embryo creation, unborn being, dwelt, And all its various revolutions roll'd Present, tho' future; prior to themselves; Whose breath can blow it into nought again; Or, from his throne some delegated pow'r, Who, studious of our peace, doft turn the thoughat From vain and vile, to folid and fublime! Unseen thou lead'st me to delicious draughts Of inspiration, from a purer stream, And fuller of the God, than that which burst From fam'd Caftalia: nor is yet allay'd My sacred thirst; though long my foul has rang'd Through pleasing paths of moral and divine, By Thee fustain'd, and lighted by the stars.

By them best lighted are the paths of thought;

1

Nights are their days, their most illumin'd hours.
By day, the foul o'erborne by life's career,
Stunu'd by the din, and giddy with the glare,
Reels far from reason, jottled by the throng.
By day the foul is passive, all her thoughts
Impos'd, precarious, broken, ere mature.
By night, from objects free, from passions cool,
Thoughts uncontroul'd, and unimpress'd, the births
Of pure election, arbitrary range,
Not to the limits of one world confin'd;
But from ethereal travels light on earth,
As voyagers drop anchor, for repose.

Let Indians, and the gay, like Indians, fond
Of feather'd fopperies, the sun adore;
Darkness has more divinity for me;

It strikes thought inward; it drives back the four
To fettle on herself, our point fupreme!
There lyes our theatre: there fits our judge.
Darkness the curtain drops o'er life's dull scene;
'Tis the kind hand of Providence ftretch'd out
'Twixt man and vanity; 'tis Reason's reign,
And Virtue's too; these tutelary shades
Are man's asylum from the tainted throng.
Night is the good man's friend, and guardian too;
It no less refcues virtue, than inspires.

Virtue, for ever frail, as fair, below,
Her tender nature suffers in the croud,
Nor touches on the world, without å stain:
The world's infectious; few bring back at eve,
Immaculate, the manners of the morn.
Something we thought is blotted; we refolv'd,
Is shaken; we renounc'd, returns again.
Each salutation may flide in a fin
Unthought before, or fix a former ftaw.
Nor is it strange: light, motion, concourse, noise,
All, scatter us abroad; thought, outward bound,
Neglectful of our home-affairs, flies off
In fume and diffipation, quits her charge,
And leaves the breaft unguarded to the foe.
Prefent example gets within our guard,
And acts with double force by few repell'd.
Ambition fires ambition; love of gain

Strikes, like a pestilence, from breast to breast;
Kiot, pride, perfidy, blue vapours breathe;
And inhumanity is caught from man;
From smiling man. A flight, a fingle glance,
And shot at random, often has brought home
A fudden fever, to the throbbing heart,
Of envy, rancour, or impure defire.
We fee, we hear, with peril; Safety dwells
Remote from Multitude; the world's a school
Of wrong, and what proficients (warm around!
We must or imitate, or disapprove;
Must list as their accomplices, or foes:
That stains our innocence; this wounds our peace.
From nature's birth hence wisdom has been imit
With sweet recess, and languish'd for the shade.
This sacred shade and solitude, what is

it?

'Tis the felt prefence of the Deity.
Few are the faults we flatter when alone.
Vice finks in her allurements, is ungilt,
And looks, like other objects, black by night.
By night an atheist half believes a God..

Night is fair Virtue's immemorial friend:
The confcious moon, through every distant age, i
Has held a lamp to wisdom, and let fall
On contemplation's eye her purging ray. /
The fam'd Athenian, he who woo'd from heav'n
Philofophy the fair, to dwell with men,
And form their manners, not inflame their pride;
While o'er his head as fearful to molest
His lab'ring mind, the stars in filence flide,
And feem all gazing on their future guest,
See him foliciting his ardent fuit

In private audience: all the live-long night
Rigid in thought, and motionless, he stands;
Nor quits his theme, or posture, till the fun
(Rude drunkard! rifing roly from the main)
Disturbs his nobler intellectual beam,
And gives him to the tumult of the world.
Hail, precious moments! stoln from the black waste
Of murder'd time! auspicious midnight, hail!
The world excluded, ev'ry passion hush'd,

And open'd a calm intercourse with heav'n,

F

Infolvent worlds the purchase cannot pay.
"Oh let me die his death!" all Nature cries.
"Then live his life:"-all Nature falters there.
Our great phyfician daily to confult,

To commune with the grave, our only cure.

What grave prescribes the best?-A friend's; and

yet,

From a friend's grave, how foon we disengage!
Ev'n to the dearest, as his inarble, cold..
Why are friends ravifh'd from us? 'Tis to bind,
By foft 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
Combin'd, can break the witchcrafts of the world.
Behold th' inexorable hour at hand!
Behold th' inexorable hour forgot!
And to forget it, the chief aim of life,
Though well to ponder it, is life's chief end.

Is Death, that ever threat'ning, ne'er remote,
That all important, and that only fure,
(Come when he will), an unexpected guest?
Nay, though invited by the loudest calls
Of blind Imprudence, unexpected still?
Though num'rous messengers are sent before,
To warn his great arrival. What the caufe,
The wondrous cause, of this mysterious ill?
All heav'n looks down astonish'd at the fight.

Is it that Life has sown her joys fo thick,
We can't thrust in a fingle 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 filter for the fame.
Life glides away, LORENZO! like a brook;
For ever changing, unperceiv'd the change.
In the fame brook none ever bath'd him twice:
To the fame life none ever twice awoke.
We call the brook the fame; the fame we think
Our life, though still more rapid in its flow;

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