On me, more justly number'd with the dead.
This is the defert, this the folitude :
How populous! how vital, is the grave!
This is creation's melancholy vault,
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom;
The land of apparitions, empty shades!
All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond
Is s substance; the reverse is Folly's cre
How folid all, where change shall be no more!
This is the bud of being, the dim dawn,
The twilight of our day, the veftibule;
Life's theatre as yet is shut, and Death,
Strong Death, alone can heave the massy bar,
This gross impediment of clay remove,
And makes us, embryos of existence, free.
From real life, but little more remote
Is he, not yet a candidate for light,
The futur ture embryo, slumbering in his fire.
Embryos
we burst the shell,
Yon ambient, azure shell, and spring to life;
The life of Gods; O transport! and of man.
Yet man, fool man! here buries all his thoughts;
Inters celestial hopes without one figh:
Prisoner of earth, and pent beneath the moon,
Here pinions all his wishes; wing'd by Heaven
To fly at infinite; and reach it there,
Where Seraphs gather immortality,
On life's fair tree, fast by the throne of God:
glow
What golden joys ambrofial cluft'ring &
In His full beam, and ripen for the
Where momentary ages are no more!
Where Time, and Pain, and Chance, and Death ex-
And is it in the flight of threescore years,
To push eternity from human thought,
And fmother fouls immortal in the dust?
A foul immortal, spending all her fires,
Wafting her strength in strenuous idleness,
Thrown into tumult, raptur'd, or alarım'd,
At aught this scene can threaten, or indulge,
Resembles ocean into tempeft wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.
Were falls this cenfure? It o'erwhelms myself.
How was my heart incrusted by the world!
O how felf-fetter'd was my graveling foul!
How, like a worm, was I wrapt round and round
In filken thought, which retile Fancy fpun,
Till darken'd Reason lay quite clouded o'er
With foft conceit of endless comfort here,
Nor yet put forth her wings to reach the skies!
Night-visions may befriend, (as fung above):
Our waking dreams are fatal: how I dreamt
Of things impossible! (could fleep do more?),
Of joys perpetual in perpetual change!
Of itable pleasures on the tossing wave!
Eternal funshine in the storms of life!
How richly were my noon-tide trances hung
With gorgeous tapestries of pictur'd joys;
Joy behind joy, in endless perspective!
Till at Death's toll, whose restless iron tongue
Calls daily for his millions at a meal,
Starting, I woke, and found myself undone.
Where now my frenzy's pompous furniture ?
The cobweb'd cottage, with its ragged wall
Of mouldering mud, is royalty to me!
The spider's most attenuated threed
Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie
On earthly bliss: it breaks at every breeze.
O ye blest scenes of permanent delight!
Full, above measure! Jasting, beyond bound!
A perpetuity of bliss is blifs.
Could you, fo rich in rapture, fear an end;
That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy,
And quite unparadise the realms of light.
Safe are you lodg'd above these rolling spheres;
The baleful influence of whose giddy dance
Sheds sad viciffitude on all beneath.
Here teems with revolutions every hour;
And rarely for the better; or the best,
More mortal than the common births of fate.
Each moment has its fickle, emulous
Of Time's enormous scythe, whose ample sweep
Strikes empires from the root; each moment plays
His little weapon in the narrower sphere
Of sweet domestic comfort, and cuss down
The fairest bloom of sublunary blifs.
Bliss! fublunary bliss!-proud words, and vaim!i
Implicit treason to divine decree!
A bold invafion of the rights of heaven!
I clasp'd the phantoms, and I found them air.
O had I weigh'd it e'er my fond embrace,
What darts of agony had miss'd my heart!
Death! great proprietor of all! 'tis thine
To tread out empire, and to quench the stars.
The fun himself by thy permiflion shines,
And, one day, thou shalt pluck him from his sphere.
Amid fuch mighty plunder, why exhauft
Thy partial quiver on a mark so mean &
Why thy peculiar rancour wreck'd on me?
Infatiate archer! could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice; and thrice my peace was flain;
And thrice, e'er thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn.
O Cynthia! why fo thy so pale? doft thou laiment
Thy wretched neighbour? grieve to fee thy wheel
Of ceaselefs change outwhirl'd in hunian life?
How wanes my borrow'd bliss! From Fortun's smile,
Precarious courtesy! not Vintue's fure,
Self-given, folar ray of found delight.
In every vary'd posture, place, and hour,
How widow'd every thought of every joy!
Thought, busy thought! too busy for my peace!
Through the dark poftern of Time long elaps'd,
Led foftly, by the stillness of the night,
Led, like a murderer, (and such it proves!),
Strays (wretched rover!) o'er the pleasing past:
In quest of wretchedness perversely strays;
And finds all defert now; and meets the ghosts
Of my departed joys, a numerous train!
I rue the riches of my former fate;
Sweet Comfort's blasted clusters. I lament;
I tremble at the blessings once fo dear;
And every pleasure pains me to the heart.
Yet why complain? or why complain for one?
Hangs out the fun his lustre but for mez
The fingle man? are angels all beside ?
I mourn for millions: 'tis the common lot;
In this shape, or in that, has fate entail'd
The mother's throes on all of woman born,
Not more the children, than sure heirs of pain.
War, famine, pest, volcano, storm, and fire,
Inteftine broils, Oppreffion, with her heart
Wrapt up in triple brafs, befiege mankind :
God's image, disinherited of day,
Here plung'd in mines, forgets a fun was made;
There beings deathless as their haughty lord,
Are hammer'd to the galling oar for life;
And plough 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 realms their valour sav'd,
If to the tyrant, or his minion, doom:
Want, and incurable Difeaje, (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 fad admission there!
What numbers, once in Fortune's lap high-fed,
Solicit the cold hand of Charity;
To shock us more, folicit it in vain !
Ye filken fons of pleasure! fince in 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 forrow seize on such alone :
Not Prudence can defend, or Virtue save;
Disease invades the chastest temperance;
And punishment the guiltless; and alarm
Thro' thickest shades purfues the fond of peace;
Man's caution often into danger turns,
And his guard falling, crushes him to death.
Not Happiness itself makes good her name;
Our very wishes give us not our with;
How distant oft the thing we dote on most,
From that for which we dote, felicity?
The smootheft course of nature has its pains,
And trueft friends, through error, wound our rest;
Without misfortune, what calamities?
And what hoflilities, without a foe?
Nor are foes wanting to the best on earth:
But endless is the list of human ills;
And fighs might fooner fail, than cause to figh.
A part how small of the terraqueous globe
Is tenanted by man? the reft a waste,
Rocks, deferts, frozen seas, and burning fands;
Wild haunts of monsters, poifons, stings, and death.
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 Wo's wide empire; where deep troubles tofs;
Loud forrows howl; envenom'd paffions bite;
Ravenous calamities our vitals seize,
And threatning Fate wide-opens to devour.
What then am I, who forrow for myself?
In age, in infancy, from others aid
Is all our hope; to teach us to be kind;
That, Nature's first, laft lesson to mankind.
The selfish heart deserves the pain it feels;
More generous forrow, while it sinks, exalts,
And confcious 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 fad a fight is human happiness
To those whose thought can pierce beyond an hour!
O thou! whate'er thou art, whose heart exults!
Wouldst thou I should congratulate thy fate?
I know thou wouldft; thy pride demands it from me.
Let thy pride pardon, what thy nature needs,
The falutary cenfure of a friend.
Thou happy wretch! by blindness art thou bless'd;
By dotage dandled to perpetual smiles.
Know, Smiler! at thy peril art thou pleas'd;
Thy pleasure is the promife of thy pain.
Misfortune, like a creditor severe,
But rises in demand for her delav
She makes a scourge of paft profperity.
To fting thee more, and double thy distress.
LORENZO, Fortune makes her court to thee;
Thy fond heart dances while the Siren fings.
Dear is thy welfare; think me not unkind;
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