A truth it is, few doubt, but fewer trust,
  "He sins against this life, who slights the next."
  What is this life? How few their favourite know!                   400
  Fond in the dark, and blind in our embrace,
  By passionately loving life, we make
  Loved life unlovely; hugging her to death.
  We give to time eternity's regard;
  And, dreaming, take our passage for our port.
  Life has no value as an end, but means;
  An end deplorable! a means divine!
  When 'tis our all, 'tis nothing; worse than nought;
  A nest of pains: when held as nothing, much:
  Like some fair humorists, life is most enjoy'd,                    410
  When courted least; most worth, when disesteem'd;
  Then 'tis the seat of comfort, rich in peace;
  In prospect richer far; important! awful!
  Not to be mention'd, but with shouts of praise!
  Not to be thought on, but with tides of joy!
  The mighty basis of eternal bliss!
  Where now the barren rock? the painted shrew?
  Where now, Lorenzo! life's eternal round?
  Have I not made my triple promise good?
  Vain is the world; but only to the vain.                           420
  To what compare we then this varying scene,
  Whose worth ambiguous rises, and declines?
  Waxes, and wanes? (In all propitious, night                        423
  Assists me here) compare it to the moon;
  Dark in herself, and indigent; but rich
  In borrow'd lustre from a higher sphere.
  When gross guilt interposes, labouring earth,
  O'ershadow'd, mourns a deep eclipse of joy;
  Her joys, at brightest, pallid, to that font
  Of full effulgent glory, whence they flow.                         430
    Nor is that glory distant: Oh, Lorenzo!
  A good man, and an angel! these between
  How thin the barrier! What divides their fate?
  Perhaps a moment, or perhaps a year:
  Or, if an age, it is a moment still;
  A moment, or eternity's forgot.
  Then be, what once they were, who now are gods;
  Be what Philander was, and claim the skies.
  Starts timid nature at the gloomy pass?
  The soft transition call it; and be cheer'd:                       440
  Such it is often, and why not to thee?
  To hope the best, is pious, brave, and wise;
  And may itself procure, what it presumes.
  Life is much flatter'd, death is much traduced;
  Compare the rivals, and the kinder crown.
  "Strange competition!"--True, Lorenzo! strange!
  So little life can cast into the scale.
    Life makes the soul dependent on the dust;
  Death gives her wings to mount above the spheres.
  Through chinks, styled organs, dim life peeps at light;
  Death bursts th' involving cloud, and all is day;                  451
  All eye, all ear, the disembodied power.
  Death has feign'd evils, nature shall not feel;
  Life, ills substantial, wisdom cannot shun.
  Is not the mighty mind, that son of heaven!
  By tyrant life dethroned, imprison'd, pain'd?
  By death enlarged, ennobled, deified?                              457
  Death but entombs the body; life the soul.
  "Is Death then guiltless? How he marks his way
  With dreadful waste of what deserves to shine!
  Art, genius, fortune, elevated power!
  With various lustres these light up the world,
  Which Death puts out, and darkens human race."                     463
  I grant, Lorenzo! this indictment just:
  The sage, peer, potentate, king, conqueror!
  Death humbles these; more barbarous life, the man.
  Life is the triumph of our mouldering clay;
  Death, of the spirit infinite! divine!
  Death has no dread, but what frail life imparts;
  Nor life true joy, but what kind death improves.                   470
  No bliss has life to boast, till death can give
  Far greater; life's a debtor to the grave,
  Dark lattice! letting in eternal day.
    Lorenzo! blush at fondness for a life,
  Which sends celestial souls on errands vile,
  To cater for the sense; and serve at boards,
  Where every ranger of the wilds, perhaps
  Each reptile, justly claims our upper hand.
  Luxurious feast! a soul, a soul immortal,
  In all the dainties of a brute bemired!                            480
  Lorenzo! blush at terror for a death,
  Which gives thee to repose in festive bowers,
  Where nectars sparkle, angels minister,
  And more than angels share, and raise, and crown,
  And eternize, the birth, bloom, bursts of bliss.
  What need I more? O Death, the palm is thine.
    Then welcome, Death! thy dreaded harbingers,
  Age and disease; disease, though long my guest;
  That plucks my nerves, those tender strings of life;
  Which, pluck'd a little more, will toll the bell,                  490
  That calls my few friends to my funeral;                           491
  Where feeble nature drops, perhaps, a tear,
  While reason and religion, better taught,
  Congratulate the dead, and crown his tomb
  With wreath triumphant. Death is victory;
  It binds in chains the raging ills of life:
  Lust and ambition, wrath and avarice,
  Dragg'd at his chariot-wheel, applaud his power.
  That ills corrosive, cares importunate,
  Are not immortal too, O Death! is thine.                           500
  Our day of dissolution!--name it right;
  'Tis our great pay-day; 'tis our harvest, rich
  And ripe: what though the sickle, sometimes keen,
  Just scars us as we reap the golden grain?
  More than thy balm, O Gilead! heals the wound.
  Birth's feeble cry, and death's deep dismal groan,
  Are slender tributes low-tax'd nature pays
  For mighty gain: the gain of each, a life!
  But O! the last the former so transcends,
  Life dies, compared; life lives beyond the grave.                  510
    And feel I, Death! no joy from thought of thee?
  Death, the great counsellor, who man inspires
  With every nobler thought, and fairer deed!
  Death, the deliverer, who rescues man!
  Death, the rewarder, who the rescued crowns!
  Death, that absolves my birth; a curse without it!
  Rich death, that realises all my cares,
  Toils, virtues, hopes; without it a chimera!
  Death, of all pain the period, not of joy;
  Joy's source, and subject, still subsist unhurt;                   520
  One, in my soul; and one, in her great Sire;
  Though the four winds were warring for my dust.
  Yes, and from winds, and waves, and central night,
  Though prison'd there, my dust too I reclaim
  (To dust when drop proud nature's proudest spheres),
  And live entire. Death is the crown of life:                       526
  Were death denied, poor man would live in vain;
  Were death denied, to live would not be life;
  Were death denied, even fools would wish to die.
  Death wounds to cure: we fall; we rise; we reign!
  Spring from our fetters; fasten in the skies;
  Where blooming Eden withers in our sight:
  Death gives us more than was in Eden lost.
  This king of terrors is the prince of peace.
  When shall I die to vanity, pain, death?
  When shall I die?--When shall I live for ever?                     536

                                  THE
                           CHRISTIAN TRIUMPH:
                               CONTAINING
                  OUR ONLY CURE FOR THE FEAR OF DEATH;
                                  AND
                   PROPER SENTIMENTS OF HEART ON THAT
                         INESTIMABLE BLESSING.

                                 TO THE
                          HONOURABLE MR YORKE.

                             NIGHT FOURTH.

                         THE CHRISTIAN TRIUMPH.

  A much-indebted muse, O Yorke! intrudes.
  Amid the smiles of fortune, and of youth,
  Thine ear is patient of a serious song.
  How deep implanted in the breast of man
  The dread of death! I sing its sovereign cure.
    Why start at Death? Where is he? Death arrived,
  Is past; not come, or gone, he's never here.
  Ere hope, sensation fails; black-boding man
  Receives, not suffers, Death's tremendous blow.
  The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave;                  10
  The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm;
  These are the bugbears of a winter's eve,
  The terrors of the living, not the dead.
  Imagination's fool, and error's wretch,
  Man makes a death, which nature never made;
  Then on the point of his own fancy falls;
  And feels a thousand deaths, in fearing one.
    But were death frightful, what has age to fear?
  If prudent, age should meet the friendly foe,
  And shelter in his hospitable gloom.                                20
  I scarce can meet a monument, but holds
  My younger; every date cries--"Come away."
  And what recalls me? Look the world around,
  And tell me what: the wisest cannot tell.
  Should any born of woman give his thought
  Full range, on just dislike's unbounded field;
  Of things, the vanity; of men, the flaws;
  Flaws in the best; the many, flaw all o'er;
  As leopards, spotted, or, as Ethiops, dark;
  Vivacious ill; good dying immature;                                 30
  (How immature, Narcissa's marble tells!)
  And at his death bequeathing endless pain;
  His heart, though bold, would sicken at the sight,
  And spend itself in sighs, for future scenes.
    But grant to life (and just it is to grant
  To lucky life) some perquisites of joy;
  A time there is, when, like a thrice-told tale,
  Long-rifled life of sweet can yield no more,
  But from our comment on the comedy,
  Pleasing reflections on parts well sustain'd,                       40
  Or purposed emendations where we fail'd,
  Or hopes of plaudits from our candid Judge,
  When, on their exit, souls are bid unrobe,
  Toss fortune back her tinsel, and her plume,
  And drop this mask of flesh behind the scene.
    With me, that time is come; my world is dead;
  A new world rises, and new manners reign:
  Foreign comedians, a spruce band! arrive,
  To push me from the scene, or hiss me there.
  What a pert race starts up! the strangers gaze,                     50
  And I at them; my neighbour is unknown;
  Nor that the worst: ah me! the dire effect
  Of loitering here, of Death defrauded long;
  Of old so gracious (and let that suffice),                          54
  My very master knows me not.--
    Shall I dare say, peculiar is the fate?
  I've been so long remember'd, I'm forgot.
  An object ever pressing dims the sight,
  And hides behind its ardour to be seen.
  When in his courtiers' ears I pour my plaint,                       60
  They drink it as the nectar of the great;
  And squeeze my hand, and beg me come to-morrow.
  Refusal! canst thou wear a smoother form?
    Indulge me, nor conceive I drop my theme:
  Who cheapens life, abates the fear of death:
  Twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy,
  Court favour, yet untaken, I besiege;
  Ambition's ill-judged effort to be rich.
  Alas! ambition makes my little less;
  Embittering the possess'd: Why wish for more?                       70
  Wishing, of all employments, is the worst;
  Philosophy's reverse; and health's decay!
  Were I as plump as stall'd theology,
  Wishing would waste me to this shade again.
  Were I as wealthy as a South Sea dream,
  Wishing is an expedient to be poor.
  Wishing, that constant hectic of a fool;
  Caught at a court; purged off by purer air,
  And simpler diet; gifts of rural life!
    Bless'd be that hand divine, which gently laid                    80
  My heart at rest, beneath this humble shed.
  The world's a stately bark, on dangerous seas,
  With pleasure seen, but boarded at our peril;
  Here, on a single plank, thrown safe ashore,
  I hear the tumult of the distant throng,
  As that of seas remote, or dying storms:
  And meditate on scenes, more silent still;
  Pursue my theme, and fight the fear of death.                       88
  Here, like a shepherd gazing from his hut,
  Touching his reed, or leaning on his staff,
  Eager ambition's fiery chace I see;
  I see the circling hunt, of noisy men,
  Burst law's enclosure, leap the mounds of right,
  Pursuing, and pursued, each other's prey;
  As wolves, for rapine; as the fox, for wiles;
  Till Death, that mighty hunter, earths them all.
    Why all this toil for triumphs of an hour?
  What though we wade in wealth, or soar in fame?
  Earth's highest station ends in "Here he lies:"
  And "Dust to dust" concludes her noblest song.                     100
  If this song lives, posterity shall know
  One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred,
  Who thought even gold might come a day too late;
  Nor on his subtle death-bed plann'd his scheme
  For future vacancies in Church or State;
  Some avocation deeming it--to die,
  Unbit by rage canine of dying rich;
  Guilt's blunder! and the loudest laugh of hell.
    O my coevals! remnants of yourselves!
  Poor human ruins, tottering o'er the grave!                        110
  Shall we, shall aged men, like aged trees,
  Strike deeper their vile root, and closer cling,
  Still more enamour'd of this wretched soil?
  Shall our pale, wither'd hands, be still stretch'd out,
  Trembling, at once, with eagerness and age?
  With avarice, and convulsions, grasping hard?
  Grasping at air! for what has earth beside?
  Man wants but little; nor that little, long;
  How soon must he resign his very dust,
  Which frugal nature lent him for an hour!                          120
  Years unexperienced rush on numerous ills;
  And soon as man, expert from time, has found                       122
  The key of life, it opes the gates of death.
    When in this vale of years I backward look,
  And miss such numbers, numbers too of such,
  Firmer in health, and greener in their age,
  And stricter on their guard, and fitter far
  To play life's subtle game, I scarce believe
  I still survive: and am I fond of life,
  Who scarce can think it possible, I live?                          130
  Alive by miracle! or, what is next,
  Alive by Mead! if I am still alive,
  Who long have buried what gives life to live,
  Firmness of nerve, and energy of thought.
  Life's lee is not more shallow, than impure,
  And vapid; sense and reason show the door,
  Call for my bier, and point me to the dust.
    O thou great arbiter of life and death!
  Nature's immortal, immaterial Sun!
  Whose all-prolific beam late call'd me forth                       140
  From darkness, teeming darkness, where I lay
  The worm's inferior, and, in rank, beneath
  The dust I tread on, high to bear my brow,
  To drink the spirit of the golden day,
  And triumph in existence; and could know
  No motive, but my bliss; and hast ordain'd
  A rise in blessing! with the patriarch's joy,
  Thy call I follow to the land unknown;
  I trust in thee, and know in whom I trust;
  Or life, or death, is equal; neither weighs:                       150
  All weight in this--O let me live to thee!
    Though nature's terrors thus may be repress'd;
  Still frowns grim Death; guilt points the tyrant's spear.
  And whence all human guilt? From death forgot.
  Ah me! too long I set at nought the swarm
  Of friendly warnings, which around me flew;                        156
  And smiled, unsmitten: small my cause to smile!
  Death's admonitions, like shafts upwards shot,
  More dreadful by delay, the longer ere
  They strike our hearts, the deeper is their wound;
  O think how deep, Lorenzo! here it stings:
  Who can appease its anguish? How it burns!                         162
  What hand the barb'd, envenom'd thought can draw?
  What healing hand can pour the balm of peace?
  And turn my sight undaunted on the tomb?
    With joy,--with grief, that healing hand I see;
  Ah! too conspicuous! it is fix'd on high.
  On high?--What means my phrensy? I blaspheme;
  Alas! how low! how far beneath the skies!
  The skies it form'd; and now it bleeds for me--                    170
  But bleeds the balm I want--yet still it bleeds;
  Draw the dire steel--ah, no! the dreadful blessing
  What heart or can sustain, or dares forego?
  There hangs all human hope: that nail supports
  The falling universe: that gone, we drop;
  Horror receives us, and the dismal wish
  Creation had been smother'd in her birth--
  Darkness his curtain, and his bed the dust;
  When stars and sun are dust beneath his throne!
  In heaven itself can such indulgence dwell?                        180
  Oh, what a groan was there! a groan not his.
  He seized our dreadful right; the load sustained;
  And heaved the mountain from a guilty world.
  A thousand worlds, so bought, were bought too dear;
  Sensations new in angels' bosoms rise;
  Suspend their song; and make a pause in bliss.
    O for their song, to reach my lofty theme!
  Inspire me, Night! with all thy tuneful spheres;
  Whilst I with seraphs share seraphic themes,
  And show to men the dignity of man;                                190
  Lest I blaspheme my subject with my song.
  Shall Pagan pages glow celestial flame,
  And Christian languish? On our hearts, not heads,
  Falls the foul infamy: my heart! awake.
  What can awake thee, unawaked by this,
  "Expended deity on human weal?"
  Feel the great truths, which burst the tenfold night
  Of heathen error, with a golden flood
  Of endless day: to feel, is to be fired;
  And to believe, Lorenzo! is to feel.                               200
    Thou most indulgent, most tremendous Power!
  Still more tremendous, for thy wondrous love!
  That arms, with awe more awful, thy commands;
  And foul transgression dips in sevenfold night;
  How our hearts tremble at thy love immense!
  In love immense, inviolably just!
  Thou, rather than thy justice should be stain'd,
  Didst stain the cross; and work of wonders far
  The greatest, that thy dearest far might bleed.
    Bold thought! shall I dare speak it, or repress?                 210
  Should man more execrate, or boast, the guilt
  Which roused such vengeance? which such love inflamed?
  O'er guilt (how mountainous!), with outstretch'd arms,
  Stern justice, and soft-smiling love embrace,
  Supporting, in full majesty, thy throne,
  When seem'd its majesty to need support,
  Or that, or man, inevitably lost:
  What, but the fathomless of thought divine,
  Could labour such expedient from despair,
  And rescue both? Both rescue! both exalt!                          220
  Oh, how are both exalted by the deed!
  The wondrous deed! or shall I call it more?
  A wonder in omnipotence itself!                                    223
  A mystery no less to gods than men!
    Not, thus, our infidels th' Eternal draw,
  A God all o'er, consummate, absolute,
  Full-orb'd, in his whole round of rays complete:
  They set at odds Heaven's jarring attributes;
  And, with one excellence, another wound;
  Maim Heaven's perfection, break its equal beams,
  Bid mercy triumph over--God himself,                               231
  Undeified by their opprobrious praise:
  A God all mercy, is a God unjust.
    Ye brainless wits! ye baptized infidels!
  Ye worse for mending! wash'd to fouler stains!
  The ransom was paid down; the fund of heaven,
  Heaven's inexhaustible, exhausted fund,
  Amazing, and amazed, pour'd forth the price,
  All price beyond: though curious to compute,
  Archangels fail'd to cast the mighty sum:                          240
  Its value vast, ungrasp'd by minds create,
  For ever hides, and glows, in the Supreme.
    And was the ransom paid? It was: and paid
  (What can exalt the bounty more?) for you.
  The sun beheld it--No! the shocking scene,
  Drove back his chariot: midnight veil'd his face;
  Not such as this; not such as nature makes;
  A midnight nature shudder'd to behold;
  A midnight new! a dread eclipse (without
  Opposing spheres) from her Creator's frown!                        250
  Sun! didst thou fly thy Maker's pain? or start
  At that enormous load of human guilt,
  Which bow'd His blessed head; o'erwhelm'd His cross;
  Made groan the centre; burst earth's marble womb,
  With pangs, strange pangs! deliver'd of her dead?
  Hell howl'd; and heaven that hour let fall a tear;
  Heaven wept, that men might smile! Heaven bled, that man
  Might never die!----
    And is devotion virtue? 'Tis compell'd.                          259
  What heart of stone but glows at thoughts like these?
  Such contemplations mount us; and should mount
  The mind still higher; nor ever glance on man,
  Unraptured, uninflamed.--Where roll my thoughts
  To rest from wonders? Other wonders rise;
  And strike where'er they roll: my soul is caught:
  Heaven's sovereign blessings, clustering from the cross,
  Rush on her, in a throng, and close her round,
  The prisoner of amaze!--In his bless'd life,
  I see the path, and, in his death, the price,
  And in his great ascent, the proof supreme                         270
  Of immortality.--And did he rise?[14]
  Hear, O ye nations! hear it, O ye dead!
  He rose! he rose! he burst the bars of death.
  Lift up your heads, ye everlasting gates!
  And give the King of glory to come in.
  Who is the King of glory? He who left
  His throne of glory, for the pang of death:
  Lift up your heads, ye everlasting gates!
  And give the King of glory to come in.
  Who is the King of glory? He who slew                              280
  The ravenous foe, that gorged all human race!
  The King of glory, he whose glory fill'd
  Heaven with amazement at his love to man;
  And with divine complacency beheld
  Powers most illumined, wilder'd in the theme.
    The theme, the joy, how then shall man sustain?
  O the burst gates! crush'd sting! demolish'd throne!
  Last gasp of vanquish'd Death! Shout earth and heaven!
  This sum of good to man. Whose nature then
  Took wing, and mounted with him from the tomb!                     290
  Then, then, I rose; then first humanity                            291
  Triumphant pass'd the crystal ports of light
  (Stupendous guest!), and seized eternal youth,
  Seized in our name. E'er since, 'tis blasphemous
  To call man mortal. Man's mortality
  Was then transferr'd to death; and heaven's duration
  Unalienably seal'd to this frail frame,
  This child of dust--Man, all-immortal! hail;
  Hail, Heaven! all lavish of strange gifts to man!
  Thine all the glory; man's the boundless bliss.                    300
    Where am I rapt by this triumphant theme?
  On Christian joy's exulting wing, above
  Th' Aonian mount?--Alas! small cause for joy!
  What if to pain immortal? if extent
  Of being, to preclude a close of woe?
  Where, then, my boast of immortality?
  I boast it still, though cover'd o'er with guilt;
  For guilt, not innocence, his life he pour'd;
  'Tis guilt alone can justify his death;
  Nor that, unless his death can justify                             310
  Relenting guilt in Heaven's indulgent sight.
  If, sick of folly, I relent; he writes
  My name in heaven with that inverted spear
  (A spear deep-dipp'd in blood!) which pierced his side,
  And open'd there a font for all mankind,
  Who strive, who combat crimes, to drink, and live:
  This, only this, subdues the fear of death.
    And what is this?--Survey the wondrous cure:
  And at each step, let higher wonder rise!
  "Pardon for infinite offence! and pardon                           320
  Through means that speak its value infinite!
  A pardon bought with blood! with blood divine!
  With blood divine of Him I made my foe!
  Persisted to provoke! though woo'd and awed,
  Bless'd and chastised, a flagrant rebel still!                     325
  A rebel, 'midst the thunders of his throne!
  Nor I alone! a rebel universe!
  My species up in arms! not one exempt!
  Yet for the foulest of the foul, he dies,
  Most joy'd, for the redeem'd from deepest guilt!
  As if our race were held of highest rank;
  And Godhead dearer, as more kind to man!"                          332
    Bound, every heart! and every bosom, burn!
  O what a scale of miracles is here!
  Its lowest round, high planted on the skies;
  Its towering summit lost beyond the thought
  Of man or angel! O that I could climb
  The wonderful ascent, with equal praise!
  Praise! flow for ever (if astonishment
  Will give thee leave) my praise! for ever flow;                    340
  Praise ardent, cordial, constant, to high Heaven
  More fragrant, than Arabia sacrificed,
  And all her spicy mountains in a flame.
    So dear, so due to Heaven, shall praise descend,
  With her soft plume (from plausive angel's wing
  First pluck'd by man) to tickle mortal ears,
  Thus diving in the pockets of the great?
  Is praise the perquisite of every paw,
  Though black as hell, that grapples well for gold?
  O love of gold! thou meanest of amours!                            350
  Shall praise her odours waste on Virtue's dead,
  Embalm the base, perfume the stench of guilt,
  Earn dirty bread by washing Æthiops fair,
  Removing filth, or sinking it from sight,
  A scavenger in scenes, where vacant posts,
  Like gibbets yet untenanted, expect
  Their future ornaments? From courts and thrones,
  Return, apostate praise! thou vagabond!
  Thou prostitute! to thy first love return,                         395
  Thy first, thy greatest, once unrivall'd theme.
    There flow redundant; like Meander flow,
  Back to thy fountain; to that parent Power,
  Who gives the tongue to sound, the thought to soar,
  The soul to be. Men homage pay to men,
  Thoughtless beneath whose dreadful eye they bow
  In mutual awe profound, of clay to clay,
  Of guilt to guilt; and turn their back on thee,
  Great Sire! whom thrones celestial ceaseless sing;
  To prostrate angels, an amazing scene!
  O the presumption of man's awe for man!--                          370
  Man's author! end! restorer! law! and judge!
  Thine, all; day thine, and thine this gloom of night,
  With all her wealth, with all her radiant worlds:
  What, night eternal, but a frown from thee?
  What, heaven's meridian glory, but thy smile?
  And shall not praise be thine? not human praise?
  While heaven's high host on hallelujahs live?
    O may I breathe no longer, than I breathe
  My soul in praise to Him, who gave my soul,
  And all her infinite of prospect fair,                             380
  Cut through the shades of hell great Love! by thee
  O most adorable! most unadored!
  Where shall that praise begin, which ne'er should end?
  Where'er I turn, what claim on all applause!
  How is night's sable mantle labour'd o'er,
  How richly wrought with attributes divine!
  What wisdom shines! what love! This midnight pomp,
  This gorgeous arch, with golden worlds inlaid!
  Built with divine ambition! nought to thee;
  For others this profusion: Thou, apart,                            390
  Above! beyond! O tell me, mighty Mind!
  Where art thou? Shall I dive into the deep,
  Call to the sun, or ask the roaring winds,                         393
  For their Creator? Shall I question loud
  The thunder, if in that th' Almighty dwells?
  Or holds He furious storms in straiten'd reins,
  And bids fierce whirlwinds wheel his rapid car?
    What mean these questions?--Trembling I retract;
  My prostrate soul adores the present God:
  Praise I a distant deity? He tunes                                 400
  My voice (if tuned); the nerve, that writes, sustains:
  Wrapp'd in his being, I resound his praise:
  But though past all diffused, without a shore,
  His essence; local is his throne (as meet),
  To gather the dispersed (as standards call
  The listed from afar): to fix a point,
  A central point, collective of his sons,
  Since finite every nature but his own.
    The nameless He, whose nod is nature's birth;
  And nature's shield, the shadow of his hand;                       410
  Her dissolution, his suspended smile!
  The great First-Last! pavilion'd high he sits,
  In darkness from excessive splendour borne,
  By gods unseen, unless through lustre lost.
  His glory, to created glory, bright,
  As that to central horrors; he looks down
  On all that soars; and spans immensity.
    Though night unnumber'd worlds unfolds to view,
  Boundless creation! what art thou? A beam,
  A mere effluvium of his majesty:                                   420
  And shall an atom of this atom-world
  Mutter, in dust and sin, the theme of heaven?
  Down to the centre should I send my thought
  Through beds of glittering ore, and glowing gems,
  Their beggar'd blaze wants lustre for my lay;
  Goes out in darkness: if, on towering wing,
  I send it through the boundless vault of stars!                    427
  The stars, though rich, what dross their gold to thee,
  Great, good, wise, wonderful, eternal King!
  If to those conscious stars thy throne around,
  Praise ever-pouring, and imbibing bliss;
  And ask their strain; they want it, more they want,
  Poor their abundance, humble their sublime,                        433
  Languid their energy, their ardour cold,
  Indebted still, their highest rapture burns;
  Short of its mark, defective, though divine.
    Still more--this theme is man's, and man's alone;
  Their vast appointments reach it not: they see
  On earth a bounty not indulged on high;
  And downward look for heaven's superior praise!                    440
  First-born of ether! high in fields of light!
  View man, to see the glory of your God!
  Could angels envy, they had envied here;
  And some did envy; and the rest, though gods,
  Yet still gods unredeem'd (their triumphs man,
  Tempted to weigh the dust against the skies),
  They less would feel, though more adorn, my theme.
  They sung creation (for in that they shared);
  How rose in melody, that child of love!
  Creation's great superior, man! is thine;                          450
  Thine is redemption; they just gave the key:
  'Tis thine to raise, and eternize, the song;
  Though human, yet divine; for should not this
  Raise man o'er man, and kindle seraphs here?
  Redemption! 'twas creation more sublime;
  Redemption! 'twas the labour of the skies;
  Far more than labour--it was death in heaven.
  A truth so strange! 'twere bold to think it true;
  If not far bolder still to disbelieve.                             459
    Here pause, and ponder--Was there death in heaven?
  What then on earth? on earth, which struck the blow?
  Who struck it? Who?--O how is man enlarged,                        462
  Seen through this medium! How the pigmy towers!
  How counterpoised his origin from dust!
  How counterpoised to dust his sad return!
  How voided his vast distance from the skies!
  How near he presses on the seraph's wing!
  Which is the seraph? Which the born of clay?
  How this demonstrates, through the thickest cloud
  Of guilt, and clay condensed, the son of heaven!                   470
  The double son; the made, and the re-made!
  And shall heaven's double property be lost?
  Man's double madness only can destroy.
  To man the bleeding cross has promised all;
  The bleeding cross has sworn eternal grace;
  Who gave his life, what grace shall he deny?
  O ye who, from this Rock of Ages, leap,
  Apostates, plunging headlong in the deep!
  What cordial joy, what consolation strong,
  Whatever winds arise, or billows roll,                             480
  Our interest in the Master of the storm!
  Cling there, and in wreck'd nature's ruins smile;
  While vile apostates tremble in a calm.
    Man! know thyself. All wisdom centres there;
  To none man seems ignoble, but to man;
  Angels that grandeur, men o'erlook, admire:
  How long shall human nature be their book,
  Degenerate mortal! and unread by thee?
  The beam dim reason sheds shows wonders there;
  What high contents! illustrious faculties!                         490
  But the grand comment, which displays at full
  Our human height, scarce sever'd from divine,
  By heaven composed, was publish'd on the Cross.
    Who looks on that, and sees not in himself
  An awful stranger, a terrestrial god?                              495
  A glorious partner with the Deity
  In that high attribute, immortal life?
  If a god bleeds, he bleeds not for a worm:
  I gaze, and, as I gaze, my mounting soul
  Catches strange fire, eternity! at thee;
  And drops the world--or rather, more enjoys:
  How changed the face of nature! how improved!                      502
  What seem'd a chaos, shines a glorious world,
  Or, what a world, an Eden; heighten'd all!
  It is another scene! another self!
  And still another, as time rolls along;
  And that a self far more illustrious still.
  Beyond long ages, yet roll'd up in shades
  Unpierced by bold conjecture's keenest ray,
  What evolutions of surprising fate!                                510
  How nature opens, and receives my soul
  In boundless walks of raptured thought! where gods
  Encounter and embrace me! What new births
  Of strange adventure, foreign to the sun,
  Where what now charms, perhaps, whate'er exists,
  Old time, and fair creation, are forgot!
    Is this extravagant? Of man we form
  Extravagant conception, to be just:
  Conception unconfined wants wings to reach him:
  Beyond its reach, the Godhead only, more.                          520
  He, the great Father! kindled at one flame
  The world of rationals; one spirit pour'd
  From spirit's awful fountain; pour'd himself
  Through all their souls; but not in equal stream,
  Profuse, or frugal, of th' inspiring God,
  As his wise plan demanded; and when past
  Their various trials, in their various spheres,
  If they continue rational, as made,
  Resorbs them all into himself again;                               529
  His throne their centre, and his smile their crown.
    Why doubt we, then, the glorious truth to sing,
  Though yet unsung, as deem'd, perhaps, too bold?
  Angels are men of a superior kind;
  Angels are men in lighter habit clad,
  High o'er celestial mountains wing'd in flight;
  And men are angels, loaded for an hour,
  Who wade this miry vale, and climb with pain,
  And slippery step, the bottom of the steep.
  Angels their failings, mortals have their praise;
  While here, of corps ethereal, such enroll'd,                      540
  And summon'd to the glorious standard soon,
  Which flames eternal crimson through the skies.
  Nor are our brothers thoughtless of their kin,
  Yet absent; but not absent from their love.
  Michael has fought our battles; Raphael sung
  Our triumphs; Gabriel on our errands flown,
  Sent by the Sovereign: and are these, O Man!
  Thy friends, thy warm allies? and thou (shame burn
  The cheek to cinder!) rival to the brute?
    Religion's all. Descending from the skies                        550
  To wretched man, the goddess, in her left,
  Holds out this world, and, in her right, the next;
  Religion! the sole voucher man is man;
  Supporter sole of man above himself;
  Even in this night of frailty, change, and death,
  She gives the soul a soul that acts a god.
  Religion! Providence! an After-state!
  Here is firm footing; here is solid rock!
  This can support us; all is sea besides;
  Sinks under us; bestorms, and then devours.                        560
  His hand the good man fastens on the skies,
  And bids earth roll, nor feels her idle whirl.
    As when a wretch, from thick polluted air,                       563
  Darkness, and stench, and suffocating damps,
  And dungeon horrors, by kind fate, discharged,
  Climbs some fair eminence, where ether pure
  Surrounds him, and Elysian prospects rise,
  His heart exults, his spirits cast their load;
  As if new-born, he triumphs in the change;
  So joys the soul, when, from inglorious aims,
  And sordid sweets, from feculence and froth                        571
  Of ties terrestrial, set at large, she mounts
  To reason's region, her own element,
  Breathes hopes immortal, and affects the skies.
    Religion! thou the soul of happiness;
  And, groaning Calvary, of thee! there shine
  The noblest truths; there strongest motives sting;
  There sacred violence assaults the soul;
  There, nothing but compulsion is forborne.
  Can love allure us? or can terror awe?                             580
  He weeps!--the falling drop puts out the sun;
  He sighs--the sigh earth's deep foundation shakes.
  If in his love so terrible, what then
  His wrath inflamed? his tenderness on fire?
  Like soft, smooth oil, outblazing other fires?
  Can prayer, can praise avert it?--Thou, my all!
  My theme! my inspiration! and my crown!
  My strength in age! my rise in low estate!
  My soul's ambition, pleasure, wealth!--my world!
  My light in darkness! and my life in death!                        590
  My boast through time! bliss through eternity!
  Eternity, too short to speak thy praise!
  Or fathom thy profound of love to man!
  To man of men the meanest, even to me;
  My sacrifice! my God!--what things are these!
    What then art Thou? by what name shall I call thee?--
  Knew I the name devout archangels use,                             597
  Devout archangels should the name enjoy,
  By me unrivall'd; thousands more sublime,
  None half so dear as that which, though unspoke,
  Still glows at heart: O how omnipotence
  Is lost in love! Thou great Philanthropist!
  Father of angels! but the friend of man!                           603
  Like Jacob, fondest of the younger born!
  Thou, who didst save him, snatch the smoking brand
  From out the flames, and quench it in thy blood!
  How art thou pleased, by bounty to distress!
  To make us groan beneath our gratitude,
  Too big for birth! to favour, and confound;
  To challenge, and to distance all return!                          610
  Of lavish love stupendous heights to soar,
  And leave praise panting in the distant vale!
  Thy right, too great, defrauds thee of thy due;
  And sacrilegious our sublimest song.
  But since the naked will obtains thy smile,
  Beneath this monument of praise unpaid,
  And future life symphonious to my strain,
  (That noblest hymn to heaven!) for ever lie
  Entomb'd my fear of death! and every fear,
  The dread of every evil, but thy frown.                            620
    Whom see I yonder, so demurely smile?
  Laughter a labour, and might break their rest.
  Ye quietists, in homage to the skies!
  Serene! of soft address! who mildly make
  An unobtrusive tender of your hearts,
  Abhorring violence! who halt indeed;
  But, for the blessing, wrestle not with Heaven!
  Think you my song too turbulent? too warm?
  Are passions, then, the Pagans of the soul?
  Reason alone baptized? alone ordain'd                              630
  To touch things sacred? Oh for warmer still!                       631
  Guilt chills my zeal, and age benumbs my powers;
  Oh for an humbler heart, and prouder song!
  Thou, my much-injured theme! with that soft eye,
  Which melted o'er doom'd Salem, deign to look
  Compassion to the coldness of my breast;
  And pardon to the winter in my strain.
    O ye cold-hearted, frozen, formalists!
  On such a theme, 'tis impious to be calm;
  Passion is reason, transport temper, here.                         640
  Shall Heaven, which gave us ardour, and has shown
  Her own for man so strongly, not disdain
  What smooth emollients in theology,
  Recumbent virtue's downy doctors preach,
  That prose of piety, a lukewarm praise?
  Rise odours sweet from incense uninflamed?
  Devotion, when lukewarm, is undevout;
  But when it glows, its heat is struck to heaven;
  To human hearts her golden harps are strung;
  High heaven's orchestra chants amen to man.                        650
    Hear I, or dream I hear, their distant strain,
  Sweet to the soul, and tasting strong of heaven,
  Soft-wafted on celestial pity's plume,
  Through the vast spaces of the universe,
  To cheer me in this melancholy gloom?
  Oh, when will death (now stingless), like a friend,
  Admit me of their choir? Oh, when will death
  This mouldering, old, partition-wall throw down?
  Give beings, one in nature, one abode?
  O Death divine! that givest us to the skies!                       660
  Great future! glorious patron of the past,
  And present! when shall I thy shrine adore?
  From nature's continent, immensely wide,
  Immensely bless'd, this little isle of life,
  This dark, incarcerating colony,                                   665
  Divides us. Happy day! that breaks our chain;
  That manumits;[15] that calls from exile home;
  That leads to nature's great metropolis,
  And re-admits us, through the guardian hand
  Of elder brothers, to our Father's throne;
  Who hears our Advocate, and, through his wounds
  Beholding man, allows that tender name.                            672
  'Tis this makes Christian triumph a command:
  'Tis this makes joy a duty to the wise;
  'Tis impious in a good man to be sad.
    See thou, Lorenzo! where hangs all our hope?
  Touch'd by the Cross, we live; or, more than die;
  That touch which touch'd not angels; more divine
  Than that which touch'd confusion into form,
  And darkness into glory; partial touch!                            680
  Ineffably pre-eminent regard!
  Sacred to man, and sovereign through the whole
  Long golden chain of miracles, which hangs
  From heaven through all duration, and supports
  In one illustrious and amazing plan,
  Thy welfare, nature! and thy God's renown.
  That touch, with charm celestial, heals the soul
  Diseased, drives pain from guilt, lights life in death,
  Turns earth to heaven, to heavenly thrones transforms
  The ghastly ruins of the mouldering tomb.                          690
    Dost ask me when? When He who died returns;
  Returns, how changed! Where then the man of woe?
  In glory's terrors all the Godhead burns;
  And all his courts, exhausted by the tide
  Of deities triumphant in his train,
  Leave a stupendous solitude in heaven;
  Replenish'd soon, replenish'd with increase
  Of pomp, and multitude; a radiant band                             698
  Of angels new; of angels from the tomb.
    Is this by fancy thrown remote? and rise
  Dark doubts between the promise and event?
  I send thee not to volumes for thy cure;
  Read nature; nature is a friend to truth;
  Nature is Christian; preaches to mankind;
  And bids dead matter aid us in our creed.
  Hast thou ne'er seen the comet's flaming flight?
  Th' illustrious stranger passing, terror sheds
  On gazing nations; from his fiery train
  Of length enormous, takes his ample round                          709
  Through depths of ether; coasts unnumber'd worlds,
  Of more than solar glory; doubles wide
  Heaven's mighty cape; and then revisits earth,
  From the long travel of a thousand years.
  Thus, at the destined period, shall return
  He, once on earth, who bids the comet blaze:
  And, with him, all our triumph o'er the tomb.
    Nature is dumb on this important point;
  Or hope precarious in low whisper breathes;
  Faith speaks aloud, distinct; even adders hear;
  But turn, and dart into the dark again.                            720
  Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death,
  To break the shock blind nature cannot shun,
  And lands thought smoothly on the farther shore.
  Death's terror is the mountain faith removes;
  That mountain barrier between man and peace.
  'Tis faith disarms destruction; and absolves
  From every clamorous charge, the guiltless tomb.
    Why disbelieve? Lorenzo!--"Reason bids,
  All-sacred reason."--Hold her sacred still;
  Nor shalt thou want a rival in thy flame:                          730
  All-sacred reason! source, and soul, of all
  Demanding praise, on earth, or earth above!                        732
  My heart is thine: deep in its inmost folds,
  Live thou with life; live dearer of the two.
  Wear I the blessed cross, by fortune stamp'd
  On passive nature, before thought was born?
  My birth's blind bigot! fired with local zeal!
  No; reason re-baptized me when adult;
  Weigh'd true, and false, in her impartial scale;
  My heart became the convert of my head;                            740
  And made that choice, which once was but my fate.
  "On argument alone my faith is built:"
  Reason pursued is faith; and, unpursued
  Where proof invites, 'tis reason, then, no more:
  And such our proof, that, or our faith is right,
  Or reason lies, and Heaven design'd it wrong:
  Absolve we this? What, then, is blasphemy?
    Fond as we are, and justly fond, of faith,
  Reason, we grant, demands our first regard;
  The mother honour'd, as the daughter dear.                         750
  Reason the root, fair faith is but the flower;
  The fading flower shall die; but reason lives
  Immortal, as her Father in the skies.
  When faith is virtue, reason makes it so.
  Wrong not the Christian; think not reason yours:
  'Tis reason our great Master holds so dear;
  'Tis reason's injured rights his wrath resents;
  'Tis reason's voice obey'd his glories crown;
  To give lost reason life, he pour'd his own:
  Believe, and show the reason of a man;                             760
  Believe, and taste the pleasure of a God;
  Believe, and look with triumph on the tomb:
  Through reason's wounds alone thy faith can die;
  Which dying, tenfold terror gives to death,
  And dips in venom his twice-mortal sting.
    Learn hence what honours, what loud pæans[16], due               766
  To those, who push our antidote aside;
  Those boasted friends to reason, and to man,
  Whose fatal love stabs every joy, and leaves
  Death's terror heighten'd, gnawing on his heart.
  Those pompous sons of reason idolized
  And vilified at once; of reason dead,
  Then deified, as monarchs were of old;                             773
  What conduct plants proud laurels on their brow?
  While love of truth through all their camp resounds,
  They draw pride's curtain o'er the noontide ray,
  Spike up their inch of reason, on the point
  Of philosophic wit, call'd argument;
  And then, exulting in their taper, cry,
  "Behold the sun!" and, Indian-like, adore.                         780
    Talk they of morals? O thou bleeding Love!
  Thou maker of new morals to mankind!
  The grand morality is love of thee.
  As wise as Socrates, if such they were
  (Nor will they bate of that sublime renown),
  As wise as Socrates, might justly stand
  The definition of a modern fool.
    A Christian is the highest style of man:
  And is there, who the blessed cross wipes off,
  As a foul blot from his dishonour'd brow?                          790
  If angels tremble, 'tis at such a sight:
  The wretch they quit, desponding of their charge,
  More struck with grief or wonder, who can tell?
    Ye sold to sense! ye citizens of earth!
  (For such alone the Christian banner fly)
  Know ye how wise your choice, how great your gain?
  Behold the picture of earth's happiest man:
  "He calls his wish, it comes; he sends it back,
  And says, he call'd another; that arrives,
  Meets the same welcome; yet he still calls on;                     800
  Till one calls him, who varies not his call,
  But holds him fast, in chains of darkness bound,
  Till nature dies, and judgment sets him free;
  A freedom far less welcome than his chain."
    But grant man happy; grant him happy long;
  Add to life's highest prize her latest hour;
  That hour, so late, is nimble in approach,
  That, like a post, comes on in full career:
  How swift the shuttle flies that weaves thy shroud!
  Where is the fable of thy former years?                            810
  Thrown down the gulf of time; as far from thee
  As they had ne'er been thine; the day in hand,
  Like a bird struggling to get loose, is going;
  Scarce now possess'd, so suddenly 'tis gone;
  And each swift moment fled, is death advanced
  By strides as swift. Eternity is all;
  And whose eternity? Who triumphs there?
  Bathing for ever in the font of bliss!
  For ever basking in the Deity!
  Lorenzo! who?--Thy conscience shall reply.                         820
    O give it leave to speak! 'twill speak ere long,
  Thy leave unask'd; Lorenzo! hear it now,
  While useful its advice, its accents mild.
  By the great edict, the divine decree,
  Truth is deposited with man's last hour;
  An honest hour, and faithful to her trust;
  Truth, eldest daughter of the Deity;
  Truth, of his council, when he made the worlds;
  Nor less, when he shall judge the worlds he made;
  Though silent long, and sleeping ne'er so sound,                   830
  Smother'd with errors, and oppress'd with toys,
  That heaven-commission'd hour no sooner calls,
  But from her cavern in the soul's abyss,
  Like him they fable under Ætna whelm'd,                            834
  The goddess bursts in thunder, and in flame;
  Loudly convinces, and severely pains.
  Dark demons I discharge, and hydra-stings;
  The keen vibration of bright truth--is hell:
  Just definition! though by schools untaught.
  Ye deaf to truth! peruse this parson'd page,                       840
  And trust, for once, a prophet, and a priest;
  "Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die."

                              THE RELAPSE.

                        TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
                         THE EARL OF LICHFIELD.

                              NIGHT FIFTH.

                              THE RELAPSE.

  Lorenzo! to recriminate is just.
  Fondness for fame is avarice of air.
  I grant the man is vain who writes for praise.
  Praise no man e'er deserved, who sought no more.
    As just thy second charge. I grant the Muse
  Has often blush'd at her degenerate sons,
  Retain'd by sense to plead her filthy cause;
  To raise the low, to magnify the mean,
  And subtilize the gross into refined:
  As if to magic numbers' powerful charm                              10
  'Twas given, to make a civet of their song
  Obscene, and sweeten ordure to perfume.
  Wit, a true Pagan, deifies the brute,
  And lifts our swine-enjoyments from the mire.
    The fact notorious, nor obscure the cause.
  We wear the chains of pleasure and of pride.
  These share the man; and these distract him too;
  Draw different ways, and clash in their commands.
  Pride, like an eagle, builds among the stars;
  But pleasure, lark-like, nests upon the ground.                     20
  Joys shared by brute creation, pride resents;                       21
  Pleasure embraces: man would both enjoy,
  And both at once: a point so hard, how gain!
  But, what can't wit, when stung by strong desire?
    Wit dares attempt this arduous enterprise.
  Since joys of sense can't rise to reason's taste;
  In subtle sophistry's laborious forge,
  Wit hammers out a reason new, that stoops
  To sordid scenes, and meets them with applause.
  Wit calls the graces the chaste zone to loose;                      30
  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 asleep,
  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,
  By Wit's address, patch up a fatal peace,                           40
  And hand in hand lead on the rank debauch,
  From rank refined 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 soul,
  These sensual ethics far, in bulk, transcend.
  The flowers of eloquence, profusely pour'd
  O'er spotted vice, fill half the letter'd world.                    50
  Can powers of genius exorcise their page,
  And consecrate enormities with song?
    But let not these inexpiable strains
  Condemn the Muse that knows her dignity;
  Nor meanly stops at time, but holds the world                       55
  As 'tis, in nature's ample field, a point,
  A point in her esteem; from whence to start,
  And run the round of universal 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.                     62
  Sing syrens only? Do not angels sing?
  There is in Poesy a decent pride,
  Which well becomes her when she speaks to Prose,
  Her younger sister; haply, not more wise.
    Think'st thou, Lorenzo! to find pastimes here?
  No guilty passion blown into a flame,
  No foible flatter'd, dignity disgraced,
  No fairy field of fiction, all on flower,                           70
  No rainbow colours here, or silken tale:
  But solemn counsels, images of awe,
  Truths, which eternity lets fall on man
  With double weight, through these revolving spheres,
  This death-deep silence, 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 dipp'd, embrowns the whole.
    Yet this, even this, my laughter-loving friends!                  80
  Lorenzo! and thy brothers of the smile!
  If, what imports you most, can most engage,
  Shall steal your ear, and chain you to my song.
  Or if you fail me, know, the wise shall taste
  The truths I sing; the truths I sing shall feel;
  And, feeling, give assent; and their assent
  Is ample recompence; is more than praise.
  But chiefly thine, O Lichfield! nor mistake;
  Think not unintroduced I force my way;                              89
  Narcissa, not unknown, not unallied,
  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 inspired.
    O Thou! Blest Spirit! whether the supreme,
  Great antemundane Father! in whose breast
  Embryo creation, unborn being, dwelt,
  And all its various revolutions roll'd                             100
  Present, though future; prior to themselves;
  Whose breath can blow it into nought again;
  Or, from his throne some delegated power,
  Who, studious of our peace, dost turn the thought
  From vain and vile, to solid and sublime!
  Unseen thou lead'st me to delicious draughts
  Of inspiration, from a purer stream,
  And fuller of the god, than that which burst
  From famed Castalia: nor is yet allay'd
  My sacred thirst; though long my soul has ranged                   110
  Through pleasing paths of moral, and divine,
  By Thee sustain'd, and lighted by the stars.
    By them best lighted are the paths of thought:
  Nights are their days, their most illumined hours.
  By day, the soul, o'erborne by life's career,
  Stunn'd by the din, and giddy with the glare,
  Reels far from reason, jostled by the throng.
  By day the soul is passive, all her thoughts
  Imposed, precarious, broken ere mature.
  By night, from objects free, from passion cool,                    120
  Thoughts uncontroll'd, and unimpress'd, the births
  Of pure election, arbitrary range,
  Not to the limits of one world confined;                           123
  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 soul
  To settle on herself, our point supreme!                           130
  There lies our theatre; there sits our judge.
  Darkness the curtain drops o'er life's dull scene;
  'Tis the kind hand of Providence stretch'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 rescues virtue, than inspires.
    Virtue, for ever frail, as fair, below,
  Her tender nature suffers in the crowd,                            140
  Nor touches on the world, without a stain:
  The world's infectious; few bring back at eve.
  Immaculate, the manners of the morn.
  Something we thought, is blotted; we resolved,
  Is shaken; we renounced, returns again.
  Each salutation may slide in a sin
  Unthought before, or fix a former flaw.
  Nor is it strange: light, motion, concourse, noise,
  All, scatter us abroad; thought outward-bound,
  Neglectful of our home affairs, flies off                          150
  In fume and dissipation, quits her charge,
  And leaves the breast unguarded to the foe.
    Present 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;
  Riot, pride, perfidy, blue vapours breathe;                        157
  And inhumanity is caught from man,
  From smiling man. A slight, a single glance,
  And shot at random, often has brought home
  A sudden fever, to the throbbing heart,
  Of envy, rancour, or impure desire.
  We see, we hear, with peril; safety dwells                         163
  Remote from multitude; the world's a school
  Of wrong, and what proficients swarm 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 smit
  With sweet recess, and languish'd for the shade.                   170
    This sacred shade, and solitude, what is it?
  'Tis the felt presence of the Deity.
  Few are the faults we flatter when alone.
  Vice sinks 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 conscious moon, through every distant age,
  Has held a lamp to wisdom, and let fall,
  On contemplation's eye, her purging ray.                           180
  The famed Athenian,[17] he who woo'd from heaven
  Philosophy the fair, to dwell with men,
  And form their manners, not inflame their pride,
  While o'er his head, as fearful to molest
  His labouring mind, the stars in silence slide,
  And seem all gazing on their future guest,
  See him soliciting his ardent suit
  In private audience: all the live-long night,
  Rigid in thought, and motionless, he stands;
  Nor quits his theme, or posture, till the sun                      190
  (Rude drunkard rising rosy from the main!)
  Disturbs his nobler intellectual beam,
  And gives him to the tumult of the world.
  Hail, precious moments! stolen from the black waste
  Of murder'd time! Auspicious midnight! hail!
  The world excluded, every passion hush'd,
  And open'd a calm intercourse with Heaven,
  Here the soul sits in council; ponders past,
  Predestines future, action; sees, not feels,
  Tumultuous life, and reasons with the storm;                       200
  All her lies answers, and thinks down her charms.
    What awful joy! what mental liberty!
  I am not pent in darkness; rather say
  (If not too bold) in darkness I'm embower'd.
  Delightful gloom! the clustering thoughts around
  Spontaneous rise, and blossom in the shade;
  But droop by day, and sicken in the sun.
  Thought borrows light elsewhere; from that first fire,
  Fountain of animation! whence descends
  Urania, my celestial guest! who deigns                             210
  Nightly to visit me, so mean; and now,
  Conscious how needful discipline to man,
  From pleasing dalliance with the charms of Night
  My wandering thought recalls, to what excites
  Far other beat of heart! Narcissa's tomb!
  Or is it feeble nature calls me back,
  And breaks my spirit into grief again?
  Is it a Stygian vapour in my blood?
  A cold, slow puddle, creeping through my veins?
  Or is it thus with all men?--Thus with all.                        220
  What are we? how unequal! Now we soar,
  And now we sink; to be the same, transcends
  Our present prowess. Dearly pays the soul
  For lodging ill; too dearly rents her clay.                        224
  Reason, a baffled counsellor! but adds
  The blush of weakness to the bane of woe.
  The noblest spirit fighting her hard fate,
  In this damp, dusky region, charged with storms,
  But feebly flutters, yet untaught to fly;
  Or, flying, short her flight, and sure her fall.
  Our utmost strength, when down, to rise again;
  And not to yield, though beaten, all our praise.                   232
    'Tis vain to seek in men for more than man.
  Though proud in promise, big in previous thought,
  Experience damps our triumph. I, who late,
  Emerging from the shadows of the grave,
  Where grief detain'd me prisoner, mounting high,
  Threw wide the gates of everlasting day,
  And call'd mankind to glory, shook off pain,
  Mortality shook off, in ether pure,                                240
  And struck the stars; now feel my spirits fail;
  They drop me from the zenith; down I rush,
  Like him whom fable fledged[18] with waxen wings,
  In sorrow drown'd--but not in sorrow lost.
  How wretched is the man who never mourn'd!
  I dive for precious pearl in sorrow's stream:
  Not so the thoughtless man that only grieves;
  Takes all the torment, and rejects the gain;
  (Inestimable gain!) and gives Heaven leave
  To make him but more wretched, not more wise.                      250
    If wisdom is our lesson (and what else
  Ennobles man? what else have angels learn'd?),
  Grief! more proficients in thy school are made,
  Than genius, or proud learning, e'er could boast.
  Voracious learning, often over-fed,
  Digests not into sense her motley meal.
  This book-case, which dark booty almost burst,                     257
  This forager on others' wisdom, leaves
  Her native farm, her reason, quite untill'd.
  With mix'd manure she surfeits the rank soil,
  Dung'd, but not dress'd; and rich to beggary.
  A pomp untameable of weeds prevails.
  Her servant's wealth, encumber'd wisdom mourns.                    263
    And what says Genius? "Let the dull be wise."
  Genius, too hard for right, can prove it wrong;
  And loves to boast, where blush men less inspired.
  It pleads exemption from the laws of sense;
  Considers reason as a leveller;
  And scorns to share a blessing with the crowd.
  That wise it could be, thinks an ample claim                       270
  To glory, and to pleasure gives the rest.
  Crassus but sleeps, Ardelio is undone.
  Wisdom less shudders at a fool, than wit.
    But Wisdom smiles, when humbled mortals weep.
  When sorrow wounds the breast, as ploughs the glebe,[19]
  And hearts obdurate feel her softening shower;
  Her seed celestial, then, glad wisdom sows;
  Her golden harvest triumphs in the soil.
  If so, Narcissa[20], welcome my Relapse;
  I'll raise a tax on my calamity,                                   280
  And reap rich compensation from my pain.
  I'll range the plenteous intellectual field;
  And gather every thought of sovereign power
  To chase the moral maladies of man;
  Thoughts, which may bear transplanting to the skies,
  Though natives of this coarse penurious soil;
  Nor wholly wither there, where seraphs sing,
  Refined, exalted, not annull'd, in heaven.
  Reason, the sun that gives them birth, the same
  In either clime, though more illustrious there.                    290
  These choicely cull'd, and elegantly ranged,                       291
  Shall form a garland for Narcissa's tomb;
  And, peradventure, of no fading flowers.
    Say on what themes shall puzzled choice descend?
  "Th' importance of contemplating the tomb;
  Why men decline it; suicide's foul birth;
  The various kind of grief; the faults of age;
  And Death's dread character--invite my song."
    And, first th' importance of our end survey'd.
  Friends counsel quick dismission of our grief:                     300
  Mistaken kindness! our hearts heal too soon.
  Are they more kind than He, who struck the blow?
  Who bid it do his errand in our hearts,
  And banish peace, till nobler guests arrive,
  And bring it back, a true and endless peace?
  Calamities are friends: as glaring day
  Of these unnumber'd lustres robs our sight;
  Prosperity puts out unnumber'd thoughts
  Of import high, and light divine, to man.
    The man how blest, who, sick of gaudy scenes,                    310
  (Scenes apt to thrust between us and ourselves!)
  Is led by choice to take his favourite walk,
  Beneath death's gloomy, silent, cypress shades,
  Unpierced by vanity's fantastic ray;
  To read his monuments, to weigh his dust,
  Visit his vaults, and dwell among the tombs!
  Lorenzo[21] read with me Narcissa's stone;
  (Narcissa was thy favourite) let us read
  Her moral stone; few doctors preach so well;
  Few orators so tenderly can touch                                  320
  The feeling heart. What pathos in the date!
  Apt words can strike: and yet in them we see
  Faint images of what we here enjoy.
  What cause have we to build on length of life?
  Temptations seize, when fear is laid asleep;                       325
  And ill foreboded is our strongest guard.
    See from her tomb, as from an humble shrine,
  Truth, radiant goddess! sallies on my soul,
  And puts delusion's dusky train to flight;
  Dispels the mists our sultry passions raise,
  From objects low, terrestrial, and obscene;
  And shows the real estimate of things;                             332
  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,                          340
  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: would'st 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,                              358
  Or real wisdom wafts us to the skies.
    As worldly schemes resemble Sibyl's leaves,
  The good man's days to Sibyl's books compare,
  (In ancient story read, thou know'st the tale),
  In price still rising, as in number less,
  Inestimable quite his final hour.                                  364
  For that who thrones can offer, offer thrones;
  Insolvent worlds the purchase cannot pay.
  "O let me die his death!" all nature cries.
  "Then live his life"--all nature falters there;
  Our great physician daily to consult,
  To commune with the grave, our only cure.                          370
    What grave prescribes the best?--A friend's; and yet,
  From a friend's grave, how soon we disengage!
  Even 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, th' inexorable hour at hand!                               380
  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 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,                         390
  The wondrous cause, of this mysterious ill?                        391
  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 same.                             400
  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
  Our life, though still more rapid in its flow;
  Nor mark the much, irrevocably lapsed,
  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?                          410
  In life embark'd, we smoothly down the tide
  Of time descend, but not on time intent;
  Amused, unconscious of the gliding wave;
  Till on a sudden we perceive a shock;
  We start, awake, look out; what see we there?
  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?                           420
  Or is it fear turns startled reason back,
  From 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,                            425
  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,                        432
  And mar the schemes of Providence below.
    What groan was that, Lorenzo?--Furies! rise,
  And drown in your less execrable 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!
  High-born, and free, her freedom should maintain,
  Unsold, unmortgaged for earth's little bribes.
  Th' illustrious stranger, in this foreign land,                    459
  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 there.
    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,
  Or their pall'd palates loathe the basket full;
  Are instantly, with wild demoniac rage,
  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;                    480
  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                        490
  Heaven's law supreme, and desperately rush,
  Through sacred Nature's murder, on their own,
  Because they never think of death, they die.                       493
  '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,                         500
  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.                        510
  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.
    Lorenzo! hast thou ever weigh'd a sigh?
  Or studied the philosophy of tears?
  (A science, yet unlectured in our schools!)
  Hast thou descended deep into the breast,
  And seen their source? If not, descend with me,                    520
  And trace these briny rivulets to their springs.
    Our funeral tears from different causes rise,
  As if from separate cisterns in the soul,
  Of various kinds, they flow. From tender hearts,
  By soft contagion call'd, some burst at once,
  And stream obsequious to the leading eye.
  Some ask more time, by curious art distill'd.                      527
  Some hearts, in secret hard, unapt to melt,
  Struck by the magic of the public eye,
  Like Moses' smitten rock, gush out amain.
  Some weep to share the fame of the deceased,
  So high in merit, and to them so dear.
  They dwell on praises, which they think they share;                533
  And thus, without a blush, commend themselves.
  Some mourn, in proof that something they could love:
  They weep not to relieve their grief, but show.
  Some weep in perfect justice to the dead,
  As conscious all their love is in arrear.
  Some mischievously weep, not unapprised
  Tears, sometimes, aid the conquest of an eye.                      540
  With what address the soft Ephesians draw
  Their sable network o'er entangled hearts!
  As seen through crystal, how their roses glow,
  While liquid pearl runs trickling down their cheek!
  Of hers not prouder Egypt's wanton queen,
  Carousing gems, herself dissolved in love.
  Some weep at death, abstracted from the dead,
  And celebrate, like Charles,[22] their own decease.
  By kind construction some are deem'd to weep,
  Because a decent veil conceals their joy.                          550
    Some weep in earnest, and yet weep in vain;
  As deep in indiscretion, as in woe.
  Passion, blind Passion! impotently pours
  Tears, that deserve more tears; while Reason sleeps;
  Or gazes like an idiot, unconcern'd;
  Nor comprehends the meaning of the storm;
  Knows not it speaks to her, and her alone.
  Irrationals all sorrow are beneath,
  That noble gift! that privilege of man!
  From sorrow's pang, the birth of endless joy.                      560
  But these are barren of that birth divine:
  They weep impetuous, as the summer storm,
  And full as short! The cruel grief soon tamed,
  They make a pastime of the stingless tale;
  Far as the deep resounding knell, they spread
  The dreadful news, and hardly feel it more.
  No grain of wisdom pays them for their woe.
    Half-round the globe, the tears pump'd up by Death
  Are spent in watering vanities of life;
  In making folly flourish still more fair,                          570
  When the sick soul, her wonted stay withdrawn,
  Reclines on earth, and sorrows in the dust;
  Instead of learning, there, her true support,
  Though there thrown down her true support to learn.
  Without Heaven's aid, impatient to be bless'd,
  She crawls to the next shrub, or bramble vile,
  Though from the stately cedar's arms she fell;
  With stale, forsworn embraces, clings anew,
  The stranger weds, and blossoms, as before,
  In all the fruitless fopperies of life:                            580
  Presents her weed, well-fancied, at the ball,
  And raffles for the Death's-head on the ring.
    So wept Aurelia, till the destined youth
  Stepp'd in, with his receipt for making smiles,
  And blanching sables into bridal bloom.
  So wept Lorenzo fair Clarissa's fate;
  Who gave that angel boy, on whom he doats;
  And died to give him, orphan'd in his birth!
  Not such, Narcissa, my distress for thee.
  I'll make an altar of thy sacred tomb,                             590
  To sacrifice to wisdom.--What wast thou?
  "Young, gay, and fortunate!" Each yields a theme.
  I'll dwell on each, to shun thought more severe;
  (Heaven knows I labour with severer still!)                        594
  I'll dwell on each, and quite exhaust thy death.
  A soul without reflection, like a pile
  Without inhabitant, to ruin runs.
    And, first, thy youth. What says it to grey hairs?
  Narcissa, I'm become thy pupil now--
  Early, bright, transient, chaste, as morning dew,
  She sparkled, was exhaled, and went to heaven.
  Time on this head has snow'd; yet still 'tis borne                 602
  Aloft; nor thinks but on another's grave.
  Cover'd with shame I speak it, age severe
  Old worn-out vice sets down for virtue fair;
  With graceless gravity, chastising youth,
  That youth chastised surpassing in a fault,
  Father of all, forgetfulness of death:
  As if, like objects pressing on the sight,
  Death had advanced too near us to be seen:                         610
  Or, that life's loan Time ripen'd into right;
  And men might plead prescription from the grave;
  Deathless, from repetition of reprieve.
  Deathless? far from it! such are dead already;
  Their hearts are buried, and the world their grave.
    Tell me, some god! my guardian angel! tell,
  What thus infatuates? what enchantment plants
  The phantom of an age 'twixt us, and Death
  Already at the door? He knocks, we hear,
  And yet we will not hear. What mail defends                        620
  Our untouch'd hearts? what miracle turns off
  The pointed thought, which from a thousand quivers
  Is daily darted, and is daily shunn'd?
  We stand, as in a battle, throngs on throngs
  Around us falling; wounded oft ourselves;
  Though bleeding with our wounds, immortal still!
  We see Time's furrows on another's brow,
  And Death intrench'd, preparing his assault;                       628
  How few themselves, in that just mirror, see,
  Or, seeing, draw their inference as strong!
  There, death is certain; doubtful here: he must,
  And soon; we may, within an age, expire.
  Though grey our heads, our thoughts and aims are green;
  Like damaged clocks, whose hand and bell dissent;
  Folly sings six, while Nature points at twelve.
    Absurd longevity! More, more! it cries:
  More life, more wealth, more trash of every kind.
  And wherefore mad for more, when relish fails?
  Object, and appetite, must club for joy;
  Shall Folly labour hard to mend the bow,                           640
  Baubles, I mean, that strike us from without,
  While Nature is relaxing every string?
  Ask thought for joy; grow rich, and hoard within.
  Think you the soul, when this life's rattles cease,
  Has nothing of more manly to succeed?
  Contract the taste immortal; learn even now
  To relish what alone subsists hereafter.
  Divine, or none, henceforth your joys for ever.
  Of age the glory is, to wish to die.
  That wish is praise, and promise; it applauds                      650
  Past life, and promises our future bliss.
  What weakness see not children in their sires?
  Grand-climacterical absurdities!
  Grey-hair'd authority, to faults of youth,
  How shocking! it makes folly thrice a fool;
  And our first childhood might our last despise.
  Peace and esteem is all that age can hope.
  Nothing but wisdom gives the first; the last,
  Nothing, but the repute of being wise.
  Folly bars both; our age is quite undone.                          660
    What folly can be ranker? Like our shadows,
  Our wishes lengthen, as our sun declines.                          662
  No wish should loiter, then, this side the grave.
  Our hearts should leave the world, before the knell
  Calls for our carcases to mend the soil.
  Enough to live in tempest, die in port;
  Age should fly concourse, cover in retreat
  Defects of judgment; and the will subdue;
  Walk thoughtful on the silent, solemn shore
  Of that vast ocean it must sail so soon;                           670
  And put good works on board; and wait the wind
  That shortly blows us into worlds unknown:
  If unconsider'd too, a dreadful scene!
    All should be prophets to themselves; foresee
  Their future fate; their future fate foretaste;
  This art would waste the bitterness of death.
  The thought of death alone, the fear destroys.
  A disaffection to that precious thought
  Is more than midnight darkness on the soul,
  Which sleeps beneath it, on a precipice,                           680
  Puff'd off by the first blast, and lost for ever.
    Dost ask, Lorenzo, why so warmly press'd,
  By repetition hammer'd on thine ear,
  The thought of death? That thought is the machine,
  The grand machine, that heaves us from the dust,
  And rears us into men. That thought, plied home,
  Will soon reduce the ghastly precipice
  O'er-hanging hell, will soften the descent,
  And gently slope our passage to the grave;
  How warmly to be wish'd! What heart of flesh                       690
  Would trifle with tremendous? dare extremes?
  Yawn o'er the fate of infinite? What hand,
  Beyond the blackest brand of censure bold,
  (To speak a language too well known to thee),
  Would at a moment give its all to chance,                          695
  And stamp the die for an eternity?
    Aid me, Narcissa! aid me to keep pace
  With Destiny; and ere her scissors cut
  My thread of life, to break this tougher thread
  Of moral death, that ties me to the world.
  Sting thou my slumbering reason to send forth
  A thought of observation on the foe;                               702
  To sally; and survey the rapid march
  Of his ten thousand messengers to man;
  Who, Jehu-like, behind him turns them all.
  All accident apart, by Nature sign'd,
  My warrant is gone out, though dormant yet;
  Perhaps behind one moment lurks my fate.
    Must I then forward only look for Death?
  Backward I turn mine eye, and find him there.                      710
  Man is a self-survivor every year.
  Man, like a stream, is in perpetual flow.
  Death's a destroyer of quotidian[23] prey.
  My youth, my noontide, his; my yesterday;
  The bold invader shares the present hour.
  Each moment on the former shuts the grave.
  While man is growing, life is in decrease;
  And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb.
  Our birth is nothing but our death begun;
  As tapers waste, that instant they take fire.                      720
    Shall we then fear, lest that should come to pass,
  Which comes to pass each moment of our lives?
  If fear we must, let that Death turn us pale,
  Which murders strength and ardour; what remains
  Should rather call on Death, than dread his call.
  Ye partners of my fault, and my decline!
  Thoughtless of death, but when your neighbour's knell
  (Rude visitant!) knocks hard at your dull sense,
  And with its thunder scarce obtains your ear!                      729
  Be death your theme, in every place and hour;
  Nor longer want, ye monumental sires!
  A brother tomb to tell you ye shall die.
  That death you dread (so great is Nature's skill)
  Know, you shall court before you shall enjoy.
    But you are learn'd; in volumes deep, you sit;
  In wisdom, shallow: pompous ignorance!
  Would you be still more learned than the learn'd?
  Learn well to know how much need not be known,
  And what that knowledge, which impairs your sense.
  Our needful knowledge, like our needful food,                      740
  Unhedged, lies open in life's common field;
  And bids all welcome to the vital feast.
  You scorn what lies before you in the page
  Of Nature, and Experience, moral truth;
  Of indispensable, eternal fruit;
  Fruit, on which mortals feeding, turn to gods:
  And dive in science for distinguish'd names,
  Dishonest fomentation of your pride!
  Sinking in virtue, as you rise in fame.
  Your learning, like the lunar beam, affords                        750
  Light, but not heat; it leaves you indevout,
  Frozen at heart, while speculation shines.
  Awake, ye curious indagators! fond
  Of knowing all, but what avails you known.
  If you would learn Death's character, attend.
  All casts of conduct, all degrees of health,
  All dies of fortune, and all dates of age,
  Together shook in his impartial urn,
  Come forth at random: or, if choice is made,
  The choice is quite sarcastic, and insults                         760
  All bold conjecture, and fond hopes of man.
  What countless multitudes not only leave,
  But deeply disappoint us, by their deaths!                         763
  Though great our sorrow, greater our surprise.
    Like other tyrants, Death delights to smite,
  What, smitten, most proclaims the pride of power,
  And arbitrary nod. His joy supreme,
  To bid the wretch survive the fortunate;
  The feeble wrap th' athletic in his shroud;
  And weeping fathers build their children's tomb:                   770
  Me thine, Narcissa!--What though short thy date?
  Virtue, not rolling suns, the mind matures.
  That life is long, which answers life's great end.
  The time that bears no fruit, deserves no name;
  The man of wisdom is the man of years.
  In hoary youth Methusalems may die;
  O how misdated on their flattering tombs!
    Narcissa's youth has lectured me thus far.
  And can her gaiety give counsel too?
  That, like the Jews' famed oracle of gems,[24]                     780
  Sparkles instruction; such as throws new light,
  And opens more the character of Death;
  Ill known to thee, Lorenzo! This thy vaunt:
  "Give Death his due, the wretched, and the old;
  Even let him sweep his rubbish to the grave;
  Let him not violate kind Nature's laws,
  But own man born to live as well as die."
  Wretched and old thou givest him; young and gay
  He takes; and plunder is a tyrant's joy.
  What if I prove, "The farthest from the fear,                      790
  Are often nearest to the stroke of Fate?"
    All, more than common, menaces an end.
  A blaze betokens brevity of life:
  As if bright embers should emit a flame,
  Glad spirits sparkled from Narcissa's eye,
  And made youth younger, and taught life to live,                   796
  As Nature's opposites wage endless war,
  For this offence, as treason to the deep
  Inviolable stupor of his reign,
  Where Lust, and turbulent Ambition, sleep,
  Death took swift vengeance. As he life detests,
  More life is still more odious; and, reduced
  By conquest, aggrandizes more his power.                           803
  But wherefore aggrandized? By Heaven's decree,
  To plant the soul on her eternal guard,
  In awful expectation of our end.
  Thus runs Death's dread commission: "Strike, but so
  As most alarms the living by the dead."
  Hence stratagem delights him, and surprise,
  And cruel sport with man's securities.                             810
  Not simple conquest, triumph is his aim;
  And, where least fear'd, there conquest triumphs most.
  This proves my bold assertion not too bold.
    What are his arts to lay our fears asleep?
  Tiberian arts his purposes wrap up
  In deep dissimulation's darkest night.
  Like princes unconfess'd in foreign courts,
  Who travel under cover, Death assumes
  The name and look of life, and dwells among us.
  He takes all shapes that serve his black designs:                  820
  Though master of a wider empire far
  Than that o'er which the Roman eagle flew.
  Like Nero, he's a fiddler, charioteer,
  Or drives his phaeton, in female guise;
  Quite unsuspected, till, the wheel beneath,
  His disarray'd oblation he devours.
    He most affects the forms least like himself,
  His slender self. Hence burly corpulence
  Is his familiar wear, and sleek disguise.
  Behind the rosy bloom he loves to lurk,                            830
  Or ambush in a smile; or wanton dive
  In dimples deep; love's eddies, which draw in
  Unwary hearts, and sink them in despair.
  Such, on Narcissa's couch he loiter'd long
  Unknown; and, when detected, still was seen
  To smile; such peace has innocence in death!
  Most happy they! whom least his arts deceive.
  One eye on Death, and one full fix'd on heaven,
  Becomes a mortal, and immortal man.
  Long on his wiles a piqued and jealous spy,                        840
  I've seen, or dreamt I saw, the tyrant dress;
  Lay by his horrors, and put on his smiles.
  Say, Muse, for thou remember'st, call it back,
  And show Lorenzo the surprising scene;
  If 'twas a dream, his genius can explain.
    'Twas in a circle of the gay I stood.
  Death would have enter'd; Nature push'd him back;
  Supported by a doctor of renown,
  His point he gain'd. Then artfully dismiss'd
  The sage; for Death design'd to be conceal'd.                      850
  He gave an old vivacious usurer
  His meagre aspect, and his naked bones;
  In gratitude for plumping up his prey,
  A pamper'd spendthrift; whose fantastic air,
  Well-fashion'd figure, and cockaded[25] brow,
  He took in change, and underneath the pride
  Of costly linen, tuck'd his filthy shroud.
  His crooked bow he straighten'd to a cane;
  And hid his deadly shafts in Myra's eye.
    The dreadful masquerader, thus equipp'd,                         860
  Out sallies on adventures. Ask you where?
  Where is he not? For his peculiar haunts,
  Let this suffice; sure as night follows day,
  Death treads in pleasure's footsteps round the world,              864
  When pleasure treads the paths, which reason shuns.
  When, against reason, riot shuts the door,
  And gaiety supplies the place of sense,
  Then, foremost at the banquet, and the ball,
  Death leads the dance, or stamps the deadly die;
  Nor ever fails the midnight bowl to crown.                         870
  Gaily carousing to his gay compeers,
  Inly he laughs, to see them laugh at him,
  As absent far: and when the revel burns,
  When fear is banish'd, and triumphant thought,
  Calling for all the joys beneath the moon,
  Against him turns the key; and bids him sup
  With their progenitors--He drops his mask;
  Frowns out at full; they start, despair, expire.
    Scarce with more sudden terror and surprise,
  From his black mask of nitre, touch'd by fire,                     880
  He bursts, expands, roars, blazes, and devours.
  And is not this triumphant treachery,
  And more than simple conquest, in the fiend?
    And now, Lorenzo, dost thou wrap thy soul
  In soft security, because unknown
  Which moment is commission'd to destroy?
  In death's uncertainty thy danger lies.
  Is death uncertain? Therefore thou be fix'd;
  Fix'd as a sentinel, all eye, all ear,
  All expectation of the coming foe.                                 890
  Rouse, stand in arms, nor lean against thy spear;
  Lest slumber steal one moment o'er thy soul,
  And Fate surprise thee nodding. Watch, be strong:
  Thus give each day the merit, and renown,
  Of dying well; though doom'd but once to die.
  Nor let life's period hidden (as from most)
  Hide too from thee the precious use of life.
    Early, not sudden, was Narcissa's fate.                          898
  Soon, not surprising, Death his visit paid.
  Her thought went forth to meet him on his way,
  Nor gaiety forgot it was to die:
  Though Fortune too (our third and final theme),
  As an accomplice, play'd her gaudy plumes,
  And every glittering gewgaw, on her sight,                         904
  To dazzle, and debauch it from its mark.
  Death's dreadful advent is the mark of man;
  And every thought that misses it, is blind.
  Fortune, with youth and gaiety, conspired
  To weave a triple wreath of happiness
  (If happiness on earth) to crown her brow.                         910
  And could Death charge through such a shining shield?
    That shining shield invites the tyrant's spear.
  As if to damp our elevated aims,
  And strongly preach humility to man.
  O how portentous is prosperity!
  How, comet-like, it threatens, while it shines!
  Few years but yield us proof of Death's ambition,
  To cull his victims from the fairest fold,
  And sheath his shafts in all the pride of life.
  When flooded with abundance, purpled o'er                          920
  With recent honours, bloom'd with every bliss,
  Set up in ostentation, made the gaze,
  The gaudy centre, of the public eye,
  When Fortune thus has toss'd her child in air,
  Snatch'd from the covert of an humble state,
  How often have I seen him dropp'd at once,
  Our morning's envy! and our evening's sigh!
  As if her bounties were the signal given,
  The flowery wreath to mark the sacrifice,
  And call Death's arrows on the destined prey.                      930
    High Fortune seems in cruel league with Fate.
  Ask you for what? To give his war on man                           932
  The deeper dread, and more illustrious spoil;
  Thus to keep daring mortals more in awe.
  And burns Lorenzo still for the sublime
  Of life? to hang his airy nest on high,
  On the slight timber of the topmost bough,
  Rock'd at each breeze, and menacing a fall?
  Granting grim Death at equal distance there;
  Yet peace begins just where ambition ends.                         940
  What makes man wretched? Happiness denied?
  Lorenzo! no: 'tis happiness disdain'd.
  She comes too meanly dress'd to win our smile;
  And calls herself Content, a homely name!
  Our flame is transport, and Content our scorn.
  Ambition turns, and shuts the door against her,
  And weds a toil, a tempest, in her stead;
  A tempest to warm transport near of kin.
  Unknowing what our mortal state admits,
  Life's modest joys we ruin, while we raise;                        950
  And all our ecstasies are wounds to peace;
  Peace, the full portion of mankind below.
    And since thy peace is dear, ambitious youth!
  Of fortune fond! as thoughtless of thy fate!
  As late I drew Death's picture, to stir up
  Thy wholesome fears; now, drawn in contrast, see
  Gay Fortune's, thy vain hopes to reprimand.
  See, high in air, the sportive goddess hangs,
  Unlocks her casket, spreads her glittering ware,
  And calls the giddy winds to puff abroad                           960
  Her random bounties o'er the gaping throng.
  All rush rapacious; friends o'er trodden friends;
  Sons o'er their fathers, subjects o'er their kings,
  Priests o'er their gods, and lovers o'er the fair
  (Still more adored), to snatch the golden shower.
    Gold glitters most, where virtue shines no more;
  As stars from absent suns have leave to shine.                     967
  O what a precious pack of votaries[26]
  Unkennell'd from the prisons, and the stews,
  Pour in, all opening in their idol's praise;
  All, ardent, eye each wafture of her hand,
  And, wide-expanding their voracious jaws,
  Morsel on morsel swallow down unchew'd,                            973
  Untasted, through mad appetite for more;
  Gorged to the throat, yet lean and ravenous still.
  Sagacious all, to trace the smallest game,
  And bold to seize the greatest. If (bless'd chance!)
  Court-zephyrs sweetly breathe, they launch, they fly,
  O'er just, o'er sacred, all-forbidden ground,
  Drunk with the burning scent of place or power,                    980
  Staunch to the foot of lucre, till they die.
    Or, if for men you take them, as I mark
  Their manners, thou their various fates survey.
  With aim mismeasured, and impetuous speed,
  Some darting, strike their ardent wish far off,
  Through fury to possess it: some succeed,
  But stumble, and let fall the taken prize.
  From some, by sudden blasts, 'tis whirl'd away,
  And lodged in bosoms that ne'er dreamt of gain.
  To some it sticks so close, that, when torn off,                   990
  Torn is the man, and mortal is the wound.
  Some, o'er-enamour'd of their bags, run mad,
  Groan under gold, yet weep for want of bread.
  Together some (unhappy rivals!) seize,
  And rend abundance into poverty;
  Loud croaks the raven of the law, and smiles:
  Smiles too the goddess; but smiles most at those
  (Just victims of exorbitant desire!)
  Who perish at their own request, and, whelm'd
  Beneath her load of lavish grants, expire.                        1000
  Fortune is famous for her numbers slain,
  The number small, which happiness can bear.                       1002
  Though various for a while their fates; at last
  One curse involves them all: at Death's approach,
  All read their riches backward into loss,
  And mourn, in just proportion to their store.
    And Death's approach (if orthodox my song)
  Is hasten'd by the lure of Fortune's smiles.
  And art thou still a glutton of bright gold?
  And art thou still rapacious of thy ruin?                         1010
  Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow;
  A blow, which, while it executes, alarms;
  And startles thousands with a single fall.
  As when some stately growth of oak, or pine,
  Which nods aloft, and proudly spreads her shade,
  The sun's defiance, and the flock's defence;
  By the strong strokes of labouring hinds subdued,
  Loud groans her last, and, rushing from her height,
  In cumbrous ruin, thunders to the ground:
  The conscious forest trembles at the shock,                       1020
  And hill, and stream, and distant dale, resound.
    These high-aim'd darts of Death, and these alone,
  Should I collect, my quiver would be full.
  A quiver, which, suspended in mid-air,
  Or near heaven's archer, in the zodiac, hung,
  (So could it be) should draw the public eye,
  The gaze and contemplation of mankind!
  A constellation awful, yet benign,
  To guide the gay through life's tempestuous wave;
  Nor suffer them to strike the common rock,                        1030
  "From greater danger to grow more secure,
  And, wrapt in happiness, forget their fate."
    Lysander, happy past the common lot,
  Was warn'd of danger, but too gay to fear.
  He woo'd the fair Aspasia: she was kind:
  In youth, form, fortune, fame, they both were bless'd:
  All who knew, envied; yet in envy loved:                          1037
  Can fancy form more finish'd happiness?
  Fix'd was the nuptial hour. Her stately dome
  Rose on the sounding beach. The glittering spires
  Float in the wave, and break against the shore:
  So break those glittering shadows, human joys.
  The faithless morning smiled: he takes his leave,                 1043
  To re-embrace, in ecstasies, at eve.
  The rising storm forbids. The news arrives:
  Untold, she saw it in her servant's eye.
  She felt it seen (her heart was apt to feel);
  And, drown'd, without the furious ocean's aid,
  In suffocating sorrows, shares his tomb.
  Now, round the sumptuous bridal monument,                         1050
  The guilty billows innocently roar;
  And the rough sailor passing, drops a tear.
  A tear?--can tears suffice?--But not for me.
  How vain our efforts! and our arts, how vain!
  The distant train of thought I took, to shun,
  Has thrown me on my fate--these died together;
  Happy in ruin! undivorced by death!
  Or ne'er to meet, or ne'er to part,[27] is peace--
  Narcissa! pity bleeds at thought of thee.
  Yet thou wast only near me; not myself.                           1060
  Survive myself?--That cures all other woe.
  Narcissa lives; Philander is forgot.
  O the soft commerce! O the tender ties,
  Close twisted with the fibres of the heart!
  Which, broken, break them; and drain off the soul
  Of human joy; and make it pain to live--
  And is it then to live? When such friends part,
  'Tis the survivor dies--My heart! no more.                        1068

                                  THE
                           INFIDEL RECLAIMED,
                             IN TWO PARTS;
                               CONTAINING
                   THE NATURE, PROOF, AND IMPORTANCE
                            OF IMMORTALITY.

                                PART I.

              WHERE, AMONG OTHER THINGS, GLORY AND RICHES
                      ARE PARTICULARLY CONSIDERED.

                                 TO THE
                        RIGHT HON. HENRY PELHAM,
     FIRST LORD COMMISSIONER OF THE TREASURY, AND CHANCELLOR OF THE
                               EXCHEQUER.

                                PREFACE.

Few ages have been deeper in dispute about religion than this. The
dispute about religion, and the practice of it, seldom go together. The
shorter, therefore, the dispute, the better. I think it may be reduced to
this single question, _Is man immortal, or is he not?_ If he is not, all
our disputes are mere amusements, or trials of skill. In this case,
truth, reason, religion, which give our discourses such pomp and
solemnity, are (as will be shown) mere empty sound, without any meaning
in them. But if man is immortal, it will behove him to be very serious
about eternal consequences; or, in other words, to be truly religious.
And this great fundamental truth, unestablished, or unawakened in the
minds of men, is, I conceive, the real source and support of all our
infidelity; how remote soever the particular objections advanced may seem
to be from it.

Sensible appearances affect most men much more than abstract reasonings;
and we daily see bodies drop around us, but the soul is invisible. The
power which inclination has over the judgment, is greater than can be
well conceived by those that have not had an experience of it; and of
what numbers is it the sad interest that souls should not survive! The
heathen world confessed, that they rather hoped, than firmly believed,
immortality; and how many heathens have we still amongst us! The sacred
page assures us, that life and immortality are brought to light by the
Gospel: but by how many is the Gospel rejected or overlooked? From these
considerations, and from my being accidentally privy to the sentiments of
some particular persons, I have been long persuaded that most, if not
all, our infidels (whatever name they take, and whatever scheme, for
argument's sake, and to keep themselves in countenance, they patronise),
are supported in their deplorable error, by some doubt of their
immortality, at the bottom. And I am satisfied, that men once thoroughly
convinced of their immortality, are not far from being Christians. For it
is hard to conceive, that a man fully conscious eternal pain or happiness
will certainly be his lot, should not earnestly and impartially inquire
after the surest means of escaping the one, and securing the other. And
of such an earnest and impartial inquiry I well know the consequence.

Here, therefore, in proof of this most fundamental truth, some plain
arguments are offered; arguments derived from principles which infidels
admit in common with believers; arguments which appear to me altogether
irresistible; and such as, I am satisfied, will have great weight with
all who give themselves the small trouble of looking seriously into their
own bosoms, and of observing, with any tolerable degree of attention,
what daily passes round about them in the world. If some arguments shall
here occur, which others have declined, they are submitted, with all
deference, to better judgments in this, of all points the most important.
For, as to the being of a God, that is no longer disputed; but it is
undisputed for this reason only, viz., because, where the least pretence
to reason is admitted, it must for ever be indisputable. And of
consequence no man can be betrayed into a dispute of that nature by
vanity; which has a principal share in animating our modern combatants
against other articles of our belief.

                              NIGHT SIXTH.

                         THE INFIDEL RECLAIMED.
                                PART I.

  She[28] (for I know not yet her name in heaven),
  Not early, like Narcissa, left the scene;
  Nor sudden, like Philander. What avail?
  This seeming mitigation but inflames;
  This fancied medicine heightens the disease.
  The longer known, the closer still she grew;
  And gradual parting is a gradual death.
  'Tis the grim tyrant's engine, which extorts,
  By tardy pressure's still-increasing weight,
  From hardest hearts, confession of distress.                        10
    Oh, the long, dark approach through years of pain,
  Death's gallery! (might I dare to call it so)
  With dismal doubt, and sable terror, hung;
  Sick hope's pale lamp its only glimmering ray:
  There, fate my melancholy walk ordain'd,
  Forbid self-love itself to flatter, there.
  How oft I gazed, prophetically sad!
  How oft I saw her dead, while yet in smiles!                        18
  In smiles she sunk her grief to lessen mine.
  She spoke me comfort, and increased my pain.
  Like powerful armies trenching at a town,
  By slow, and silent, but resistless sap,
  In his pale progress gently gaining ground,
  Death urged his deadly siege; in spite of art,
  Of all the balmy blessings nature lends
  To succour frail humanity. Ye stars!
  (Not now first made familiar to my sight)
  And thou, O moon! bear witness, many a night
  He tore the pillow from beneath my head,
  Tied down my sore attention to the shock,                           30
  By ceaseless depredations on a life
  Dearer than that he left me. Dreadful post
  Of observation! darker every hour!
  Less dread the day that drove me to the brink,
  And pointed at eternity below;
  When my soul shudder'd at futurity;
  When, on a moment's point, th' important die
  Of life and death spun doubtful, ere it fell,
  And turn'd up life; my title to more woe.
    But why more woe? More comfort let it be.                         40
  Nothing is dead, but that which wish'd to die;
  Nothing is dead, but wretchedness and pain;
  Nothing is dead, but what encumber'd, gall'd,
  Block'd up the pass, and barr'd from real life.
  Where dwells that wish most ardent of the wise?
  Too dark the sun to see it; highest stars
  Too low to reach it; Death, great Death alone,
  O'er stars and sun, triumphant, lands us there.
    Nor dreadful our transition; though the mind,
  An artist at creating self-alarms,                                  50
  Rich in expedients for inquietude,
  Is prone to paint it dreadful. Who can take                         52
  Death's portrait true? The tyrant never sat.
  Our sketch all random strokes, conjecture all;
  Close shuts the grave, nor tells one single tale.
  Death, and his image rising in the brain,
  Bear faint resemblance; never are alike;
  Fear shakes the pencil; Fancy loves excess;
  Dark Ignorance is lavish of her shades:
  And these the formidable picture draw.                              60
    But grant the worst; 'tis past; new prospects rise;
  And drop a veil eternal o'er her tomb.
  Far other views our contemplation claim,
  Views that o'erpay the rigours of our life;
  Views that suspend our agonies in death.
  Wrapt in the thought of immortality,
  Wrapt in the single, the triumphant thought!
  Long life might lapse, age unperceived come on;
  And find the soul unsated with her theme.
  Its nature, proof, importance, fire my song.                        70
  O that my song could emulate my soul!
  Like her, immortal. No!--the soul disdains
  A mark so mean; far nobler hope inflames;
  If endless ages can outweigh an hour,
  Let not the laurel, but the palm, inspire.
    Thy nature, Immortality! who knows?
  And yet who knows it not? It is but life
  In stronger thread of brighter colour spun,
  And spun for ever; dipp'd by cruel Fate
  In Stygian dye, how black, how brittle here!                        80
  How short our correspondence with the sun!
  And while it lasts, inglorious! Our best deeds,
  How wanting in their weight! our highest joys
  Small cordials to support us in our pain,
  And give us strength to suffer. But how great
  To mingle interests, converse, amities,                             86
  With all the sons of Reason, scatter'd wide
  Through habitable space, wherever born,
  Howe'er endow'd! to live free citizens
  Of universal nature! to lay hold
  By more than feeble faith on the Supreme!
  To call heaven's rich unfathomable mines
  (Mines, which support archangels in their state)                    93
  Our own! To rise in science, as in bliss,
  Initiate in the secrets of the skies!
  To read creation; read its mighty plan
  In the bare bosom of the Deity!
  The plan, and execution, to collate!
  To see, before each glance of piercing thought,
  All cloud, all shadow, blown remote; and leave                     100
  No mystery--but that of Love Divine,
  Which lifts us on the seraph's flaming wing,
  From earth's Aceldama, this field of blood,
  Of inward anguish, and of outward ill,
  From darkness, and from dust, to such a scene!
  Love's element! true joy's illustrious home!
  From earth's sad contrast (now deplored) more fair!
  What exquisite vicissitude of fate!
  Bless'd absolution of our blackest hour!
    Lorenzo, these are thoughts that make man Man,                   110
  The wise illumine, aggrandize the great.
  How great (while yet we tread the kindred clod,
  And every moment fear to sink beneath
  The clod we tread; soon trodden by our sons);
  How great, in the wild whirl of Time's pursuits,
  To stop, and pause, involved in high presage,
  Through the long vista of a thousand years,
  To stand contemplating our distant selves,
  As in a magnifying mirror seen,
  Enlarged, ennobled, elevate, divine!                               120
  To prophesy our own futurities;
  To gaze in thought on what all thought transcends!
  To talk, with fellow-candidates, of joys
  As far beyond conception as desert,
  Ourselves th' astonish'd talkers, and the tale!
    Lorenzo, swells thy bosom at the thought?
  The swell becomes thee: 'tis an honest pride.
  Revere thyself;--and yet thyself despise.
  His nature no man can o'er-rate; and none
  Can under-rate his merit. Take good heed,                          130
  Nor there be modest, where thou should'st be proud;
  That almost universal error shun.
  How just our pride, when we behold those heights!
  Not those Ambition paints in air, but those
  Reason points out, and ardent Virtue gains,
  And angels emulate; our pride how just!
  When mount we? when these shackles cast? when quit
  This cell of the creation? this small nest,
  Stuck in a corner of the universe,
  Wrapt up in fleecy cloud, and fine-spun air?                       140
  Fine-spun to sense; but gross and feculent
  To souls celestial; souls ordain'd to breathe
  Ambrosial gales, and drink a purer sky;
  Greatly triumphant on Time's farther shore,
  Where Virtue reigns, enrich'd with full arrears;
  While Pomp imperial begs an alms of peace.
    In empire high, or in proud science deep,
  Ye born of earth! on what can you confer,
  With half the dignity, with half the gain,
  The gust, the glow of rational delight,                            150
  As on this theme, which angels praise and share?
  Man's fates and favours are a theme in heaven.
    What wretched repetition cloys us here!
  What periodic potions for the sick!                                154
  Distemper'd bodies! and distemper'd minds!
  In an eternity, what scenes shall strike!
  Adventures thicken! novelties surprise!
  What webs of wonder shall unravel, there!
  What full day pour on all the paths of heaven,
  And light th' Almighty's footsteps in the deep!
  How shall the blessed day of our discharge
  Unwind, at once, the labyrinths of fate,                           162
  And straighten its inextricable maze!
    If inextinguishable thirst in man
  To know; how rich, how full, our banquet there!
  There, not the moral world alone unfolds;
  The world material, lately seen in shades,
  And, in those shades, by fragments only seen,
  And seen those fragments by the labouring eye,
  Unbroken, then, illustrious, and entire,                           170
  Its ample sphere, its universal frame,
  In full dimensions, swells to the survey;
  And enters, at one glance, the ravish'd sight.
  From some superior point (where, who can tell?
  Suffice it, 'tis a point where gods reside)
  How shall the stranger man's illumined eye,
  In the vast ocean of unbounded space,
  Behold an infinite of floating worlds
  Divide the crystal waves of ether pure,
  In endless voyage, without port? The least                         180
  Of these disseminated orbs, how great!
  Great as they are, what numbers these surpass,
  Huge, as Leviathan, to that small race,
  Those twinkling multitudes of little life,
  He swallows unperceived! Stupendous these!
  Yet what are these stupendous to the whole?
  As particles, as atoms ill perceived;
  As circulating globules in our veins;                              188
  So vast the plan. Fecundity divine!
  Exuberant Source! perhaps, I wrong thee still.
    If admiration is a source of joy,
  What transport hence! Yet this the least in heaven.
  What this to that illustrious robe He wears,
  Who toss'd this mass of wonders from his hand,
  A specimen, an earnest of his power?
  'Tis to that glory, whence all glory flows,
  As the mead's meanest floweret to the sun,
  Which gave it birth. But what, this sun of heaven?
  This bliss supreme of the supremely blest?
  Death, only death, the question can resolve.                       200
  By death, cheap bought th' ideas of our joy;
  The bare ideas! solid happiness
  So distant from its shadow chased below.
    And chase we still the phantom through the fire,
  O'er bog, and brake, and precipice, till death?
  And toil we still for sublunary pay?
  Defy the dangers of the field and flood,
  Or, spider-like, spin out our precious all,
  Our more than vitals spin (if no regard
  To great futurity) in curious webs                                 210
  Of subtle thought, and exquisite design;
  (Fine network of the brain!) to catch a fly!
  The momentary buzz of vain renown!
  A name! a mortal immortality!
    Or (meaner still!) instead of grasping air,
  For sordid lucre plunge we in the mire?
  Drudge, sweat, through every shame, for every gain,
  For vile contaminating trash; throw up
  Our hope in heaven, our dignity with man?
  And deify the dirt, matured to gold?                               220
  Ambition, Avarice; the two demons these,
  Which goad through every slough our human herd,                    222
  Hard-travell'd from the cradle to the grave.
  How low the wretches stoop! how steep they climb!
  These demons burn mankind; but most possess
  Lorenzo's bosom, and turn out the skies.
    Is it in time to hide eternity?
  And why not in an atom on the shore
  To cover ocean? or a mote, the sun?
  Glory and wealth! have they this blinding power?                   230
  What if to them I prove Lorenzo blind?
  Would it surprise thee? Be thou then surprised;
  Thou neither know'st: their nature learn from me.
    Mark well, as foreign as these subjects seem,
  What close connexion ties them to my theme.
  First, what is true ambition? The pursuit
  Of glory, nothing less than man can share.
  Were they as vain, as gaudy-minded man,
  As flatulent with fumes of self-applause,
  Their arts and conquests animals might boast,                      240
  And claim their laurel crowns, as well as we;
  But not celestial. Here we stand alone;
  As in our form, distinct, pre-eminent;
  If prone in thought, our stature is our shame;
  And man should blush, his forehead meets the skies.
  The visible and present are for brutes,
  A slender portion, and a narrow bound!
  These Reason, with an energy divine,
  O'erleaps; and claims the future and unseen;
  The vast unseen! the future fathomless!                            250
  When the great soul buoys up to this high point,
  Leaving gross nature's sediments below,
  Then, and then only, Adam's offspring quits
  The sage and hero of the fields and woods,
  Asserts his rank, and rises into man.                              255
  This is ambition: this is human fire.
    Can Parts or Place (two bold pretenders!) make
  Lorenzo great, and pluck him from the throng?
    Genius and Art, ambition's boasted wings,
  Our boast but ill deserve. A feeble aid!
  Dedalian enginery! If these alone
  Assist our flight, Fame's flight is Glory's fall.
  Heart merit wanting, mount we ne'er so high,                       263
  Our height is but the gibbet of our name.
  A celebrated wretch, when I behold,
  When I behold a genius bright, and base,
  Of towering talents, and terrestrial aims;
  Methinks I see, as thrown from her high sphere,
  The glorious fragments of a soul immortal,
  With rubbish mix'd, and glittering in the dust.                    270
  Struck at the splendid, melancholy sight,
  At once compassion soft, and envy, rise--
  But wherefore envy? Talents angel-bright,
  If wanting worth, are shining instruments
  In false ambition's hand, to finish faults
  Illustrious, and give infamy renown.
    Great ill is an achievement of great powers.
  Plain sense but rarely leads us far astray.
  Reason the means, affections choose our end;
  Means have no merit, if our end amiss.                             280
  If wrong our hearts, our heads are right in vain:
  What is a Pelham's head, to Pelham's heart?
  Hearts are proprietors of all applause.
  Right ends, and means, make wisdom: worldly-wise
  Is but half-witted, at its highest praise.
    Let Genius then despair to make thee great;
  Nor flatter Station: what is station high?
  'Tis a proud mendicant; it boasts, and begs;
  It begs an alms of homage from the throng,                         289
  And oft the throng denies its charity.
  Monarchs and ministers, are awful names;
  Whoever wear them, challenge our devoir.
  Religion, public order, both exact
  External homage, and a supple knee,
  To beings pompously set up, to serve
  The meanest slave: all more is merit's due,
  Her sacred and inviolable right;
  Nor ever paid the monarch, but the man.
  Our hearts ne'er bow but to superior worth;
  Nor ever fail of their allegiance there.                           300
  Fools, indeed, drop the man in their account,
  And vote the mantle into majesty.
  Let the small savage boast his silver fur;
  His royal robe unborrow'd, and unbought,
  His own, descending fairly from his sires.
  Shall man be proud to wear his livery,
  And souls in ermine scorn a soul without?
  Can place or lessen us, or aggrandize?
  Pigmies are pigmies still, though perch'd on Alps;
  And pyramids are pyramids in vales.                                310
  Each man makes his own stature, builds himself:
  Virtue alone outbuilds the pyramids:
  Her monuments shall last, when Egypt's fall.
    Of these sure truths dost thou demand the cause?
  The cause is lodged in immortality.
  Hear, and assent. Thy bosom burns for power;
  What station charms thee? I'll install thee there;
  'Tis thine. And art thou greater than before?
  Then thou before wast something less than man.
  Has thy new post betray'd thee into pride?                         320
  That treacherous pride betrays thy dignity;
  That pride defames humanity, and calls
  The being mean, which staffs or strings can raise.                 323
  That pride, like hooded hawks, in darkness soars,
  From blindness bold, and towering to the skies.
  'Tis born of ignorance, which knows not man:
  An angel's second; nor his second, long.
  A Nero quitting his imperial throne,
  And courting glory from the tinkling string,
  But faintly shadows an immortal soul,                              330
  With empire's self, to pride, or rapture, fired.
  If nobler motives minister no cure,
  Even vanity forbids thee to be vain.
    High worth is elevated place: 'tis more;
  It makes the post stand candidate for thee;
  Makes more than monarchs, makes an honest man;
  Though no exchequer it commands, 'tis wealth;
  And though it wears no riband, 'tis renown;
  Renown, that would not quit thee, though disgraced,
  Nor leave thee pendent on a master's smile.                        340
  Other ambition Nature interdicts;
  Nature proclaims it most absurd in man,
  By pointing at his origin, and end;
  Milk, and a swathe, at first, his whole demand;
  His whole domain, at last, a turf, or stone;
  To whom, between, a world may seem too small.
    Souls truly great dart forward on the wing
  Of just ambition, to the grand result,
  The curtain's fall; there, see the buskin'd chief
  Unshod behind this momentary scene;                                350
  Reduced to his own stature, low or high,
  As vice, or virtue, sinks him, or sublimes;
  And laugh at this fantastic mummery,
  This antic prelude of grotesque events,
  Where dwarfs are often stilted, and betray
  A littleness of soul by worlds o'errun,
  And nations laid in blood. Dread sacrifice                         357
  To Christian pride! which had with horror shock'd
  The darkest Pagans, offer'd to their gods.
    O thou most Christian[29] enemy to peace!
  Again in arms? Again provoking fate?
  That prince, and that alone, is truly great,
  Who draws the sword reluctant, gladly sheathes;                    363
  On empire builds what empire far outweighs,
  And makes his throne a scaffold to the skies.
    Why this so rare? Because forgot of all
  The day of death; that venerable day,
  Which sits as judge; that day, which shall pronounce
  On all our days, absolve them, or condemn.
  Lorenzo, never shut thy thought against it;                        370
  Be levees ne'er so full, afford it room,
  And give it audience in the cabinet.
  That friend consulted, flatteries apart,
  Will tell thee fair, if thou art great, or mean.
    To doat on aught may leave us, or be left,
  Is that ambition? Then let flames descend,
  Point to the centre their inverted spires,
  And learn humiliation from a soul,
  Which boasts her lineage from celestial fire.
  Yet these are they, the world pronounces wise;                     380
  The world, which cancels nature's right and wrong,
  And casts new wisdom: even the grave man lends
  His solemn face, to countenance the coin.
  Wisdom for parts is madness for the whole.
  This stamps the paradox, and gives us leave
  To call the wisest weak, the richest poor,
  The most ambitious, unambitious, mean;
  In triumph, mean; and abject, on a throne.
  Nothing can make it less than mad in man,
  To put forth all his ardour, all his art,                          390
  And give his soul her full unbounded flight,
  But reaching Him, who gave her wings to fly.
  When blind Ambition quite mistakes her road,
  And downwards pores, for that which shines above,
  Substantial happiness, and true renown;
  Then, like an idiot, gazing on the brook,
  We leap at stars, and fasten in the mud;
  At glory grasp, and sink in infamy.
    Ambition! powerful source of good and ill!
  Thy strength in man, like length of wing in birds,                 400
  When disengaged from earth, with greater ease,
  And swifter flight, transports us to the skies;
  By toys entangled, or in guilt bemired,
  It turns a curse; it is our chain, and scourge,
  In this dark dungeon, where confined we lie,
  Close grated by the sordid bars of Sense;
  All prospect of eternity shut out;
  And, but for execution, ne'er set free.
    With error in ambition justly charged,
  Find we Lorenzo wiser in his wealth?                               410
  What if thy rental I reform? and draw
  An inventory new, to set thee right?
  Where thy true treasure? Gold says, "Not in me:"
  And, "Not in me," the diamond. Gold is poor;
  India's insolvent: seek it in thyself,
  Seek in thy naked self, and find it there;
  In being, so descended, form'd, endow'd;
  Sky-born, sky-guided, sky-returning race!
  Erect, immortal, rational, divine!
  In senses, which inherit earth, and heavens;                       420
  Enjoy the various riches Nature yields;
  Far nobler! give the riches they enjoy;
  Give taste to fruits; and harmony to groves;
  Their radiant beams to gold, and gold's bright fire;               424
  Take in, at once, the landscape of the world,
  At a small inlet, which a grain might close,
  And half create the wondrous world they see.
  Our senses, as our reason, are divine.
  But for the magic organ's powerful charm,
  Earth were a rude, uncolour'd chaos still.
  Objects are but th' occasion; ours th' exploit;
  Ours is the cloth,[30] the pencil, and the paint,                  432
  Which nature's admirable picture draws;
  And beautifies creation's ample dome.
  Like Milton's Eve, when gazing on the lake,
  Man makes the matchless image man admires.
  Say then, shall man, his thoughts all sent abroad,
  Superior wonders in himself forgot,
  His admiration waste on objects round,
  When Heaven makes him the soul of all he sees?                     440
  Absurd! not rare! so great, so mean, is man.
    What wealth in senses such as these! What wealth
  In Fancy, fired to form a fairer scene
  Than Sense surveys! In memory's firm record,
  Which, should it perish, could this world recall
  From the dark shadows of o'erwhelming years!
  In colours fresh, originally bright,
  Preserve its portrait, and report its fate!
  What wealth in Intellect, that sovereign power!
  Which Sense and Fancy summons to the bar;                          450
  Interrogates, approves, or reprehends;
  And from the mass those underlings import,
  From their materials sifted, and refined,
  And in Truth's balance accurately weigh'd,
  Forms art, and science, government, and law;
  The solid basis, and the beauteous frame,                          456
  The vitals, and the grace of civil life!
  And manners (sad exception!) set aside,
  Strikes out, with master hand, a copy fair
  Of His idea, whose indulgent thought
  Long, long, ere chaos teem'd, plann'd human bliss.
    What wealth in souls that soar, dive, range around,
  Disdaining limit, or from place, or time;                          463