All pleasures and all hopes are their own scorn,
And man’s a measure, filling, never fill’d;
Who’d not sell life, its promise something worn,
For one week’s bliss with no awakening chill’d?
It cannot be; and some, foil’d or despis’d,
Or craving peace, life’s courted joys all spann’d,
Have scouted all things which the world e’er prized;
Dreaming of life, through the dead cloister scann’d,
Fair sounds this, luring; yet, methinks, that shows
A creed nor hard, nor healthy, which unscrews
The rivets, that should pin us to the throes,
That nature in begetting man renews:
The earthly mind, fed on unearthly leaven,
Diffuses Hell through earth, and earth through Heaven.