Produced by Delphine Lettau, Stephen Hutcheson, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
YOUNG'S
NIGHT THOUGHTS.
YOUNG'S
NIGHT THOUGHTS.
_With Life, Critical Dissertation, and
Explanatory Notes,_
BY THE
REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.
EDINBURGH:
JAMES NICHOL, 9 NORTH BANK STREET.
LONDON: JAMES NISBET AND CO.
DUBLIN: W. ROBERTSON.
M.DCCC.LIII.
ON THE LIFE AND POETIC GENIUS OF EDWARD YOUNG.
Between the period of George Herbert, and that of Edward Young, some
singular changes had taken place in British poetry as well as in British
manners, politics, and religion. There had passed over the land the
thunderstorm of the Puritanic Revolt, which had first clouded and then
cleared, for a season, the intellectual and moral horizon. The effect of
this on poetry was, for such fugitive though felicitous hymns as those of
Herbert, to substitute the epic unities and grand choral harmonies of
Milton. Then came the Restoration--the Apotheosis of falsehood; including
in that term false principles, false politics, and false taste. Britain
became the degraded slave of France, at once in laws and in literature.
Dryden, indeed, maintained, in some measure, the character and the taste
of his nation, but he stood almost alone. To him succeeded Addison and
Pope, both gifted but both timid men, whose genius, great as it was,
never, or rarely, ventured on original and daring flights, and who seemed
always to be haunted by the fear of French criticism. Pope, especially,
lent all his influence to confirm and seal the power of a foreign code of
literary laws; and so general and so deep was the submission, that it is
to us one of the strongest proofs of Edward Young's genius, that he
ventured, in that polished but powerless era, to uplift a native voice of
song, and not to uplift it in vain; for, if he did not absolutely make a
revolution, or found a school, he yet established himself, and left his
poetry as a glorious precedent to all who should afterwards be so hardy
as to "go and do likewise."
Edward Young was born in June 1681 (according to some, two years
earlier), in the village of Upham, Hampshire. His father was rector of
the parish, and is represented as a man of great learning and abilities.
He was the author of some volumes of sermons, and, on account of their
merit, and through the patronage of Lord Bradford, he was appointed
chaplain to King William, and Dean of Salisbury. He died in 1705, in the
sixty-third year of his age, and Bishop Burnet, the Sunday after his
decease, pronounced a glowing panegyric on his character, in a funeral
sermon delivered in the Cathedral.
Edward was sent to Winchester School, and thence to Oxford, where he
obtained a law fellowship in All-Souls College, and afterwards took
successively the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Civil Law, besides
obtaining a fellowship in 1706. When the Codrington Library was founded,
he was appointed to deliver the Latin oration. It was published, but met
with a frigid reception, being full of conceits and puerilities, and the
author wisely omitted it from his collected works. Little else is known
of his career at College. He is said to have blended fits of study with
frequent dissipation. When he relaxed, it was in the company of the
infamous Duke of Wharton, who patronised, corrupted, and laughed at him.
When he studied, he would shut his windows, create around him an
artificial night, and make it more hideous by piling up skulls,
cross-bones, and instruments of death in his room. His talent was then as
well known as his eccentricity. Tindal the sceptic bore a striking
testimony to this when he said, "The other boys I can always answer,
because I always know where they have their arguments, which I have read
a hundred times; but that fellow Young is continually pestering me with
something of his own."
He seems to have been nearly thirty ere he began to tune that lyre which
was afterwards to thrill with vibrations of song so powerful and
melodious. His first choice of a subject was characteristic of the lofty
and ambitious tone of his genius: it was, "The Last Day." This poem was
written in 1710, although not given to the world till 1713. He had
previously, in 1712, published an epistle to Lord Lansdown, which
displayed little of his peculiar power, but was at once feeble and
pretentious. Young became afterwards heartily ashamed of it. In the same
year that "The Last Day" appeared, he prefixed to Addison's "Cato" a copy
of verses of no great merit. Shortly after, he issued a poem entitled,
"The Force of Religion; or, Vanquished Love:" it was founded on the story
of Lady Jane Grey and her husband, and was ushered in by a flaming
dedication to the Countess of Salisbury. On the death of the Queen, in
1714, he published a panegyric in verse on her memory, and inscribed it
to Addison. In these days flattery to princes and nobles was a commodity
almost essential to poetry--a tawdry court dress which every poet was
obliged to put on for the nonce; and not even Dryden has excelled Young
in the violent unlikeness and unsparing incense of his adulations. It is
satisfactory to remember that, on cool reflection, he cancelled the most
of those unworthy effusions; although he continued to the last very much
of a courtier, as the dedications to the "Night Thoughts" sufficiently
prove. He is supposed about the year 1717 to have visited Ireland in
company with Wharton.
In 1719 his tragedy of "Busiris" appeared on the stage, and had
considerable success. He sold the copyright afterwards to B. Lintot, for
L84, which, for a first play by an author previously unknown, was thought
a large sum. "Busiris" is a play of that solemnly pompous and intensely
artificial school, the race of which has been long since gathered to its
fathers. It is conceived and written in Ercles' vein;[1] and Nat Lee
himself, in his wild ranting plays, has scarcely surpassed the torrents
of bombastic nonsense which issue from the lips of Myron. Immediately
after "Busiris" he published his Paraphrase on part of the Book of Job, a
production scarcely worthy either of Young or of the sublime original.
The descriptions in that grandest of all poems, which are so rich and
massive as to press almost on the sense, are more fairly represented in
our common prose translation than in the poetical paraphrase of Young. We
are far, however, from being opposed, with some critics, to the principle
of paraphrasing Scripture. We admire to enthusiasm many of the Scottish
paraphrases, some of Byron's and Moore's Hebrew Melodies, and Croly's
_Scenes from Scripture_; and should like to see all the poetry of the
Bible versified by some competent hand.
In 1721 appeared "The Revenge," by far the most powerful of his
tragedies. Its great fault lies in its likeness to Othello: its great
praise is, that, though it imitates and challenges comparison with that
Shakspearean masterpiece, it has not been utterly sunk and eclipsed
before it. As a play, we think it decidedly second-rate; the plot is not
artistically managed, and the means by which jealousy is excited in the
mind of Alonzo, are a very poor and shabby copy of those in Shakspeare.
Zanga has been called a "vulgar caricature of Iago;" he is so in part,
perhaps, but Young has abated the vulgarity of the imitation by endowing
his hero with a wild and native vein of poetry. Iago is a subtler, colder
fiend than Zanga, and indulges more in sneers and in smut than in
declamation. Zanga's speeches exhaust the rhetoric of revenge. Iago has
nothing but intellect, wit, and malignity. Zanga has an imagination
worthy of the hot and lion-peopled land of his birth. Iago, after his
detection, sinks into obstinate silence; he stiffens into the statue of a
demon. Zanga dies, using lofty imagery.
Indeed, "The Revenge" owes all its interest to the flames of poetic
genius which burst out at every pore of its otherwise coarse and copied
structure. It was dedicated to Wharton, with whom Young continued to be
intimate; whom he taught to speak good Latin _in the space of six weeks_;
and who lent him money to reimburse him for the expenses of an
unsuccessful attempt to get into Parliament. This was in 1721; the place
was Cirencester. The election, however, was contested, and fortunately,
perhaps, both for Young and the world, he was unsuccessful. Had he gained
the seat, he had very probably,
"Though born for the universe, narrow'd his mind,
And to party given up what was meant for mankind;"
and what comparison between a series of eloquent, forgotten speeches, and
the starry, ever-burning splendours of the "Night Thoughts"?
His disappointment in this attempt, coupled, probably, with remorse for
the follies and vices of a misspent youth, seems to have soured Young,
and ripened him to the point when satire becomes the unavoidable
expression of the irritated yet unsubdued spirit. In 1725 appeared the
first part of his "Universal Passion;" the rest came out in successive
satires between that and 1728, when they were collected and published,
along with a somewhat querulous preface, in which he hints that he had
not found poetry very favourable to preferment. He gained, however, L3000
by these poems, of which, according to Spence, L2000 was contributed by
the Duke of Grafton, who did not, however, regret the price. His
inscriptions of the several satires were, as usual at the time, stuffed
with fulsome praise of such men as Dorset, Dodington, Campton, and Sir
Robert Walpole, all of whom appreciated and rewarded the compliments. We
reserve our criticism on these remarkable productions till afterwards,
noticing only at present, that they were published _before_ the satires
of Pope, and that they became instantly popular.
As if to propitiate the Nemesis, who always stands behind the chariot of
the popular writer, Young next issued two of the poorest of all his
unequal productions. The first of these, entitled "The Instalment," was
addressed to Sir Robert Walpole, and is, perhaps, although the word be a
wide one, the most nonsensical and trashy _lie in verse_ ever addressed
to a prime minister. The second is an "Ode to Ocean," a compound of
doggrel and stilted dulness--which, indeed, any sailor of education might
have composed, if "half-seas-over."
At length, sick of dissipation, of the stage, of bad odes, and good
satires, Young determined to become wise, and enter into orders. An
irresistible current had long been carrying him on, with many a
convulsive recalcitration on his part, to this determination. That great
intellect and heart, over which, already, the shadow of the "Night
Thoughts" was beginning to gather, could not be satisfied with the
society of "peers, poets," and demireps; with the applause of sweltering
crowds collected in theatres; or with the ebullitions of its own giant
spleen, in the shape of epigrammatic satires. The world, which once
seemed to his eye so fresh and fair, had withered gradually to a
skeleton, with sockets for eyes, with eternal baldness for hair, with a
"stench instead of a sweet savour, and burning instead of beauty." He
resolved to proclaim the particulars of this painful yet blessed
disenchantment to the ends of the earth, and to all classes of mankind.
And for this purpose, he first of all mounted the pulpit, and then began
to wield what was even then the mightier engine of the press. He was no
novice when he entered the ministry. Would that we had more who, like
Young, do not go up by a mechanical ladder, and the mere force of custom,
to the pulpit, but who come down upon it from long and vain wanderings
elsewhere, and with a conviction, as the result of mature experience,
that God there still desires to dwell, and that it constitutes even yet a
pinnacle of prospect, and power, and promise! Thus came Herbert, and
Chalmers, and Foster, to their real work as ministers of the gospel. It
is not a boy, but a Boanerges-ministry that introduces the Word with most
effect to a gainsaying world. Young was full forty-seven--mature in
years, in acquirements, in experience, and in reputation--when he began
to publish the "News that it is well." Like the eminent men we have just
mentioned, and like others whom we might mention, his motives in entering
the Church have been calumniated. He has been compared to a lady
disappointed in love, taking the veil; and, rather inconsistently with
this figure, to a sated sensualist becoming an anchorite. How can both be
true? If Young was disappointed, how could he be sated? and if sated, how
could he be chagrined by the want of satisfaction? The fact is, that such
men as Young, Chalmers, Herbert, and Foster, are altogether superior to
common standards of judgment, and must be tried by their peers. All had
their own share of the disgusts and dissatisfactions connected with life,
and all felt them keenly. But all had a deeper reason still--a reason, we
grant, probably stirred by circumstances into action, for renouncing the
empty arena of this world's honours and wealth, and devoting themselves
to a higher and nobler purpose. They all saw into the hollowness of
society, into the misery of the human heart; and felt that the gospel
alone could fill that aching void, and satisfy those dreary cravings.
Hence, Herbert quitted the pleasures of a court; Chalmers dropped his
air-pump and his telescope; Foster resigned his philosophic speculations;
and Young shook off the blandishments of peers, and forgot the claps of
multitudes, to proclaim the glad tidings to perishing sinners; and verily
all, in different measures, had their reward.
In April 1728 he was appointed chaplain to George II. His tragedy, "The
Brothers," which had been in rehearsal, was prudently withdrawn. It is a
play superior to "Busiris," but very much inferior to "The Revenge." Full
of passion and poetry, of startling scenes, and vivid images, its subject
is unpleasing, and the various perplexities of the plot are not skilfully
disentangled.
In the same year he published "A True Estimate of Human Life," written
with force and ingenuity; and a long and very loyal sermon, preached
before the House of Commons, on the Martyrdom of Charles I. It was
entitled, "An Apology for Princes; or, the Reverence due to Governments."
Hitherto Young had lived on the proceeds of his fellowship, and on
presents from Wharton, who, at his death, too, left him a pension. He
became now, however, very naturally anxious for promotion in that new
sphere on which he had entered, and was compelled, _proh pudor_! to lay
his case before Mrs Howard, the favourite mistress of George II.--that
identical "good Howard," who figures so curiously in the famous scene
between Jeanie Deans and Queen Caroline. The fact of the application, as
well as the terms of the letter he wrote her, renders this the most
humiliating incident in all Young's history. In 1730, he published
"Imperium Pelagi," another naval lyric, as bad and much longer than his
"Ode to Ocean." In the same year he wrote an epistle to Pope, which
resembles a coarser and more careless production of the little man of
Twickenham.
In July 1730, Young was presented by his college to the rectory of Welwyn
in Hertfordshire. We refer our readers, for various delightful
speculations and anecdotes about his residence and labours there, to
Bulwer's _Student_. He was a powerful preacher. His sermons seem to have
been striking in thought, rich in image, intensely practical in tendency,
and were delivered with great animation and effect. It is told, that on
one occasion, while preaching at St James's before the Court and His
Majesty, on some subject of transcendent importance, and not being able
to command the attention or awaken the feelings of his audience, he at
length threw himself back into the pulpit, and burst into tears. That was
itself a sermon! The figure of this weeping Titan, who could have rent
rocks and severed mountains, but who had failed in breaking the hearts of
any of his courtly hearers, is one of the most affecting in the annals of
pulpit oratory. Alas! what preacher who has ever aimed at Young's object,
has not been at times tempted to assume Young's attitude, and to shed
Young's bitter and burning tears? "Who hath believed our report, and to
whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?"
In 1731, Young, at the mature age of fifty, married the Lady Elizabeth
Lee, daughter of the Earl of Lichfield, and widow of Colonel Lee. This
marriage sprung out of his father's acquaintance with Lady Ann Wharton,
who was co-heiress of Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley in Oxfordshire, and seems
to have been very happy. He next published another of those stupid odes
by which he seemed predestined to disgrace his genius, entitled "A Sea
Piece." It was as though Milton had tried to write Anacreontics. A few
years afterwards appeared "The Foreign Address, or the Best Argument for
Peace," occasioned by the posture of affairs in which the British fleet
was then placed, and written in the character of a sailor. It is a mere
tissue of sounding verbiage--or, as Hamlet hath it, "Words, words,
words." About this time Young met with Voltaire, who, according to the
story, was ridiculing Milton's allegory of "Death and Sin," when our hero
struck in with the extempore epigram:--
"Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin,
That thou thyself art Milton, Death, and Sin."
We cannot see very much wit in this epigram, even in that best shape
which we have now given it; but it was not inappropriate to the lean
denier, who sought to empty everything of the important element--its God;
to leave the universe, like himself, a grinning skeleton, and to smile in
ghastly sympathy over the completed ruin. We fancy we see the two gifted
men, the one the representative of the scepticism of France, the other,
of the belief of England, meeting and conversing together. Voltaire is
not much in advance of thirty; Young is fifty, and more. Voltaire's face
is worn with premature thought and inordinate laughter; Young's, though
older, bears a warmer and more sanguine flush. Voltaire has the
insincerest of smiles playing constantly over his face like the light of
an aurora borealis; Young's countenance is grave, settled, open, and
serene, as the radiance of an autumn sunset. In Voltaire's eye you see
the future "Candide" laughing down in its depths, while on Young's brow
lies the dim and magnificent promise of the "Night Thoughts." After
meeting, talking, bowing, wondering, and recoiling, they part for ever;
Voltaire sighing through smiles as he thinks of the "misled giant of
Religion;" and Young smiling through sighs as he thinks of the "wondrous
and well-nigh human ape of Infidelity."
By his wife Young had one son, Frederick. He does not seem to have been a
particularly well-behaved youth; indeed, his father for some time before
his death refused to see him, although he ultimately sent him his
forgiveness, and made him his heir. But no son of illustrious father has
ever had harder measure dealt him. It has been generally supposed that he
was the Lorenzo of the "Night Thoughts," a poem published when Frederick
was only eight years of age, and when he could scarcely have even thought
of committing those crimes of scepticism and reckless self-gratification
with which Young charges his imaginary or half-real hero.
The Poet's life, during the first ten years of his rectorship at Welwyn,
flowed on in an even tenor. He was regular in his conduct, happy in his
family, diligent in his pastoral duties, and easy in his fortune. His
preaching was popular and useful. His studies were principally connected
with his own profession, and yielded him a growing satisfaction. An
anonymous writer in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1782, who seems to
have been intimate with him, thus describes him:--"The dignity of a great
and good mind appeared in all his actions, and in all his words. He
conversed on religious subjects with the cheerfulness of virtue; his
piety was undebased by gloom or enthusiasm; he was regular in the
performance of all its duties, both in public and in private. In his
domestic character he was amiable as he was venerable in the Christian.
His politeness was such as I never saw equalled: it was invariable to his
superiors in rank; to his equals and to his inferiors it differed only in
degrees of elegance. I never heard him speak with roughness to the
meanest servant. In conversation upon lively subjects he had a brilliancy
of wit which was peculiar to himself; I know not how to describe it but
by saying that it was both heightened and softened by the amiable
qualities of his soul. I have seen him ill and in pain, yet the serenity
of his mind remained unruffled. I never heard a peevish expression fall
from his lips." Few of his brilliancies are preserved, since,
unfortunately, he had no Boswell attached to his heels. But one or two of
the sayings that have floated down to us are singularly characteristic.
On one very stormy night Young went out to his garden, and remained some
time. When he returned, one expressed wonder why he had stayed so long in
such an evening. "Oh," he replied, "it is a very fine night; _the Lord is
abroad_." He was very fond of a garden, and inscribed on the wall of his
summer-house the words, _Ambulantes in horto audiebant vocem Dei_
(Walking in the garden, they heard the voice of God). He had also erected
a dial with the inscription, _Eheu fugaces!_ which, he said with a smile
to Mr Langton, "was sadly verified, for by the next morning my dial had
been carried off." Though sometimes melancholy, he was disposed to
encourage mirth in others, and established an assembly and bowling-green
in his parish.
And had this been all--had Young continued to pursue such an even,
equable course--he had been by this time well-nigh forgotten; for we do
not think that either his satires or plays would of themselves have
preserved his name. But it was decreed that grief should co-operate with
disappointment in unfolding the full riches of his mind. Antaeus was
strongest when he touched the ground. Job was never so eloquent till he
was prostrated on his dunghill. And, in order to be able to write the
"Night Thoughts," Young must be plunged in the deepest gloom of
affliction--"Thrice flew the shaft, and thrice his peace was slain." In
1736, a daughter of his wife, by a former husband, died. This was Mrs
Temple--the Narcissa of his great poem. Her disease was a lingering one.
Young accompanied her to Lyons, where she died, and where her remains
were brutally denied sepulture, as the dust of a Protestant. Her husband,
Mr Temple, or Philander, died four years later; and in 1741, Young's
wife, or Lucia, also expired. He now felt himself alone, and blasted in
his solitude. But his grief did not sink into sullen inactivity. He made
it oracular, and distilled his tears into song. The "Night Thoughts" were
immediately commenced, and published between 1742 and 1744. This
marvellous poem was all composed either at night, or when riding on
horseback--an exercise, by the way, which gives a sense of mastery and
confidence, stirs the blood, elevates the animal spirits, and has been
felt by many to be eminently favourable to thought and mental
composition. It inspired, we know, such men as Burns, Byron, Shelley, and
Delta. We love to think of Young riding through the green lanes of his
parish, and cooing out to himself his plaintive minstrelsies. We love
better still to watch his lonely lamp shining at midnight, like a star,
through the darkness, and seeming to answer the far signal of those
mightier luminaries which are burning above in the Great Bear and
Orion--the poet the while now dipping his pen to indite his ardent
immortalities--now leaning his head on his widowed arm, and surrendering
himself to paroxysms of uncontrollable anguish--and now looking out upon
the Night as the "Lord is abroad" on the wings of the tempest, or as He
is silently shining out his name in suns and galaxies--those unwearied
"Watchers" and unbaptized "Holy Ones."
In 1745, Young wrote "Reflections on the Public Situation of the
Kingdom"--a production which made no impression at the time, and is now
entirely forgotten. He did not include it in the collection of his works.
In 1753, the tragedy of "The Brothers," which had lain past for thirty
years, was produced on the stage. Young gave the profits of the play, and
several hundreds from his own pocket, amounting to a thousand pounds in
all, to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel--an act which
surely balances the stories usually told of his love of money and thirst
for preferment.
His next work was, "The Centaur not Fabulous, in Six Letters to a
Friend." Its subjects were, the infidelity and licentiousness of that
age. It is a pity that this book has fallen into oblivion, as it is a
very rich and powerful piece of writing. It is full of clear, sharp,
sententious truth. Its style palpitates with energy, and glitters with
poetic image. We wish we saw it reprinted in a cheap form; for, although
infidelity and pleasure have both materially changed their phases, there
is much in Young's little work that has an imperishable application, and
that would be even yet eminently useful. The character of Altamont is
supposed to represent Lord Euston--a nobleman notorious for his vices.
The age in which Young's lot was cast was characterised by a low,
sneering scepticism, and his earnest and awful letters were treated with
ridicule. Many pronounced him mad, others whispered about dotage. _Now_,
the book seems replete with wisdom, and burning almost with prophetic
fire.
Young, in fact, was not generally appreciated during his lifetime. Tried
by the Boileau and Pope standard, his writings were pronounced turgid,
strained, and extravagant. Even Warburton, who should have known better,
passed a severe judgment on the "Night Thoughts." He had, however, his
warm admirers, prominent among whom was the amiable and learned Joseph
Warton. He dedicated to Young his "Essay on Pope"--an essay containing
the first sober and discriminating estimate of that most artificial of
true poets, and with the opinions expressed in which Young is supposed to
have coincided; for, although he admired, and too often imitated, Pope's
brilliant point and antithesis, he was aware of far higher models, and
found Homer, Milton, and Job far more congenial companions in his
studious midnights. In 1758, he published a short and in nowise
remarkable sermon, preached before the King at Kensington.
Richardson, the novelist, was one of Young's greatest friends. Their
views on moral and religious subjects were identical; and in gravity of
tone, and severity of genius, they resembled each other--Richardson being
a duller Young, and Young a more elastic and brilliant Richardson.
Although both lived in a most depraved age, neither catered to its
tastes. To Richardson, Young addressed, in 1759, a letter on Original
Composition, which betrays no symptoms of senility, but is full of
vigorous and striking remark. In 1762, when upwards of eighty, he wrote
his last and worst poem. It is entitled "Resignation," and requires, on
the part of the reader, considerable exercise of that grace. It has very
little of Young's peculiar power, and is chiefly filled with weak and
toothless abuse of his old acquaintance Voltaire. It was written, it
appears, at the instance of Mrs Boscawen--the widow of the Admiral--who,
having found consolation from the "Night Thoughts," visited Young, and
was still more captivated by his conversation.
During the latter years of his life, he is said to have fallen too much
under the dominion of his housekeeper, Mrs Hallowes, the widow of a
clergyman, who is reported to have ruled him with a rod of iron. Ere his
death he revised his printed works, and gave charges in his will that all
his MSS. should be burned. He applied, when past eighty, to Archbishop
Secker for promotion, and was appointed Clerk of the Closet to the
Princess-Dowager of Wales. In April 1765, at the age of eighty-four, he
breathed his last. He had been previously unable to perform duty for
three or four years, but retained his faculties to the last. He left his
property principally to his son, who was found by Johnson and Boswell, in
1781, residing at Welwyn, and cherishing the memory of his father.
Young was unquestionably a neglected man. Out of all sight the greatest
genius then connected with the ministry of the Church of England, he
never mounted one step higher than the rectorship his own college had
conferred on him. Many reasons have been assigned for this. Some say that
it was because he had attached himself to the side of Frederick, Prince
of Wales, and had preached an obnoxious sermon at St James's; others,
that it was because he had received a pension through Sir Robert Walpole.
We think that the real cause lay in the vulgar and senseless prejudice
which prevailed then, and in some measure prevails still, against a
literary divine, as if he were a hybrid, or "centaur, not fabulous." Let
us not blame that age so long as we remember the burning shame reflected
on ours by the fact that the gifted and high-charactered author of
_Salathiel_, and _Paris_ in 1815, is still only the rector of St
Stephen's, Walbrook, while many younger men, who in comparison with him
are of little mark, have reached the episcopal bench. Probably Young felt
himself consoled for his bad success, by the knowledge that his name and
great poem had travelled to foreign lands, and that Madame Klopstock was
wondering--good, simple soul!--that her husband's idol and her own, had
not been made Archbishop of Canterbury.
Very little beyond what we have mentioned has been left on record about
his private habits and manners. It was his custom, when well pleased with
a passage in the course of his reading, to double down the leaf--when
particularly gratified, to mark it by two folds; and some favourite
works, such as _The Rambler_, had so many of these marks of approbation
that they would not shut. On one occasion, in replying to Tonson and
Lintot, who were both candidates for printing one of his works, he
misdirected the letters; and when Lintot opened his, he found it
begun--"Bernard Lintot is so great a scoundrel," &c. Young was proverbial
for absence of mind, and sometimes forgot whether he had dined or not.
Yet in Welwyn his mode of life was rather systematic. He rose early, made
his domestics join him in morning prayer, read little, ate and drank
moderately, walked much in his churchyard, and, in general, retired to
rest punctually at eight evening. His son told Dr Johnson that he was
cheerful in company, but gloomy when alone, and that he never fully
recovered his spirits after his wife's death. Mr Jones, his curate, has
confirmed this statement, although the gossipping and heartless tone of
his letters about such a man cannot be too strongly condemned. Young was
subject to fits of inspiration, which stupid people confounded with
madness. At times his poetry rushed upon him like a whirlwind, and caught
him up
"Like swift Ezekiel, by his lock of hair"--
and when he came down he seemed weak, panting, and powerless. Mrs
Boscawen and others describe his conversation as still more remarkable
than his writings, although occasionally disfigured by conceits and bad
puns.
We come now to speak of his genius, especially as manifested in the
"Night Thoughts." The subject of this wonderful strain was one which, in
its novelty, dignity, and depth, challenged the very highest exercise of
the very highest faculties; and had Young risen to the full height of his
great argument, he had become the greatest of all poets. This we by no
means affirm he did; but we do assert, that many of the aspects of his
magnificent theme have been fully and eloquently expressed by him, and
that some of his passages are unsurpassed in the language of men.
The poem demands a brief critical consideration as to its _season_, its
_argument_, its _imagery_, its _style_, its _versification_, its
_comparative place_ and _merit_, and, lastly, the _genius_ of its author.
First, of its _season_--the Night--and the use to which he turns it.
Night had never before found a worthy laureate. Its profound silence, as
if it were listening to catch the accents of some supernal voice--the
shadowy grandeur and mysterious newness it gives to objects on the
earth--the divine hues into which its moon discolours all things--the
deep sleep which then falleth upon men, and changes the world into one
hushed grave--the supernatural shapes and mystic sounds which have been
supposed to walk in its darkness, or to echo through its depths--the
voices scarce less solemn, which often break its silence, of howling
winds, and wailing rivers, and shrieking tempests, and groaning thunders,
and the wild cries of human misery and despair--and last and highest, its
withdrawal of the bright mist and mantle of day from the starry universe,
and the pomp with which it unrols and exhibits its "great map" of suns
and systems--its silvery satellites--its meek planets, each shining in
its own degree of reflected splendour--its oceans of original and
ever-burning fire called suns--its comets, those serpents of the sky,
trailing their vast volumes of deadly glory through the shuddering
system--its fantastic and magnificent shapes and collocations of stars,
the constellations--its firmaments rising above firmaments, like rounds
in a ladder, at the top of which is the throne of God--and those two
awful arms into which its Milky Way diverges, and which seem uplifted to
heaven in silent prayer, or in some deep and dread protest,--all these
elements of interest and grandeur had existed from the beginning of the
world in Night, and yet had never, till Young arose, awakened any
consecutive and lofty strain of poetic adoration. Many beautiful and many
sublime sentiments had been uttered by poets about particular features of
Night, but there had been no attempt to represent it as a whole. There
were many single thoughts, but no large and sounding Hymn. The views of
the Pagan poets about astronomy were, of course, warped by the absurd
systems of their day; and this served to damp their fire, and to render
their poetic tributes rather fantastic than truly powerful. Even Dante
and Milton are somewhat embarrassed by the Ptolemaic system, although it
proves the strength of their genius that they have extracted so much
poetry from it. But before Young arose,
"Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said, Let Newton be, and all was light;"
and he has set the Newtonian system to his own martial music.
We are far from contending that Young has exhausted the poetry of the
theme. Since his time the telescopes of Herschell and Lord Rosse have
been turned to the skies, and have greatly extended the size and
splendour of that vast midnight Apparition--the starry scheme. Our recent
poets have availed themselves of these discoveries, as witness the
eloquent rhapsodies about the stars by Bailey, A. Smith, and Bigg. And
there is even yet room for another great poem on the subject, entitled
"Night," were the author come. But Young deserves praise for the
following things:--
_1st_, He has nobly sung the magnitude and unutterable glory of the
starry hosts. His soul kindles, triumphs, exults under the midnight
canopy. As the Tartar horse when led forth from his stable to the free
steppes and free firmament of the desert, bounds, prances, and caracoles
for joy, so does Young, in the last part of his poem. Escaped from dark
and mournful contemplations on Man, Death, Infidelity, and Earth's
"melancholy map," he sees the stars like bright milestones on the way to
heaven, and his spirit is glad within him, and tumultuous is the
grandeur, and fierce and rapid the torrent, of his song.
_2dly_, He has brought out, better than any other poet, the religion of
the stars. "Night," says Isaac Taylor, "has three daughters, Atheism,
Superstition, and Religion." Following out this fine thought, we see
Atheism looking up with impudent eye, brazen brow, and naked figure, to
the midnight sky, as if it were only a huge toy-shop of glittering
gew-gaws; Superstition shrouding herself in a black mantle, and falling
down prostrate and trembling before these innumerable fires, as if they
were the eyes of an infinite enemy; while Religion turns aloft her
humble, yet fearless form, her tear-trembling yet radiant visage, and
murmurs, "My Father made them all." Young, we need scarcely say, finds in
the nocturnal heavens lessons neither of Atheism nor of Superstition, but
of Religion, and reads in the face of Old Night her divine origin, the
witness she bears to the existence of God, her dependence upon her
Author, and her subordination to His purposes. He had magnified, as
Newton himself could not so eloquently have done, the extent of the
universe; and yet his loyalty to Scripture compels him to intimate that
this system, so far from being God, or infinite, or, strictly speaking,
Divine, is to perish and pass away. One look from the angry Judge, one
uplifting of His rod, and its voluminous waves of glory, like another Red
Sea, are to be dried up, that the people of God may pass through and
enter on the land of the real Immortality, the "inheritance
incorruptible, undefiled, and that shall never fade away." We refer our
readers to that most eloquent picture, near the beginning of the Ninth
Night, of the Last Day. We once heard a lecturer on chemistry close a
superb description of the material universe, with the words, "And it is
to shine on for ever." We thought of the words of Peter, "All these
things shall be dissolved." And then we fancied an invisible animalcule
inhabiting one of the mountain peaks of a furnace, looking abroad from
one of its surging spires, and saying, "This wondrous blaze is to burn
for ever," and yet, ere a few hours have passed, the flame is sunk in
ashes, and the animalcule is gone. So the Heavens shall pass away with a
great noise. They shall perish, but Thou God remainest; nay, thou Man,
too, art destined to survive this splendid nursery, and to enter on new
Heavens and a new Earth!
The argument of the "Night Thoughts" may be stated in general to be as
follows:--It is to shew the vanity of man as mortal; to inculcate the
lowness, misery, and madness of the sensual life; to prove the
superiority of the Christian to the man of the world, both in life and in
death, and the worthlessness of merely human friendship; to argue, from
nature and reason, the truth of man's immortality; to shew the
reasonableness of religion, and to inculcate the necessity of a divine
revelation, and of a propitiatory sacrifice. That this argument is always
steadily pursued, or logically pled, we do not pretend. It has its
flaws;--we particularly demur to many of its proofs of the immortality of
the soul, which seem to us very feeble and unsatisfactory; but, taking it
as a whole, it is unanswerable and overwhelming. Its links are of red-hot
iron; its appeals to the conscience are irresistible; and he who can read
it with indifference, or rise from it unimpressed and unawed, must be
either something worse or something less than man. It needs not to be
surrounded by panegyrics. Convinced, purified, elevated, saved Souls, are
the gems in its crown. We are inclined to believe that, in this aspect,
the "Night Thoughts" has effected more practical good than the "Paradise
Lost." The latter is a splendid picture; the former a searching, powerful
sermon. Now, although pictures with a strong moral contained in them have
often done much good, they want the point, emphasis, and effect of great
sermons. You may gaze long enough at Milton with no feeling besides
admiration of his genius; but in every page Young is grappling with your
conscience, and saying, "Don't look at me, but look to yourself." Foster,
one of the greatest of our practical reasoners on religion, has been much
indebted to Young, whom he resembled also in the sombre grandeur of his
genius.
Young's imagery is distinguished by its richness, originality, and
exceeding boldness. It was verily a new thing in that timid and
conventional age. Like the imagery of all highest poets, it is selected
alike from low and from lofty objects, from the gay and the gloomy, from
stars and dunghills. His mind moves along through the poem like a great
wheel, now descending and now ascending, easy to criticise, but
impossible to resist. You may question the taste of many of his figures,
such as that of the Sun--
"Rude drunkard, rising rosy from the main;"
or when he speaks of God as the "Great Philanthropist;" or calls the moon
"the Portland of the skies;" but you always feel yourself in contact with
a new, native, overflowing mind--with a mind which has read nature
through man, and man through nature. There is to Young's genius nothing
common or unclean in the material universe. _All_ points up to God, and
looks round significantly to man. His imagination has no limits, and,
when he is thoroughly roused, like the war-horse of Job, the "glory of
his nostrils is terrible;" it is the fury of power, the revel of
conscious wealth, the "prancing of a mighty one;" not the dance of mere
fancy, but the earnestness and energy of one treading a winepress alone.
In proof of this, we appeal to his splendid passages on the miserable
state of Man, on Dreams, on Procrastination, to one half of his defence
of Immortality, and to the whole of his descant on the Stars. This every
one feels is power--barbarous power, if you will--savage, mismanaged
power, if you please to call it so; but power that moves, agitates,
overwhelms, hurries you away like an infant on the stream of a cataract.
His diction is, on the whole, a worthy medium to his thought. It has been
somewhat spoiled by intimacy with Pope's writings, and is often vitiated
with antithesis, an excess in which was the mode of the day. Now and
then, too, he is coarse and violent, to vulgarity, in his expressions.
But whenever he forgets Pope, and remembers Milton--or, still more, when
he becomes swallowed up in the magnitude of his theme--his language is
easy, powerful, and magnificent. It never, as Mitford asserts, is
unsupported by a "corresponding grandeur of thought." There is more
thought in Young's poem--more sharp, clear, original reflection--more of
that matter which leaves stings behind it--more moral sublimity--than in
any poem which has appeared since in Britain. Mitford says, that "every
image is amplified to the utmost." Some images unquestionably are; but
amplification is not a prevailing vice of Young's style--it is, indeed,
inconsistent with that pointed intensity which is his general manner; and
how comes it, if he be a diffuse and wordy writer, that his pages
literally sparkle with maxims, and that, next perhaps to Shakspeare, no
poet has been so often quoted? What the same writer means by Young
"fatiguing the reader's mind," we can understand; since it is fatiguing
to look long at the sun, or to follow the grand parabola of the eagle's
flight; but how he should "dissatisfy" the mind of any intelligent and
candid reader, is to us extraordinary. It is not true that the work has
"a uniformity of subject." Its tone is rather uniform, but its subjects
are as varied as they are important. They are--Man--the World--Ambition--
Pleasure--Infidelity--Immortality--Death--Judgment--Heaven--Hell--the
Stars--Eternity. Mr Mitford compares Young to Seneca; as if a cold
collector of stiff maxims, and a poet whose wisdom was set in enthusiasm
as in a ring of fire, were proper subjects of comparison. And it is
strange how he should introduce the name of Cicero, as if he were not
that very master of amplification, and of over-copiousness of expression,
which Mitford _imagines_ Young to be! "No selection--no discreet and
graceful reservation--no experienced taste!"--in other words, he was not
Pope or Campbell, but Edward Young--not a middle-sized, neat, and
well-dressed citizen, but a hirsute giant--not an elegant _parterre_, but
an American forest, bowing only to the old Tempests, and offering up a
holocaust of native wealth and glory, not to Man, but to God.
His versification is a more vulnerable point. We grant at once that it
is, as a whole, rugged and imperfect, and that, while his single lines
are often exceedingly melodious, he rarely reaches, any more than Pope or
Johnson, those long and linked swells of sound--
"Floating, mingling, interweaving,
Rising, sinking, and receiving
Each from each, while each is giving
On to each, and each relieving
Each, the pails of gold, the living
Current through the air is heaving"--
which Goethe has so beautifully, although unintentionally, described in
these words, applied by him to the elements of Nature; and which he and
Milton, and Spenser, and Coleridge, and Shelley, have so admirably
exemplified in their verse. Young's style is too broken and sententious
to permit the miracles of melody which are found in some of our poets.
Yet he has a few passages which approach even to this high standard. Take
the following:--
"Look nature through, 'tis revolution all;
All change, no death. Day follows night, and night
The dying day; stars rise and set and rise;
Earth takes th' example. See the summer gay,
With her green chaplet, and ambrosial flowers,
Droops into pallid autumn; winter gray,
Horrid with frost, and turbulent with storm,
Blows autumn, and his golden fruits away;
Then melts into the spring. Soft spring, with breath
Favonian, from warm chambers of the south,
Recalls the first."
Or take the well-known burst which closes the First Night:--
"The sprightly lark's shrill matin wakes the morn;
Grief's sharpest thorn hard pressing on my breast,
I strive, with wakeful melody, to cheer
The sullen gloom, sweet Philomel! like thee,
And call the stars to listen: every star
Is deaf to mine, enamour'd of thy lay.
Yet be not vain; there are, who thine excel,
And charm through distant ages: wrapt in shade,
Prisoner of darkness! to the silent hours
How often I repeat their rage divine,
To lull my griefs, and steal my heart from woe!
I roll their raptures, but not catch their fire,
Dark, though not blind, like thee, Maeonides!
Or his, who made Maeonides our own.
Man, too, he sung; immortal man I sing;
Oft bursts my song beyond the bounds of life;
What, now, but immortality, can please?
O had he press'd his theme, pursued the track
Which opens out of darkness into day!
O had he, mounted on his wing of fire,
Soar'd where I sink, and sung immortal man!
How had it bless'd mankind, and rescued me!"
The reader will notice how, in this noble passage, the individual
sentences and points are all subordinated to the main purpose of the
poet, and being subjected to the general stress of the strain, do not
detract from, but add to, its musical unity.
The comparative place of the poem, and the genius of the writer, are two
subjects which are closely connected, and indeed slide into each other.
The "Night Thoughts" must not be named, in interest, finish, sustained
sublimity, and artistic completeness, with the "Iliad," the "Divina
Commedia," or the "Paradise Lost." It ranks, however, at the top of such
a high class of poems as Cowper's Poems, Thomson's "Seasons," Byron's
Poems, Blair's "Grave," Pollock's "Course of Time," and a few others not
very often criticised now-a-days. Young, however, seems to us to have
been capable of even higher things than he has effected in his works. He
was one of those prolific, fiery, inexhaustible souls, who never seem
nearing a limit, or dreaming of a shallow in their genius; who, often
stumbling over precipices or precipitated into pools, rise stronger, and
rush on faster, from their misadventures; who, sometimes stopping too
long to moralise on fungi and ant-hillocks, are all the better breathed
to career through endless forests, and to take Alps and Andes at a flying
leap; and who are
"Ne'er so sure our pleasure to create,
As when they tread the brink of all we hate."
His taste was not equal certainly to his other faculties, and he was
guilty of occasional extravagances, and stumbled not unfrequently over
the brink of the bathos; but his genius possessed the following
qualities:--It was original. He had read much, but he copies little, and
never slavishly. His mind looks at everything--at skulls and
stars--through a medium of its own. It was subtle as well as native and
strong, and in its movements it is broadly based on a vigorous intellect.
It was progressive and prophetic in its spirit, and many of our recent
speculations or semi-speculations on the relations of man and nature, are
to be found in Young--ay, in the mere spray his mind threw off on its way
to an ulterior result. Think of this, for instance, and then remember a
similar expression in Carlyle:--
"Man's grief is but his grandeur in disguise;
And discontent is immortality."
Finally, his genius, with all its compass and daring, was reverent and
religious. He gloried in the universe; he swam, as it were, and circled
like a strong swimmer, in that starry sea; but he bent before the Cross,
and, instead of looking up, looked down, and cried out, "God be merciful
to me a sinner."
We commend his masterpiece to readers, partly, indeed, for its power,--a
power that has hitherto rather been felt than acknowledged, rather
admired in silence than analysed; but principally because, like "The
Temple" of Herbert, it is holy ground. The author, amid his elaborate
ingenuities, and wilful though minor perversities, never ceases to love
and to honour truth; in pursuit of renown, he is never afraid to glory in
the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; and if his flights of fancy be at
times too wild, and if his thoughts be often set to the tune of the
tempest, it is a tempest on whose wings, to use his own simple but
immortal words, "The Lord is abroad."
THE COMPLAINT:
OR,
NIGHT THOUGHTS.
PREFACE.
As the occasion of this Poem was real, not fictitious; so the method
pursued in it was rather imposed by what spontaneously arose in the
Author's mind on that occasion, than meditated or designed. Which will
appear very probable from the nature of it. For it differs from the
common mode of poetry, which is, from long narrations to draw short
morals. Here, on the contrary, the narrative is short, and the morality
arising from it makes the bulk of the Poem. The reason of it is, that the
facts mentioned did naturally pour these moral reflections on the thought
of the Writer.
NIGHT FIRST.
ON LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
ARTHUR ONSLOW, ESQ.,
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy Sleep!
He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where Fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes;
Swift on his downy pinion flies from woe,
And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.
From short (as usual) and disturb'd repose,
I wake: how happy they, who wake no more!
Yet that were vain, if dreams infest the grave.
I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams
Tumultuous; where my wreck'd desponding thought 10
From wave to wave of fancied misery
At random drove, her helm of reason lost.
Though now restored, 'tis only change of pain,
(A bitter change!) severer for severe:
The day too short for my distress; and night, 15
Even in the zenith of her dark domain,
Is sunshine to the colour of my fate.
Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world.
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound!
Nor eye, nor listening ear, an object finds;
Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse 23
Of life stood still, and nature made a pause;
An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
And let her prophecy be soon fulfill'd;
Fate! drop the curtain; I can lose no more.
Silence and darkness: solemn sisters! twins
From ancient Night, who nurse the tender thought
To reason, and on reason build resolve 30
(That column of true majesty in man),
Assist me: I will thank you in the grave;
The grave, your kingdom: there this frame shall fall
A victim sacred to your dreary shrine.
But what are ye?--
Thou, who didst put to flight
Primeval Silence, when the morning stars,
Exulting, shouted o'er the rising ball;
O Thou, whose word from solid darkness struck
That spark, the sun; strike wisdom from my soul; 40
My soul, which flies to thee, her trust, her treasure,
As misers to their gold, while others rest.
Through this opaque of nature, and of soul,
This double night, transmit one pitying ray,
To lighten, and to cheer. O lead my mind,
(A mind that fain would wander from its woe),
Lead it through various scenes of life and death;
And from each scene the noblest truths inspire.
Nor less inspire my conduct, than my song; 49
Teach my best reason, reason; my best will
Teach rectitude; and fix my firm resolve
Wisdom to wed, and pay her long arrear:
Nor let the phial of thy vengeance, pour'd
On this devoted head, be pour'd in vain.
The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
But from its loss. To give it then a tongue
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,
I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright,
It is the knell of my departed hours:
Where are they? With the years beyond the flood. 60
It is the signal that demands despatch:
How much is to be done? My hopes and fears
Start up alarm'd, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down--on what? a fathomless abyss;
A dread eternity! how surely mine!
And can eternity belong to me,
Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!
How passing wonder He who made him such! 70
Who centred in our make such strange extremes!
From different natures marvellously mix'd,
Connexion exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguish'd link in being's endless chain!
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
A beam ethereal, sullied and absorb'd!
Though sullied and dishonour'd, still divine!
Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal! insect infinite! 80
A worm! a god!--I tremble at myself,
And in myself am lost! At home a stranger,
Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast, 83
And wondering at her own: how reason reels!
O what a miracle to man is man,
Triumphantly distress'd! what joy, what dread!
Alternately transported and alarm'd!
What can preserve my life, or what destroy?
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave;
Legions of angels can't confine me there. 90
'Tis past conjecture; all things rise in proof:
While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread,
What though my soul fantastic measures trod
O'er fairy fields; or mourn'd along the gloom
Of pathless woods; or down the craggy steep
Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool;
Or scaled the cliff; or danced on hollow winds,
With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain?
Her ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her nature
Of subtler essence than the trodden clod; 100
Active, aerial, towering, unconfined,
Unfetter'd with her gross companion's fall.
Even silent night proclaims my soul immortal:
Even silent night proclaims eternal day.
For human weal, Heaven husbands all events;
Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain.
Why then their loss deplore that are not lost?
Why wanders wretched thought their tombs around,
In infidel distress? Are angels there?
Slumbers, raked up in dust, ethereal fire? 110
They live! they greatly live a life on earth
Unkindled, unconceived; and from an eye
Of tenderness let heavenly pity fall
On me, more justly number'd with the dead.
This is the desert, this the solitude:
How populous, how vital, is the grave!
This is creation's melancholy vault, 117
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom;
The land of apparitions, empty shades!
All, all on earth, is shadow, all beyond
Is substance; the reverse is Folly's creed:
How solid all, where change shall be no more!
This is the bud of being, the dim dawn, 123
The twilight of our day, the vestibule;
Life's theatre as yet is shut, and death,
Strong death, alone can heave the massy bar,
This gross impediment of clay remove,
And make us embryos of existence free.
From real life, but little more remote
Is he, not yet a candidate for light, 130
The future embryo, slumbering in his sire.
Embryos we must be, till we burst the shell,
Yon ambient azure shell, and spring to life,
The life of gods, O transport! and of man.
Yet man, fool man! here buries all his thoughts;
Inters celestial hopes without one sigh.
Prisoner of earth, and pent beneath the moon,
Here pinions all his wishes; wing'd by heaven
To fly at infinite; and reach it there,
Where seraphs gather immortality, 140
On life's fair tree, fast by the throne of God.
What golden joys ambrosial clustering glow
In His full beam, and ripen for the just,
Where momentary ages are no more!
Where time, and pain, and chance, and death, expire!
And is it in the flight of threescore years
To push eternity from human thought,
And smother souls immortal in the dust?
A soul immortal, spending all her fires,
Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness 150
Thrown into tumult, raptured, or alarm'd, 151
At aught this scene can threaten or indulge,
Resembles ocean into tempest wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.
Where falls this censure? It o'erwhelms myself;
How was my heart encrusted by the world!
O how self-fetter'd was my grovelling soul!
How, like a worm, was I wrapt round and round
In silken thought, which reptile fancy spun,
Till darken'd reason lay quite clouded o'er 160
With soft conceit of endless comfort here,
Nor yet put forth her wings to reach the skies!
Night-visions may befriend (as sung above):
Our waking dreams are fatal. How I dream'd
Of things impossible! (could sleep do more?)
Of joys perpetual in perpetual change!
Of stable pleasures on the tossing wave!
Eternal sunshine in the storms of life!
How richly were my noontide trances hung
With gorgeous tapestries of pictured joys! 170
Joy behind joy, in endless perspective!
Till at death's toll, whose restless iron tongue
Calls daily for his millions at a meal,
Starting I woke, and found myself undone.
Where now my phrensy's pompous furniture?
The cobwebb'd cottage, with its ragged wall
Of mouldering mud, is royalty to me!
The spider's most attenuated thread
Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie
On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze. 180
O ye blest scenes of permanent delight!
Full above measure! lasting beyond bound!
A perpetuity of bliss is bliss.
Could you, so rich in rapture, fear an end,
That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy, 185
And quite unparadise the realms of light.
Safe are you lodged above these rolling spheres;
The baleful influence of whose giddy dance
Sheds sad vicissitude on all beneath.
Here teems with revolutions every hour;
And rarely for the better; or the best,
More mortal than the common births of fate.
Each moment has its sickle, emulous 193
Of Time's enormous scythe, whose ample sweep
Strikes empires from the root; each moment plays
His little weapon in the narrower sphere
Of sweet domestic comfort, and cuts down
The fairest bloom of sublunary bliss.
Bliss! sublunary bliss!--proud words, and vain!
Implicit treason to divine decree! 200
A bold invasion of the rights of Heaven!
I clasp'd the phantoms, and I found them air.
Oh! had I weigh'd it ere my fond embrace,
What darts of agony had miss'd my heart!
Death! great proprietor of all! 'tis thine
To tread out empire, and to quench the stars.
The sun himself by thy permission shines;
And, one day, thou shalt pluck him from his sphere.
Amid such mighty plunder, why exhaust
Thy partial quiver on a mark so mean? 210
Why thy peculiar rancour wreak'd on me?
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice;[2] and thrice my peace was slain;
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn.
O Cynthia! why so pale? dost thou lament
Thy wretched neighbour? grieve to see thy wheel
Of ceaseless change outwhirl'd in human life? 217
How wanes my borrow'd bliss! from fortune's smile,
Precarious courtesy! not virtue's sure,
Self-given, solar ray of sound delight.
In every varied posture, place, and hour,
How widow'd every thought of every joy!
Thought, busy thought! too busy for my peace!
Through the dark postern of time long lapsed, 224
Led softly, by the stillness of the night,
Led, like a murderer, (and such it proves!)
Strays (wretched rover!) o'er the pleasing past;
In quest of wretchedness perversely strays;
And finds all desert now; and meets the ghosts
Of my departed joys; a numerous train! 230
I rue the riches of my former fate;
Sweet comfort's blasted clusters I lament;
I tremble at the blessings once so dear;
And every pleasure pains me to the heart.
Yet why complain? or why complain for one?
Hangs out the sun his lustre but for me,
The single man? Are angels all beside?
I mourn for millions: 'tis the common lot;
In this shape, or in that, has fate entail'd
The mother's throes on all of woman born, 240
Not more the children, than sure heirs, of pain.
War, famine, pest, volcano, storm, and fire,
Intestine broils, oppression, with her heart
Wrapt up in triple brass, besiege mankind.
God's image disinherited of day,
Here, plunged in mines, forgets a sun was made.
There, beings deathless as their haughty lord,
Are hammer'd to the galling oar for life;
And plough the winter's wave, and reap despair.
Some, for hard masters, broken under arms, 250
In battle lopp'd away, with half their limbs, 251
Beg bitter bread through realms their valour saved,
If so the tyrant, or his minion, doom.
Want and incurable disease (fell pair!)
On hopeless multitudes remorseless seize
At once; and make a refuge of the grave.
How groaning hospitals eject their dead!
What numbers groan for sad admission there!
What numbers, once in fortune's lap high-fed,
Solicit the cold hand of charity! 260
To shock us more, solicit it in vain!
Ye silken sons of pleasure! since in pains
Ye rue more modish visits, visit here,
And breathe from your debauch: give, and reduce
Surfeit's dominion o'er you: but so great
Your impudence, you blush at what is right.
Happy, did sorrow seize on such alone!
Not prudence can defend, or virtue save;
Disease invades the chastest temperance;
And punishment the guiltless; and alarm, 270
Through thickest shades pursues the fond of peace.
Man's caution often into danger turns,
And his guard falling, crushes him to death.
Not happiness itself makes good her name!
Our very wishes give us not our wish.
How distant oft the thing we doat on most,
From that for which we doat, felicity!
The smoothest course of nature has its pains;
And truest friends, through error, wound our rest.
Without misfortune, what calamities! 280
And what hostilities, without a foe!
Nor are foes wanting to the best on earth.
But endless is the list of human ills,
And sighs might sooner fail, than cause to sigh.
A part how small of the terraqueous globe 285
Is tenanted by man! the rest a waste,
Rocks, deserts, frozen seas, and burning sands:
Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings, and death.
Such is earth's melancholy map! But, far
More sad! this earth is a true map of man.
So bounded are its haughty lord's delights
To woe's wide empire; where deep troubles toss,
Loud sorrows howl, envenom'd passions bite, 293
Ravenous calamities our vitals seize,
And threatening fate wide opens to devour.
What then am I, who sorrow for myself?
In age, in infancy, from others' aid
Is all our hope; to teach us to be kind.
That, nature's first, last lesson to mankind;
The selfish heart deserves the pain it feels; 300
More generous sorrow, while it sinks, exalts;
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang.
Nor virtue, more than prudence, bids me give
Swoln thought a second channel; who divide,
They weaken, too, the torrent of their grief.
Take then, O world! thy much-indebted tear:
How sad a sight is human happiness,
To those whose thought can pierce beyond an hour!
O thou! whate'er thou art, whose heart exults!
Would'st thou I should congratulate thy fate? 310
I know thou would'st; thy pride demands it from me.
Let thy pride pardon, what thy nature needs,
The salutary censure of a friend.
Thou happy wretch! by blindness thou art blest;
By dotage dandled to perpetual smiles.
Know, smiler! at thy peril art thou pleased;
Thy pleasure is the promise of thy pain.
Misfortune, like a creditor severe,
But rises in demand for her delay; 319
She makes a scourge of past prosperity,
To sting thee more, and double thy distress.
Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to thee,
Thy fond heart dances, while the syren sings.
Dear is thy welfare; think me not unkind;
I would not damp, but to secure thy joys.
Think not that fear is sacred to the storm:
Stand on thy guard against the smiles of fate.
Is Heaven tremendous in its frowns? Most sure;
And in its favours formidable too:
Its favours here are trials, not rewards; 330
A call to duty, not discharge from care;
And should alarm us, full as much as woes;
Awake us to their cause, and consequence;
O'er our scann'd conduct give a jealous eye,
And make us tremble, weigh'd with our desert;
Awe nature's tumult, and chastise her joys,
Lest, while we clasp, we kill them; nay, invert
To worse than simple misery, their charms.
Revolted joys, like foes in civil war,
Like bosom friendships to resentment sour'd, 340
With rage envenom'd rise against our peace.
Beware what earth calls happiness; beware
All joys, but joys that never can expire.
Who builds on less than an immortal base,
Fond as he seems, condemns his joys to death.
Mine died with thee, Philander![3] thy last sigh
Dissolved the charm; the disenchanted earth
Lost all her lustre. Where her glittering towers?
Her golden mountains, where? all darken'd down
To naked waste; a dreary vale of tears: 350
The great magician's dead! Thou poor, pale piece
Of outcast earth, in darkness! what a change 352
From yesterday! Thy darling hope so near
(Long-labour'd prize!), O how ambition flush'd
Thy glowing cheek! ambition truly great,
Of virtuous praise. Death's subtle seed within
(Sly, treacherous miner!), working in the dark,
Smiled at thy well-concerted scheme, and beckon'd
The worm to riot on that rose so red,
Unfaded ere it fell; one moment's prey! 360
Man's foresight is conditionally wise;
Lorenzo![4] wisdom into folly turns
Oft, the first instant, its idea fair
To labouring thought is born. How dim our eye!
The present moment terminates our sight;
Clouds thick as those on doomsday, drown the next;
We penetrate, we prophesy in vain.
Time is dealt out by particles; and each,
Ere mingled with the streaming sands of life,
By fate's inviolable oath is sworn 370
Deep silence, "where eternity begins."
By nature's law, what may be, may be now;
There's no prerogative in human hours.
In human hearts what bolder thought can rise,
Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn!
Where is to-morrow? In another world.
For numbers this is certain; the reverse
Is sure to none; and yet on this perhaps,
This peradventure, infamous for lies,
As on a rock of adamant, we build 380
Our mountain hopes; spin out eternal schemes,
As we the fatal sisters could out-spin,
And, big with life's futurities, expire.
Not even Philander had bespoke his shroud;
Nor had he cause; a warning was denied. 385
How many fall as sudden, not as safe!
As sudden, though for years admonish'd home.
Of human ills the last extreme beware,
Beware, Lorenzo! a slow sudden death.
How dreadful that deliberate surprise!
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead; 392
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.
Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears 400
The palm, "That all men are about to live,"
For ever on the brink of being born.
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel: and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise;
At least, their own; their future selves applaud;
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead!
Time lodged in their own hands is folly's vails;[5]
That lodged in fate's, to wisdom they consign;
The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone; 410
'Tis not in folly, not to scorn a fool;
And scarce in human wisdom to do more.
All promise is poor dilatory man,
And that through every stage: when young, indeed,
In full content we, sometimes, nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish,
As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
At thirty, man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; 419
At fifty, chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves; and re-resolves; then dies the same.
And why? Because he thinks himself immortal.
All men think all men mortal, but themselves:
Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate
Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread;
But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,
Soon close; where pass'd the shaft, no trace is found.
As from the wing no scar the sky retains; 430
The parted wave no furrow from the keel;
So dies in human hearts the thought of death.
Even with the tender tear which nature sheds
O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave.
Can I forget Philander? That were strange!
O my full heart!----But should I give it vent,
The longest night, though longer far, would fail,
And the lark listen to my midnight song.
The sprightly lark's shrill matin wakes the morn;
Grief's sharpest thorn hard pressing on my breast, 440
I strive, with wakeful melody, to cheer
The sullen gloom, sweet Philomel! like thee,
And call the stars to listen: every star
Is deaf to mine, enamour'd of thy lay.
Yet be not vain; there are, who thine excel,
And charm through distant ages: wrapt in shade,
Prisoner of darkness! to the silent hours,
How often I repeat their rage divine,
To lull my griefs, and steal my heart from woe!
I roll their raptures, but not catch their fire. 450
Dark, though not blind, like thee, Maeonides![6]
Or, Milton! thee; ah, could I reach your strain! 452
Or his, who made Maeonides our own.[7]
Man too he sung: immortal man I sing;
Oft bursts my song beyond the bounds of life;
What, now, but immortality, can please?
O had he press'd his theme, pursued the track,
Which opens out of darkness into day!
O had he, mounted on his wing of fire,
Soar'd where I sink, and sung immortal man! 460
How had it bless'd mankind, and rescued me!
ON
TIME, DEATH, AND FRIENDSHIP.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
THE EARL OF WILMINGTON.
NIGHT SECOND.
ON TIME, DEATH, AND FRIENDSHIP.
"When the cock crew, he wept"--smote by that eye
Which looks on me, on all: that Power, who bids
This midnight sentinel, with clarion shrill
(Emblem of that which shall awake the dead),
Rouse souls from slumber, into thoughts of heaven.
Shall I too weep? Where then is fortitude?
And, fortitude abandon'd, where is man?
I know the terms on which he sees the light;
He that is born, is listed; life is war;
Eternal war with woe. Who bears it best, 10
Deserves it least.--On other themes I'll dwell.
Lorenzo! let me turn my thoughts on thee,
And thine, on themes may profit; profit there,
Where most thy need; themes, too, the genuine growth
Of dear Philander's dust. He thus, though dead,
May still befriend--what themes? Time's wondrous price,
Death, friendship, and Philander's final scene.
So could I touch these themes, as might obtain
Thine ear, nor leave thy heart quite disengaged,
The good deed would delight me; half impress 20
On my dark cloud an Iris; and from grief
Call glory.--Dost thou mourn Philander's fate?
I know thou say'st it: says thy life the same?
He mourns the dead, who lives as they desire.
Where is that thrift, that avarice of time,
(O glorious avarice!) thought of death inspires,
As rumour'd robberies endear our gold?
O time! than gold more sacred; more a load
Than lead to fools; and fools reputed wise.
What moment granted man without account? 30
What years are squander'd, wisdom's debt unpaid!
Our wealth in days, all due to that discharge.
Haste, haste, he lies in wait, he's at the door,
Insidious Death! should his strong hand arrest,
No composition sets the prisoner free.
Eternity's inexorable chain
Fast binds; and vengeance claims the full arrear.
How late I shudder'd on the brink! how late
Life call'd for her last refuge in despair!
That time is mine, O Mead! to thee I owe; 40
Fain would I pay thee with eternity.
But ill my genius answers my desire;
My sickly song is mortal, past thy cure.
Accept the will;--that dies not with my strain.
For what calls thy disease, Lorenzo? not
For Esculapian, but for moral aid.
Thou think'st it folly to be wise too soon.
Youth is not rich in time, it may be poor;
Part with it as with money, sparing; pay
No moment, but in purchase of its worth; 50
And what its worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.
Part with it as with life, reluctant; big
With holy hope of nobler time to come;
Time higher aim'd, still nearer the great mark 54
Of men and angels; virtue more divine.
Is this our duty, wisdom, glory, gain?
(These Heaven benign in vital union binds)
And sport we like the natives of the bough,
When vernal suns inspire? Amusement reigns
Man's great demand: to trifle, is to live:
And is it then a trifle, too, to die?
Thou say'st I preach, Lorenzo! 'tis confess'd. 62
What, if for once, I preach thee quite awake?
Who wants amusement in the flame of battle?
Is it not treason to the soul immortal,
Her foes in arms, eternity the prize?
Will toys amuse, when medicines cannot cure?
When spirits ebb, when life's enchanting scenes
Their lustre lose, and lessen in our sight,
As lands, and cities with their glittering spires, 70
To the poor shatter'd bark, by sudden storm
Thrown off to sea, and soon to perish there?
Will toys amuse? No: thrones will then be toys,
And earth and skies seem dust upon the scale.
Redeem we time?--its loss we dearly buy.
What pleads Lorenzo for his high-prized sports?
He pleads time's numerous blanks; he loudly pleads
The straw-like trifles on life's common stream.
From whom those blanks and trifles, but from thee?
No blank, no trifle, nature made, or meant. 80
Virtue, or purposed virtue, still be thine;
This cancels thy complaint at once, this leaves
In act no trifle, and no blank in time.
This greatens, fills, immortalizes all;
This, the bless'd art of turning all to gold;
This, the good heart's prerogative to raise
A royal tribute from the poorest hours;
Immense revenue! every moment pays. 88
If nothing more than purpose in thy power;
Thy purpose firm, is equal to the deed:
Who does the best his circumstance allows,
Does well, acts nobly; angels could no more.
Our outward act, indeed, admits restraint;
'Tis not in things o'er thought to domineer;
Guard well thy thought; our thoughts are heard in heaven.
On all-important time, through every age,
Though much, and warm, the wise have urged; the man
Is yet unborn, who duly weighs an hour.
"I've lost a day"--the prince who nobly cried
Had been an emperor without his crown; 100
Of Rome? say, rather, lord of human race:
He spoke, as if deputed by mankind.
So should all speak; so reason speaks in all:
From the soft whispers of that God in man,
Why fly to folly, why to phrensy fly,
For rescue from the blessing we possess?
Time the supreme!--Time is eternity;
Pregnant with all eternity can give;
Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile.
Who murders time, he crushes in the birth 110
A power ethereal, only not adored.
Ah! how unjust to Nature, and himself,
Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!
Like children babbling nonsense in their sports,
We censure Nature for a span too short;
That span too short, we tax as tedious too;
Torture invention, all expedients tire,
To lash the lingering moments into speed,
And whirl us (happy riddance!) from ourselves.
Art, brainless Art! our furious charioteer 120
(For Nature's voice unstifled would recall),
Drives headlong towards the precipice of death; 122
Death, most our dread; death thus more dreadful made:
Oh, what a riddle of absurdity!
Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot wheels;
How heavily we drag the load of life!
Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain,
It makes us wander; wander earth around,
To fly that tyrant, thought. As Atlas groan'd
The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour. 130
We cry for mercy to the next amusement;
The next amusement mortgages our fields;
Slight inconvenience! prisons hardly frown,
From hateful time if prisons set us free.
Yet when Death kindly tenders us relief,
We call him cruel; years to moments shrink,
Ages to years. The telescope is turn'd.
To man's false optics (from his folly false),
Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings,
And seems to creep, decrepit with his age; 140
Behold him, when pass'd by; what then is seen,
But his broad pinions swifter than the winds?
And all mankind, in contradiction strong,
Rueful, aghast! cry out on his career.
Leave to thy foes these errors and these ills;
To Nature just, their cause and cure explore.
Not short Heaven's bounty, boundless our expence;
No niggard, Nature; men are prodigals.
We waste, not use our time; we breathe, not live.
Time wasted is existence, used is life. 150
And bare existence, man, to live ordain'd,
Wrings, and oppresses with enormous weight.
And why? since time was given for use, not waste,
Enjoin'd to fly; with tempest, tide, and stars,
To keep his speed, nor ever wait for man;
Time's use was doom'd a pleasure: waste, a pain; 156
That man might feel his error, if unseen:
And, feeling, fly to labour for his cure;
Not, blundering, split on idleness for ease.
Life's cares are comforts; such by Heaven design'd;
He that has none, must make them, or be wretched.
Cares are employments; and without employ
The soul is on a rack; the rack of rest, 163
To souls most adverse; action all their joy.
Here then, the riddle, mark'd above, unfolds;
Then time turns torment, when man turns a fool.
We rave, we wrestle, with great Nature's plan;
We thwart the Deity; and 'tis decreed,
Who thwart his will shall contradict their own.
Hence our unnatural quarrels with ourselves; 170
Our thoughts at enmity; our bosom-broils;
We push Time from us, and we wish him back;
Lavish of lustrums, and yet fond of life;
Life we think long, and short; death seek, and shun;
Body and soul, like peevish man and wife,
United jar, and yet are loth to part.
Oh the dark days of vanity! while here,
How tasteless! and how terrible, when gone!
Gone! they ne'er go; when past, they haunt us still;
The spirit walks of every day deceased; 180
And smiles an angel, or a fury frowns.
Nor death, nor life delight us. If time past,
And time possess'd, both pain us, what can please?
That which the Deity to please ordain'd,
Time used. The man who consecrates his hours
By vigorous effort, and an honest aim,
At once he draws the sting of life and death;
He walks with Nature; and her paths are peace.
Our error's cause and cure are seen: see next
Time's nature, origin, importance, speed; 190
And thy great gain from urging his career.--
All-sensual man, because untouch'd, unseen,
He looks on time as nothing. Nothing else
Is truly man's; 'tis fortune's.--Time's a god.
Hast thou ne'er heard of Time's omnipotence?
For, or against, what wonders he can do,
And will? To stand blank neuter he disdains.
Not on those terms was Time (Heaven's stranger!) sent
On his important embassy to man.
Lorenzo! no: on the long-destined hour, 200
From everlasting ages growing ripe,
That memorable hour of wondrous birth,
When the Dread Sire, on emanation bent,
And big with Nature, rising in his might,
Call'd forth creation (for then Time was born),
By Godhead streaming through a thousand worlds;
Not on those terms, from the great days of heaven,
From old Eternity's mysterious orb,
Was Time cut off, and cast beneath the skies;
The skies, which watch him in his new abode, 210
Measuring his motions by revolving spheres;
That horologe machinery divine.
Hours, days, and months, and years, his children play,
Like numerous wings around him, as he flies:
Or, rather, as unequal plumes, they shape
His ample pinions, swift as darted flame,
To gain his goal, to reach his ancient rest,
And join anew Eternity his sire;
In his immutability to nest,
When worlds, that count his circles now, unhinged 220
(Fate the loud signal sounding), headlong rush
To timeless night and chaos, whence they rose.
Why spur the speedy? why with levities
New wing thy short, short day's too rapid flight? 224
Know'st thou, or what thou dost, or what is done?
Man flies from time, and time from man; too soon
In sad divorce this double flight must end:
And then where are we? where, Lorenzo! then
Thy sports? thy pomps?--I grant thee, in a state
Not unambitious; in the ruffled shroud,
Thy Parian tomb's triumphant arch beneath.
Has Death his fopperies? Then well may life 232
Put on her plume, and in her rainbow shine.
Ye well-array'd! ye lilies of our land!
Ye lilies male! who neither toil nor spin
(As sister lilies might), if not so wise
As Solomon, more sumptuous to the sight!
Ye delicate! who nothing can support,
Yourselves most insupportable! for whom
The winter rose must blow, the sun put on 240
A brighter beam in Leo; silky-soft
Favonius breathe still softer, or be chid;
And other worlds send odours, sauce, and song,
And robes, and notions, framed in foreign looms!
O ye Lorenzos of our age! who deem
One moment unamused, a misery
Not made for feeble man! who call aloud
For every bauble drivell'd o'er by sense;
For rattles, and conceits of every cast,
For change of follies, and relays of joy, 250
To drag your patient through the tedious length
Of a short winter's day--say, sages! say,
Wit's oracles! say, dreamers of gay dreams!
How will you weather an eternal night,
Where such expedients fail?
O treacherous Conscience! while she seems to sleep
On rose and myrtle, lull'd with syren song;
While she seems, nodding o'er her charge, to drop 258
On headlong appetite the slacken'd rein,
And give us up to licence, unrecall'd,
Unmark'd;--see, from behind her secret stand,
The sly informer minutes every fault,
And her dread diary with horror fills.
Not the gross act alone employs her pen;
She reconnoitres fancy's airy band,
A watchful foe! the formidable spy,
Listening, o'erhears the whispers of our camp:
Our dawning purposes of heart explores,
And steals our embryos of iniquity.
As all-rapacious usurers conceal 270
Their doomsday-book from all-consuming heirs;
Thus, with indulgence most severe, she treats
Us spendthrifts of inestimable time;
Unnoted, notes each moment misapplied;
In leaves more durable than leaves of brass,
Writes our whole history; which Death shall read
In every pale delinquent's private ear;
And Judgment publish; publish to more worlds
Than this; and endless age in groans resound.
Lorenzo, such that sleeper in thy breast! 280
Such is her slumber; and her vengeance such
For slighted counsel; such thy future peace!
And think'st thou still thou canst be wise too soon?
But why on Time so lavish is my song?
On this great theme kind Nature keeps a school,
To teach her sons herself. Each night we die,
Each morn are born anew: each day, a life!
And shall we kill each day? If trifling kills;
Sure vice must butcher. Oh, what heaps of slain
Cry out for vengeance on us! Time destroy'd 290
Is suicide, where more than blood is spilt.
Time flies, Death urges, knells call, Heaven invites, 292
Hell threatens: all exerts; in effort, all;
More than creation labours!--labours more?
And is there in creation what, amidst
This tumult universal, wing'd despatch,
And ardent energy, supinely yawns?--
Man sleeps; and man alone; and man, whose fate,
Fate irreversible, entire, extreme,
Endless, hair-hung, breeze-shaken, o'er the gulf 300
A moment trembles; drops! and man, for whom
All else is in alarm! man, the sole cause
Of this surrounding storm! and yet he sleeps,
As the storm rock'd to rest.--Throw years away?
Throw empires, and be blameless. Moments seize;
Heaven's on their wing: a moment we may wish,
When worlds want wealth to buy. Bid Day stand still,
Bid him drive back his car, and re-import
The period past, re-give the given hour.
Lorenzo, more than miracles we want; 310
Lorenzo--O for yesterdays to come!
Such is the language of the man awake;
His ardour such, for what oppresses thee.
And is his ardour vain, Lorenzo? No;
That more than miracle the gods indulge;
To-day is yesterday return'd; return'd
Full power'd to cancel, expiate, raise, adorn,
And reinstate us on the rock of peace.
Let it not share its predecessor's fate;
Nor, like its elder sisters, die a fool. 320
Shall it evaporate in fume? fly off
Fuliginous, and stain us deeper still?
Shall we be poorer for the plenty pour'd?
More wretched for the clemencies of Heaven?
Where shall I find him? Angels! tell me where.
You know him: he is near you: point him out: 326
Shall I see glories beaming from his brow?
Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?
Your golden wings, now hovering o'er him, shed
Protection; now, are waving in applause
To that bless'd son of foresight! lord of fate!
That awful independent on to-morrow!
Whose work is done; who triumphs in the past; 333
Whose yesterdays look backwards with a smile;
Nor, like the Parthian, wound him as they fly;
That common but opprobrious lot! past hours,
If not by guilt, yet wound us by their flight,
If folly bounds our prospect by the grave,
All feeling of futurity benumb'd;
All god-like passion for eternals quench'd; 340
All relish of realities expired;
Renounced all correspondence with the skies;
Our freedom chain'd; quite wingless our desire;
In sense dark-prison'd all that ought to soar;
Prone to the centre; crawling in the dust;
Dismounted every great and glorious aim;
Embruted every faculty divine;
Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world.
The world, that gulf of souls, immortal souls,
Souls elevate, angelic, wing'd with fire 350
To reach the distant skies, and triumph there
On thrones, which shall not mourn their masters changed,
Though we from earth; ethereal, they that fell.
Such veneration due, O man, to man.
Who venerate themselves, the world despise.
For what, gay friend! is this escutcheon'd world,
Which hangs out death in one eternal night?
A night, that glooms us in the noontide ray,
And wraps our thought, at banquets, in the shroud.
Life's little stage is a small eminence, 360
Inch-high the grave above; that home of man,
Where dwells the multitude: we gaze around;
We read their monuments; we sigh; and while
We sigh, we sink; and are what we deplored;
Lamenting, or lamented, all our lot!
Is Death at distance? No: he has been on thee;
And given sure earnest of his final blow.
These hours that lately smiled, where are they now?
Pallid to thought, and ghastly! drown'd, all drown'd
In that great deep, which nothing disembogues! 370
And, dying, they bequeathed thee small renown.
The rest are on the wing: how fleet their flight!
Already has the fatal train took fire;
A moment, and the world's blown up to thee;
The sun is darkness, and the stars are dust.
'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours;
And ask them, what report they bore to heaven;
And how they might have borne more welcome news.
Their answers form what men experience call;
If Wisdom's friend, her best; if not, worst foe. 380
"Oh, reconcile them!" kind Experience cries;
"There's nothing here, but what as nothing weighs;
The more our joy, the more we know it vain;
And by success are tutor'd to despair."
Nor is it only thus, but must be so.
Who knows not this, though grey, is still a child.
Loose then from earth the grasp of fond desire,
Weigh anchor, and some happier clime explore.
Art thou so moor'd thou canst not disengage,
Nor give thy thoughts a ply to future scenes? 390
Since, by life's passing breath, blown up from earth,
Light as the summer's dust, we take in air
A moment's giddy flight, and fall again;
Join the dull mass, increase the trodden soil, 394
And sleep, till earth herself shall be no more;
Since then (as emmets, their small world o'erthrown)
We, sore-amazed, from out earth's ruins crawl,
And rise to fate extreme of foul or fair,
As man's own choice (controller of the skies!)
As man's despotic will, perhaps one hour
(O how omnipotent is time!) decrees;
Should not each warning give a strong alarm?
Warning, far less than that of bosom torn 403
From bosom, bleeding o'er the sacred dead!
Should not each dial strike us as we pass,
Portentous, as the written wall, which struck,
O'er midnight bowls, the proud Assyrian pale,
Erewhile high-flush'd, with insolence, and wine?
Like that, the dial speaks; and points to thee,
Lorenzo! loth to break thy banquet up: 410
"O man, thy kingdom is departing from thee;
And, while it lasts, is emptier than my shade."
Its silent language such: nor need'st thou call
Thy Magi, to decipher what it means.
Know, like the Median, fate is in thy walls:
Dost ask, How? Whence? Belshazzar-like, amazed?
Man's make encloses the sure seeds of death;
Life feeds the murderer: ingrate! he thrives
On her own meal, and then his nurse devours.
But, here, Lorenzo, the delusion lies; 420
That solar shadow, as it measures life,
It life resembles too: life speeds away
From point to point, though seeming to stand still.
The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth:
Too subtle is the movement to be seen;
Yet soon man's hour is up, and we are gone.
Warnings point out our danger; gnomons, time:
As these are useless when the sun is set: 423
So those, but when more glorious reason shines.
Reason should judge in all; in reason's eye,
That sedentary shadow travels hard.
But such our gravitation to the wrong,
So prone our hearts to whisper what we wish,
'Tis later with the wise than he's aware:
A Wilmington goes slower than the sun:
And all mankind mistake their time of day;
Even age itself. Fresh hopes are hourly sown
In furrow'd brows. To gentle life's descent
We shut our eyes, and think it is a plain.
We take fair days in winter, for the spring; 440
And turn our blessings into bane. Since oft
Man must compute that age he cannot feel,
He scarce believes he's older for his years.
Thus, at life's latest eve, we keep in store
One disappointment sure, to crown the rest;
The disappointment of a promised hour.
On this, or similar, Philander! thou,
Whose mind was moral, as the preacher's tongue;
And strong, to wield all science, worth the name;
How often we talk'd down the summer's sun, 450
And cool'd our passions by the breezy stream!
How often thaw'd and shorten'd winter's eve,
By conflict kind, that struck out latent truth,
Best found, so sought; to the recluse more coy!
Thoughts disentangle passing o'er the lip;
Clean runs the thread; if not, 'tis thrown away,
Or kept to tie up nonsense for a song;
Song, fashionably fruitless; such as stains
The fancy, and unhallow'd passion fires;
Chiming her saints to Cytherea's[8] fane. 460
Know'st thou, Lorenzo! what a friend contains? 461
As bees mix'd nectar draw from fragrant flowers,
So men from friendship, wisdom and delight;
Twins tied by Nature, if they part, they die.
Hast thou no friend to set thy mind abroach?
Good sense will stagnate. Thoughts shut up, want air,
And spoil, like bales unopen'd to the sun.
Had thought been all, sweet speech had been denied;
Speech, thought's canal! speech, thought's criterion too!
Thought in the mine, may come forth gold, or dross;
When coin'd in words, we know its real worth. 471
If sterling, store it for thy future use;
'Twill buy thee benefit; perhaps, renown.
Thought, too, deliver'd, is the more possess'd;
Teaching, we learn; and, giving, we retain
The births of intellect; when dumb, forgot.
Speech ventilates our intellectual fire;
Speech burnishes our mental magazine;
Brightens, for ornament; and whets, for use.
What numbers, sheathed in erudition, lie, 480
Plunged to the hilts in venerable tomes,
And rusted in; who might have borne an edge,
And play'd a sprightly beam, if born to speech;
If born bless'd heirs of half their mother's tongue!
'Tis thought's exchange, which, like th' alternate push
Of waves conflicting, breaks the learned scum,
And defecates the student's standing pool.
In contemplation is his proud resource?
'Tis poor, as proud, by converse unsustain'd.
Rude thought runs wild in contemplation's field; 490
Converse, the menage, breaks it to the bit
Of due restraint; and emulation's spur
Gives graceful energy, by rivals awed.
'Tis converse qualifies for solitude;
As exercise, for salutary rest. 495
By that untutor'd, contemplation raves;
And Nature's fool, by wisdom is undone.
Wisdom, though richer than Peruvian mines,
And sweeter than the sweet ambrosial hive,
What is she, but the means of happiness?
That unobtain'd, than folly more a fool;
A melancholy fool, without her bells.
Friendship, the means of wisdom, richly gives 503
The precious end, which makes our wisdom wise.
Nature, in zeal for human amity,
Denies, or damps, an undivided joy.
Joy is an import; joy is an exchange;
Joy flies monopolists: it calls for two;
Rich fruit! heaven-planted! never pluck'd by one.
Needful auxiliars are our friends, to give 510
To social man true relish of himself.
Full on ourselves, descending in a line,
Pleasure's bright beam is feeble in delight:
Delight intense, is taken by rebound;
Reverberated pleasures fire the breast.
Celestial happiness, whene'er she stoops
To visit earth, one shrine the goddess finds,
And one alone, to make her sweet amends
For absent heaven--the bosom of a friend;
Where heart meets heart, reciprocally soft, 520
Each other's pillow to repose divine.
Beware the counterfeit: in passion's flame
Hearts melt, but melt like ice, soon harder froze.
True love strikes root in reason; passion's foe:
Virtue alone entenders us for life:
I wrong her much--entenders us for ever:
Of friendship's fairest fruits, the fruit most fair
Is virtue kindling at a rival fire,
And, emulously, rapid in her race. 529
O the soft enmity! endearing strife!
This carries friendship to her noontide point,
And gives the rivet of eternity.
From friendship, which outlives my former themes,
Glorious survivor of old time and death;
From friendship, thus, that flower of heavenly seed,
The wise extract earth's most Hyblean bliss,
Superior wisdom, crown'd with smiling joy.
But for whom blossoms this Elysian flower?
Abroad they find, who cherish it at home.
Lorenzo! pardon what my love extorts, 540
An honest love, and not afraid to frown.
Though choice of follies fasten on the great,
None clings more obstinate, than fancy, fond
That sacred friendship is their easy prey;
Caught by the wafture of a golden lure,
Or fascination of a high-born smile.
Their smiles, the great, and the coquette, throw out
For others' hearts, tenacious of their own;
And we no less of ours, when such the bait.
Ye fortune's cofferers! ye powers of wealth! 550
Can gold gain friendship? Impudence of hope!
As well mere man an angel might beget.
Love, and love only, is the loan for love.
Lorenzo! pride repress; nor hope to find
A friend, but what has found a friend in thee.
All like the purchase; few the price will pay;
And this makes friends such miracles below.
What if (since daring on so nice a theme)
I show thee friendship delicate, as dear,
Of tender violations apt to die? 560
Reserve will wound it; and distrust, destroy.
Deliberate on all things with thy friend.
But since friends grow not thick on every bough, 563
Nor every friend unrotten at the core;
First, on thy friend, deliberate with thyself;
Pause, ponder, sift; not eager in the choice,
Nor jealous of the chosen; fixing, fix;
Judge before friendship, then confide till death.
Well, for thy friend; but nobler far for thee;
How gallant danger for earth's highest prize! 570
A friend is worth all hazards we can run.
"Poor is the friendless master of a world:
A world in purchase for a friend is gain."
So sung he (angels hear that angel sing!
Angels from friendship gather half their joy),
So sung Philander, as his friend went round
In the rich ichor, in the generous blood
Of Bacchus, purple god of joyous wit,
A brow solute, and ever-laughing eye.
He drank long health, and virtue, to his friend; 580
His friend, who warm'd him more, who more inspired.
Friendship's the wine of life; but friendship new
(Not such was his) is neither strong, nor pure.
O for the bright complexion, cordial warmth,
And elevating spirit, of a friend,
For twenty summers ripening by my side;
All feculence of falsehood long thrown down;
All social virtues rising in his soul;
As crystal clear; and smiling, as they rise!
Here nectar flows; it sparkles in our sight; 590
Rich to the taste, and genuine from the heart.
High-flavour'd bliss for gods! on earth how rare!
On earth how lost!--Philander is no more.
Think'st thou the theme intoxicates my song?
Am I too warm?--Too warm I cannot be.
I loved him much; but now I love him more.
Like birds, whose beauties languish, half-conceal'd, 597
Till, mounted on the wing, their glossy plumes
Expanded shine with azure, green, and gold;
How blessings brighten as they take their flight!
His flight Philander took; his upward flight,
If ever soul ascended. Had he dropp'd
(That eagle genius!), oh! had he let fall
One feather as he flew; I, then, had wrote, 604
What friends might flatter; prudent foes forbear;
Rivals scarce damn; and Zoilus reprieve.
Yet what I can, I must: it were profane
To quench a glory lighted at the skies,
And cast in shadows his illustrious close.
Strange! the theme most affecting, most sublime, 610
Momentous most to man, should sleep unsung!
And yet it sleeps, by genius unawaked,
Paynim or Christian; to the blush of wit.
Man's highest triumph! man's profoundest fall!
The death-bed of the just! is yet undrawn
By mortal hand; it merits a divine:
Angels should paint it, angels ever there;
There, on a post of honour, and of joy.
Dare I presume, then? But Philander bids;
And glory tempts, and inclination calls-- 620
Yet am I struck; as struck the soul, beneath
Aerial groves' impenetrable gloom;
Or, in some mighty ruin's solemn shade;
Or, gazing by pale lamps on high-born dust,
In vaults; thin courts of poor unflatter'd kings;
Or, at the midnight altar's hallow'd flame.
Is it religion to proceed? I pause--
And enter, awed, the temple of my theme.
Is it his death-bed? No: it is his shrine:
Behold him, there, just rising to a god. 630
The chamber where the good man meets his fate, 631
Is privileged beyond the common walk
Of virtuous life, quite in the verge of heaven.
Fly, ye profane! if not, draw near with awe,
Receive the blessing, and adore the chance,
That threw in this Bethesda your disease;
If unrestored by this, despair your cure.
For here, resistless demonstration dwells;
A death-bed's a detector of the heart.
Here tired Dissimulation drops her mask, 640
Through life's grimace, that mistress of the scene!
Here real and apparent are the same.
You see the man; you see his hold on heaven;
If sound his virtue; as Philander's, sound.
Heaven waits not the last moment; owns her friends
On this side death; and points them out to men,
A lecture, silent, but of sovereign power!
To vice, confusion; and to virtue, peace.
Whatever farce the boastful hero plays,
Virtue alone has majesty in death; 650
And greater still, the more the tyrant frowns.
Philander! he severely frown'd on thee.
"No warning given! Unceremonious fate!
A sudden rush from life's meridian joy!
A wrench from all we love! from all we are!
A restless bed of pain! a plunge opaque
Beyond conjecture! feeble Nature's dread!
Strong reason's shudder at the dark unknown!
A sun extinguish'd! a just opening grave!
And, oh! the last, last, what? (can words express? 660
Thought reach it?)--the last--silence of a friend!"
Where are those horrors, that amazement, where,
This hideous group of ills, which singly shock,
Demand from man?--I thought him man till now.
Through nature's wreck, through vanquish'd agonies
(Like the stars struggling through this midnight gloom),
What gleams of joy! what more than human peace!
Where, the frail mortal? the poor abject worm?
No, not in death, the mortal to be found.
His conduct is a legacy for all; 670
Richer than Mammon's for his single heir.
His comforters he comforts; great in ruin,
With unreluctant grandeur, gives, not yields,
His soul sublime; and closes with his fate.
How our hearts burn'd within us at the scene!
Whence this brave bound o'er limits fix'd to man?
His God sustains him in his final hour!
His final hour brings glory to his God!
Man's glory Heaven vouchsafes to call her own.
We gaze, we weep; mix'd tears of grief and joy! 680
Amazement strikes! devotion bursts to flame!
Christians adore! and infidels believe!
As some tall tower,[9] or lofty mountain's brow,
Detains the sun, illustrious, from its height;
While rising vapours, and descending shades,
With damps, and darkness, drown the spacious vale;
Undamp'd by doubt, undarken'd by despair,
Philander, thus, augustly rears his head,
At that black hour, which general horror sheds
On the low level of th' inglorious throng: 690
Sweet peace, and heavenly hope, and humble joy,
Divinely beam on his exalted soul;
Destruction gild, and crown him for the skies,
With incommunicable lustre, bright.
NARCISSA.
TO HER GRACE
THE DUCHESS OF P----.[10]
Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere manes.--Virg.
NIGHT THIRD.
NARCISSA.
From dreams, where thought in fancy's maze runs mad,
To reason, that heaven-lighted lamp in man,
Once more I wake; and at the destined hour,
Punctual as lovers to the moment sworn,
I keep my assignation with my woe.
Oh! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought,
Lost to the noble sallies of the soul!
Who think it solitude to be alone.
Communion sweet! communion large and high!
Our reason, guardian angel, and our God! 10
Then nearest these, when others most remote;
And all, ere long, shall be remote, but these.
How dreadful, then, to meet them all alone,
A stranger! unacknowledged, unapproved!
Now woo them, wed them, bind them to thy breast;
To win thy wish, creation has no more.
Or if we wish a fourth, it is a friend--
But friends, how mortal! dangerous the desire.
Take Phoebus to yourselves, ye basking bards! 19
Inebriate at fair fortune's fountain-head;
And reeling through the wilderness of joy;
Where sense runs savage, broke from reason's chain,
And sings false peace, till smother'd by the pall.
My fortune is unlike; unlike my song;
Unlike the deity my song invokes.
I to Day's soft-eyed sister pay my court
(Endymion's rival!), and her aid implore;
Now first implored in succour to the Muse.
Thou, who didst lately borrow[11] Cynthia's form,
And modestly forego thine own! O thou, 30
Who didst thyself at midnight hours inspire!
Say, why not Cynthia patroness of song?
As thou her crescent, she thy character
Assumes; still more a goddess by the change.
Are there demurring wits, who dare dispute
This revolution in the world inspired?
Ye train Pierian! to the lunar sphere,
In silent hour address your ardent call
For aid immortal; less her brother's right.
She, with the spheres harmonious, nightly leads 40
The mazy dance, and hears their matchless strain;
A strain for gods, denied to mortal ear.
Transmit it heard, thou silver Queen of Heaven!
What title, or what name, endears thee most?
Cynthia! Cyllene! Phoebe!--or dost hear
With higher gust, fair P----d of the skies?
Is that the soft enchantment calls thee down,
More powerful than of old Circean charm?
Come; but from heavenly banquets with thee bring
The soul of song, and whisper in my ear 50
The theft divine; or in propitious dreams
(For dreams are thine) transfuse it through the breast 52
Of thy first votary--but not thy last;
If, like thy namesake, thou art ever kind.
And kind thou wilt be; kind on such a theme;
A theme so like thee, a quite lunar theme,
Soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair!
A theme that rose all pale, and told my soul,
'Twas Night; on her fond hopes perpetual night;
A night which struck a damp, a deadlier damp, 60
Than that which smote me from Philander's tomb.
Narcissa[12] follows, ere his tomb is closed.
Woes cluster; rare are solitary woes;
They love a train, they tread each other's heel;
Her death invades his mournful right, and claims
The grief that started from my lids for him:
Seizes the faithless, alienated tear,
Or shares it, ere it falls. So frequent Death,
Sorrow he more than causes, he confounds;
For human sighs his rival strokes contend, 70
And make distress, distraction. Oh, Philander!
What was thy fate? A double fate to me;
Portent, and pain! a menace, and a blow!
Like the black raven hovering o'er my peace,
Not less a bird of omen, than of prey.
It call'd Narcissa long before her hour;
It call'd her tender soul, by break of bliss,
From the first blossom, from the buds of joy;
Those few our noxious fate unblasted leaves
In this inclement clime of human life. 80
Sweet harmonist! and beautiful as sweet!
And young as beautiful! and soft as young!
And gay as soft! and innocent as gay!
And happy (if aught happy here) as good!
For fortune fond had built her nest on high. 85
Like birds quite exquisite of note and plume,
Transfix'd by fate (who loves a lofty mark),
How from the summit of the grove she fell,
And left it unharmonious! all its charms
Extinguish'd in the wonders of her song!
Her song still vibrates in my ravish'd ear,
Still melting there, and with voluptuous pain
(O to forget her!) thrilling through my heart! 93
Song, beauty, youth, love, virtue, joy! this group
Of bright ideas, flowers of paradise,
As yet unforfeit! in one blaze we bind,
Kneel, and present it to the skies; as all
We guess of heaven: and these were all her own.
And she was mine; and I was--was!--most blest!--
Gay title of the deepest misery! 100
As bodies grow more ponderous, robb'd of life;
Good lost weighs more in grief, than gain'd, in joy.
Like blossom'd trees o'erturn'd by vernal storm,
Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay;
And if in death still lovely, lovelier there;
Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.
And will not the severe excuse a sigh?
Scorn the proud man that is ashamed to weep;
Our tears indulged, indeed deserve our shame.
Ye that e'er lost an angel! pity me. 110
Soon as the lustre languish'd in her eye,
Dawning a dimmer day on human sight;
And on her cheek, the residence of spring,
Pale omen sat; and scatter'd fears around
On all that saw; (and who would cease to gaze,
That once had seen?) with haste, parental haste,
I flew, I snatch'd her from the rigid north,
Her native bed, on which bleak Boreas blew,
And bore her nearer to the sun;[13] the sun 119
(As if the sun could envy) check'd his beam,
Denied his wonted succour; nor with more
Regret beheld her drooping, than the bells
Of lilies; fairest lilies, not so fair!
Queen lilies! and ye painted populace!
Who dwell in fields, and lead ambrosial lives;
In morn and evening dew your beauties bathe,
And drink the sun; which gives your cheeks to glow,
And out-blush (mine excepted) every fair;
You gladlier grew, ambitious of her hand,
Which often cropp'd your odours, incense meet 130
To thought so pure! Ye lovely fugitives!
Coeval race with man! for man you smile;
Why not smile at him too? You share indeed
His sudden pass; but not his constant pain.
So man is made, nought ministers delight,
By what his glowing passions can engage;
And glowing passions, bent on aught below,
Must, soon or late, with anguish turn the scale;
And anguish, after rapture, how severe!
Rapture? Bold man! who tempts the wrath divine, 140
By plucking fruit denied to mortal taste,
While here, presuming on the rights of heaven.
For transport dost thou call on every hour,
Lorenzo? At thy friend's expense be wise;
Lean not on earth; 'twill pierce thee to the heart;
A broken reed, at best; but, oft, a spear;
On its sharp point peace bleeds, and hope expires.
Turn, hopeless thought! turn from her:--thought repell'd
Resenting rallies, and wakes every woe.
Snatch'd ere thy prime! and in thy bridal hour! 150
And when kind fortune, with thy lover, smiled! 151
And when high flavour'd thy fresh opening joys!
And when blind man pronounced thy bliss complete!
And on a foreign shore; where strangers wept!
Strangers to thee; and, more surprising still,
Strangers to kindness, wept: their eyes let fall
Inhuman tears: strange tears! that trickled down
From marble hearts! obdurate tenderness!
A tenderness that call'd them more severe;
In spite of nature's soft persuasion, steel'd; 160
While nature melted, superstition raved;
That mourn'd the dead; and this denied a grave.
Their sighs incensed; sighs foreign to the will!
Their will the tiger suck'd, outraged the storm.
For oh! the cursed ungodliness of zeal!
While sinful flesh relented, spirit nursed
In blind infallibility's embrace,
The sainted spirit petrified the breast;
Denied the charity of dust, to spread
O'er dust! a charity their dogs enjoy. 170
What could I do? what succour? what resource?
With pious sacrilege, a grave I stole;
With impious piety, that grave I wrong'd;
Short in my duty; coward in my grief!
More like her murderer, than friend, I crept,
With soft-suspended step, and muffled deep
In midnight darkness, whisper'd my last sigh.
I whisper'd what should echo through their realms;
Nor writ her name, whose tomb should pierce the skies.
Presumptuous fear! How durst I dread her foes, 180
While nature's loudest dictates I obey'd?
Pardon necessity, bless'd shade! of grief
And indignation rival bursts I pour'd;
Half execration mingled with my prayer;
Kindled at man, while I his God adored; 185
Sore grudged the savage land her sacred dust;
Stamp'd the cursed soil; and with humanity
(Denied Narcissa) wish'd them all a grave.
Glows my resentment into guilt? What guilt
Can equal violations of the dead?
The dead how sacred! Sacred is the dust
Of this heaven-labour'd form, erect, divine! 192
This heaven-assumed majestic robe of earth,
He deign'd to wear, who hung the vast expanse
With azure bright, and clothed the sun in gold.
When every passion sleeps that can offend;
When strikes us every motive that can melt;
When man can wreak his rancour uncontroll'd,
That strongest curb on insult and ill-will;
Then, spleen to dust? the dust of innocence? 200
An angel's dust?--This Lucifer transcends;
When he contended for the patriarch's bones,
'Twas not the strife of malice, but of pride;
The strife of pontiff pride, not pontiff gall.
Far less than this is shocking in a race
Most wretched, but from streams of mutual love;
And uncreated, but for love divine;
And, but for love divine, this moment, lost,
By fate resorb'd, and sunk in endless night.
Man hard of heart to man! of horrid things 210
Most horrid! 'mid stupendous, highly strange!
Yet oft his courtesies are smoother wrongs;
Pride brandishes the favours He confers,
And contumelious his humanity:
What then his vengeance? Hear it not, ye stars!
And thou, pale moon! turn paler at the sound;
Man is to man the sorest, surest ill.
A previous blast foretells the rising storm;
O'erwhelming turrets threaten ere they fall; 219
Volcanos bellow ere they disembogue;
Earth trembles ere her yawning jaws devour;
And smoke betrays the wide-consuming fire:
Ruin from man is most conceal'd when near,
And sends the dreadful tidings in the blow.
Is this the flight of fancy? Would it were!
Heaven's Sovereign saves all beings, but himself,
That hideous sight, a naked human heart.
Fired is the Muse? And let the Muse be fired:
Who not inflamed, when what he speaks, he feels,
And in the nerve most tender, in his friends? 230
Shame to mankind! Philander had his foes;
He felt the truths I sing, and I in him.
But he, nor I, feel more: past ills, Narcissa!
Are sunk in thee, thou recent wound of heart!
Which bleeds with other cares, with other pangs;
Pangs numerous, as the numerous ills that swarm'd
O'er thy distinguish'd fate, and, clustering there
Thick as the locusts on the land of Nile,
Made death more deadly, and more dark the grave.
Reflect (if not forgot my touching tale) 240
How was each circumstance with aspics arm'd?
An aspic, each! and all, a hydra woe:
What strong Herculean virtue could suffice?--
Or is it virtue to be conquer'd here?
This hoary cheek a train of tears bedews;
And each tear mourns its own distinct distress;
And each distress, distinctly mourn'd, demands
Of grief still more, as heighten'd by the whole.
A grief like this proprietors excludes:
Not friends alone such obsequies deplore; 250
They make mankind the mourner; carry sighs
Far as the fatal fame can wing her way;
And turn the gayest thought of gayest age, 253
Down their right channel, through the vale of death.
The vale of death! that hush'd Cimmerian vale,
Where darkness, brooding o'er unfinish'd fates
With raven wing incumbent, waits the day
(Dread day!) that interdicts all future change!
That subterranean world, that land of ruin!
Fit walk, Lorenzo, for proud human thought!
There let my thought expatiate, and explore 261
Balsamic truths, and healing sentiments,
Of all most wanted, and most welcome, here.
For gay Lorenzo's sake, and for thy own,
My soul! "the fruits of dying friends survey;
Expose the vain of life; weigh life and death;
Give death his eulogy; thy fear subdue;
And labour that first palm of noble minds,
A manly scorn of terror from the tomb."
This harvest reap from thy Narcissa's grave. 270
As poets feign'd from Ajax' streaming blood
Arose, with grief inscribed, a mournful flower;
Let wisdom blossom from my mortal wound.
And first, of dying friends; what fruit from these?
It brings us more than triple aid; an aid
To chase our thoughtlessness, fear, pride, and guilt.
Our dying friends come o'er us like a cloud,
To damp our brainless ardours; and abate
That glare of life, which often blinds the wise.
Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth 280
Our rugged pass to death; to break those bars
Of terror, and abhorrence, nature throws
Cross our obstructed way; and, thus to make
Welcome, as safe, our port from every storm.
Each friend by fate snatch'd from us, is a plume
Pluck'd from the wing of human vanity,
Which makes us stoop from our aerial heights, 287
And, damp'd with omen of our own decease,
On drooping pinions of ambition lower'd,
Just skim earth's surface, ere we break it up,
O'er putrid earth to scratch a little dust,
And save the world a nuisance. Smitten friends
Are angels sent on errands full of love;
For us they languish, and for us they die:
And shall they languish, shall they die, in vain?
Ungrateful, shall we grieve their hovering shades,
Which wait the revolution in our hearts?
Shall we disdain their silent soft address;
Their posthumous advice, and pious prayer?
Senseless, as herds that graze their hallow'd graves, 300
Tread under foot their agonies and groans;
Frustrate their anguish, and destroy their deaths?
Lorenzo! no; the thought of death indulge;
Give it its wholesome empire! let it reign,
That kind chastiser of thy soul in joy!
Its reign will spread thy glorious conquests far,
And still the tumults of thy ruffled breast:
Auspicious era! golden days, begin!
The thought of death shall, like a god, inspire.
And why not think on death? Is life the theme 310
Of every thought? and wish of every hour?
And song of every joy? Surprising truth!
The beaten spaniel's fondness not so strange.
To wave the numerous ills that seize on life
As their own property, their lawful prey;
Ere man has measured half his weary stage,
His luxuries have left him no reserve,
No maiden relishes, unbroach'd delights;
On cold served repetitions he subsists,
And in the tasteless present chews the past; 320
Disgusted chews, and scarce can swallow down. 321
Like lavish ancestors, his earlier years
Have disinherited his future hours,
Which starve on orts, and glean their former field.
Live ever here, Lorenzo?--shocking thought!
So shocking, they who wish, disown it too;
Disown from shame what they from folly crave.
Live ever in the womb, nor see the light?
For what live ever here?--With labouring step
To tread our former footsteps? pace the round 330
Eternal? to climb life's worn, heavy wheel,
Which draws up nothing new? to beat, and beat
The beaten track? to bid each wretched day
The former mock? to surfeit on the same,
And yawn our joys? or thank a misery
For change, though sad? to see what we have seen?
Hear, till unheard, the same old slabber'd tale?
To taste the tasted, and at each return
Less tasteful? o'er our palates to decant
Another vintage? strain a flatter year, 340
Through loaded vessels, and a laxer tone?
Crazy machines to grind earth's wasted fruits!
Ill-ground, and worse concocted! load, not life!
The rational foul kennels of excess!
Still-streaming thoroughfares of dull debauch!
Trembling each gulp, lest death should snatch the bowl.
Such of our fine ones is the wish refined!
So would they have it: elegant desire!
Why not invite the bellowing stalls, and wilds?
But such examples might their riot awe. 350
Through want of virtue, that is, want of thought
(Though on bright thought they father all their flights),
To what are they reduced? To love, and hate,
The same vain world; to censure, and espouse,
This painted shrew of life, who calls them fool 355
Each moment of each day; to flatter bad
Through dread of worse; to cling to this rude rock,
Barren, to them, of good, and sharp with ills,
And hourly blacken'd with impending storms,
And infamous for wrecks of human hope--
Scared at the gloomy gulf, that yawns beneath,
Such are their triumphs! such their pangs of joy! 362
'Tis time, high time, to shift this dismal scene.
This hugg'd, this hideous state, what art can cure?
One only; but that one, what all may reach;
Virtue--she, wonder-working goddess! charms
That rock to bloom; and tames the painted shrew;
And what will more surprise, Lorenzo! gives
To life's sick, nauseous iteration, change;
And straightens nature's circle to a line. 370
Believest thou this, Lorenzo? lend an ear,
A patient ear, thou'lt blush to disbelieve.
A languid, leaden iteration reigns,
And ever must, o'er those, whose joys are joys
Of sight, smell, taste: the cuckoo-seasons sing
The same dull note to such as nothing prize,
But what those seasons, from the teeming earth,
To doating sense indulge. But nobler minds,
Which relish fruits unripen'd by the sun,
Make their days various; various as the dyes 380
On the dove's neck, which wanton in his rays.
On minds of dove-like innocence possess'd,
On lighten'd minds, that bask in virtue's beams,
Nothing hangs tedious, nothing old revolves
In that for which they long, for which they live.
Their glorious efforts, wing'd with heavenly hope,
Each rising morning sees still higher rise;
Each bounteous dawn its novelty presents
To worth maturing, new strength, lustre, fame; 389
While nature's circle, like a chariot-wheel
Rolling beneath their elevated aims,
Makes their fair prospect fairer every hour;
Advancing virtue, in a line to bliss;
Virtue, which Christian motives best inspire!
And bliss, which Christian schemes alone ensure!
And shall we then, for virtue's sake, commence
Apostates, and turn infidels for joy?
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 AEthiops 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 paeans[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 AEtna 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.