Dr. Young has some lines on this subject which are by some much
admired.—But tho’ the subject be the same, it is differently
circumstanced.—Young’s is a general description of the last judgment,
Quarles describes its effect on a single being who is supposed to have
lived fearless of such an event.
————At the destin’d hour,
By the loud trumpet summon’d to the charge,
See all the formidable sons of fire,
Eruptions, earthquakes, comets, lightnings, play
Their various engines; all at once disgorge
Their blazing magazines; and take by storm
This poor terrestrial citadel of man.
Amazing period! when each mountain height
Out-burns Vesuvius! rocks eternal pour
Their melted mass, as rivers once they pour’d;
Stars rush, and final _Ruin_ fiercely drives
Her plough-share o’er creation.——
Now to me, all this is a “pestilent congregation of vapour.”——The
formidable sons of fire spewing out blazing magazines—and _Ruin_ like
a plough-man (or rather plough-woman) driving _her_ plough-share—are
mean, incoherent images. How much more sublimely Quarles expresses the
same, and indeed some additional ones, in the last three lines?
In the print belonging to the emblem from which the following is taken,
is a figure striking a globe with his knuckles.—The motto, _Tinnit,
inane est_.
She’s empty—hark! she sounds—there’s nothing there
But noise to fill thy ear;
Thy vain enquiry can at length but find
A blast of murm’ring wind:
It is a cask, that seems, as full as fair,
But merely tunn’d with air;
Fond youth, go build thy hopes on better grounds:
The soul that vainly sounds
Her joys upon this world, but feeds on empty sounds!