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.
Shall I see glories beaming from his brow,
Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?
Your golden wings, now hov'ring o'er him, shed
Protection; now are waving in applause
To that blest son of foresight! lord of fate!
That awful independent on to-morrow!
Whose work is done; who triumphs in the past;
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 godlike passion for eternals quench'd;
All relish of realities expir'd;
Renounc'd 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 ev'ry great and glorious aim;
Imbruted ev'ry faculty divine;
Heart-bury'd in the rubbish of the world.
The world, that gulf of souls, immortal souls,
Souls elevate, angelic, wing'd with fire
To reach the distant skies, and triumph there
On thrones, which shall not mourn their masters chang'd;
Tho' 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,
What 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,
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 deplor'd:
Lamenting or lamented all our lot!
Is Death at distance? No; he has been on thee,
And giv'n sure earnest of his final blow.
Those hours that lately smil'd, where are they now?
Pallid to thought, and ghastly! drown'd, all drown'd
In that great deep which nothing disembogues!
And, dying, they bequeath'd 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 in 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. O 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, tho' 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?
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,
And sleep, till earth herself shall be no more;
Since then (as emmets, their small world o'erthrown)
We, sore amaz'd, from out earth's ruins crawl,
And rise to fate extreme of foul or fair,
A › 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
From bosom, bleeding o'er the sacred dead!
Should not each dial strike us as we pass,
Portentious, 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! loath to break thy banquet up.
"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 decypher what it means.
Know, like the Median, fate is in thy walls:
Dost ask how? whence? Belshazzar-like, amaz’d.
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;
That solar shadow, as it measures life,
It life resembles too. Life speeds away
From point to point, tho' seeming to stand still.
The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth:
Too subtle in 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;
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;
E'en 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,
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 promis'd 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,
And cool'd our passions by the breezy stream!
How often thaw'd and shorten'd winter's eve,
|