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With foft-fufpended step; and, muffled deep
In midnight darkness, whisper'd my last figh.
I whisper'd what should echo thro' their realms:
Nor writ her name, whofe tomb should pierce the skies.
Prefumptuous fear! how durft I dread her foes,

While nature's loudeft dictates I obey'd?
Pardon neceffity, bleft fhade! Of grief
And indignation rival burfts I pour'd;
Half-execration mingled with my pray'r;
Kindled at man, while I his God ador'd;
Sore-grudg'd the favage land her facred dust ;
Stampt the curft foil; and with humanity
(Deny'd Narciffa) wifh'd them all a grave.
Glows my refentment into guilt? what guilt
Can equal violations of the dead?

The dead how facred! facred is the duft
Of this heav'n-labour'd form, erect, divine!
This heav'n-affum'd majestic robe of earth,
He deign'd to wear, who hung the vast expanfe
With azure bright, and cloath'd the fun in gold.
When every paffion fleeps that can offend ;
When strikes us ev'ry motive that can melt;
When man can wreak his rancour uncontroul'd,
That strongest curb on infult and ill-will;
Then, fpleen to duft? the duft of innocence?
An angel's duft!-this Lucifer tranfcends;

When he contended for the patriarch's bones,
'Twas not the ftrife of malice, but of pride;
The ftrife of pontiff pride, not pontiff gall.
Far less than this is fhocking in a race

Moft wretched, but from ftreams of mutual love;
And uncreated, but for love divine;

And, but for love divine, this moment, lost,
By fate reforb'd, and funk in endless night.
Man hard of heart to man! of horrid things
Moft horrid! 'mid ftupendous, highly strange!
Yet oft his courtefies 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 found;
Man is to man the foreft, fureft, ill.

A previous blast foretels the rifing storm;
C'erwhelming turrets threaten ere they fall;
Volcanos bellow ere they difembogue;
Earth trembles ere her yawning jaws devour;
And smoke betrays the wide-confuming fire:
Ruin from man is moft conceal'd when near,
And fends the dreadful tidings in the blow.
Is this the flight of fancy? would it were!
Heav'n's Sov'reign faves all beings but himself,
That hideous fight, a naked human heart.

Fir'd is the mufe? and let the mufe be fir'd:

Who not inflam'd, when what he fpeaks, he feels,
And in the nerve most tender, in his friends?
Shame to mankind! Philander had his foes;
He felt the truths I fing, and I in him.

But he, nor I, feel more: paft ills, Narciffa!
Are funk in thee, thou recent wound of heart!
Which bleeds with other cares, with other pangs;
Pangs num'rous, as the num'rous ills that fwarm'd
O'er thy diftinguifht fate, and, cluft'ring there
'Thick as the locust on the land of Nile,

Made death more deadly, and more dark the grave.
Reflect (if not forgot my touching tale)

How was each circumftance with afpics arm'd?
An afpic, each; and all, an hydra-woe.
What ftrong Herculean virtue could fuffice?—
Or is it virtue to be conquer'd here?

This hoary cheek a train of tears bedews;
And cach tear mourns its own distinct distress;
And each distress, diftin&tly mourn'd, demands
Of grief ftill more, as heighten'd by the whole.
A grief like this proprietors excludes:
Not friends alone fuch obfequies deplore;
"They make mankind the mourner; carry fighs
Far as the fatal fame can wing her way;
And turn the gayeft thought of gayest age,

Down

Down their right channel, thro' the vale of death.
The vale of death! that hufht Cimmerian vale,
Where dark nefs, brooding o'er unfinisht fates,
With raven wing incumbent, waits the day
.{Dread day!) that interdicts all future change!
That fubterranean world, that land of ruin!

Fit walk, Lorenzo, for proud human thought!
There let my thought expatiate; and explore
Balfamic truths, and healing fentiments,

Of all most wanted, and moft welcome, here.
For gay Lorenzo's fake, and for thy own,
My foul! "The fruits of dying friends furvey;

66

Expofe the vain of life; weigh life and death: "Give death his eulogy; thy fear fubdu'd; "And labour that firft palm of noble minds, "A manly fcorn of terror from the tomb.**

This harvest reap from thy Narciffa's grave.
As poets feign'd, from Ajax' ftreaming blood
Arofe, with grief infcrib'd, a mournful flow'r;
Let wisdom bloffom from my mortal wound.
And first, of dying friends; what fruit from thefe ?
It brings us more than triple aid; an aid

To chase our thoughtleffnefs, fear, pride, and guilt,
Our dying friends come o'er us like a cloud,
To damp our brainless ardors; and abate
That glare of life, which often blinds the wife.

Our

Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth.
Our rugged pafs to death; to break those bars
Of terror, and abhorrence, nature throws
Cross our obstructed way; and, thus, to make
Welcome, as fafe, our port from ev'ry ftorm.
Each friend by fate fnatch'd from us, is a plume
Pluckt from the wing of human vanity,
Which makes us floop from our aëreal heights,
And, dampt with omen of our own decease,
On drooping pinions of ambition lower'd,
Juft fkim earth's furface, ere we break it up,
O'er putrid pride to fcratch a little duft,

And fave the world a nuifance. Smitten friends
Are angels fent on errands full of love;

For us they languish, and for us they die:

And fhall they languifh, fhall they die, in vain ?
Ungrateful, fhall we grieve their hov'ring fhades,
Which wait the revolution in our hearts ?

Shall we difdain their filent, foft addrefs;

Their pofthumous advice, and pious pray'r? Senfelefs, as herds that their hallow'd graves.

graze

Tread under-foot their agonies and groans;

Fruftrate their anguish, and destroy their deaths?

HYMNS

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