Of life stood still, and nature made a pause;
An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
And let her prophecy be soon fulfil'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,
(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

Primæval 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;
My soul, which flies to thee, her trust, her treasure,
As misers to their gold, while others rest.

Thro' 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 thro' various scenes of life and death;
And from each scene, the noblest truths inspire.
Nor less inspire my conduct, than my song;
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 vial 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.
It is the signal that demands dispatch:

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!
Who centred in our make such strange extremes !
From different natures, marvelously mix'd,
Connection exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguish'd link in being's endless chain !
Midway from nothing to the DEITY!
A beam ethereal, sully'd, and absorpt!
Tho' sully'd and dishonor'd, still divine!
Dim miniature of greatness absolute !
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal! insect infinite!

A worm! a god !-I tremble at myself,
And in myself am lost! at home, a stranger,
Thought wanders up and down, surpriz'd, aghast,
And wond'ring 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.

'Tis past conjecture: all things rise in proof:
While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spreads,
What tho' 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 scal'd the cliff, or danc'd on hollow winds
With antic shapes? wild natives of the brain !
Her ceaseless flight, tho' devious, speaks her nature
Of subtler essence than the trodden clod;
Active, aerial, tow'ring, unconfin'd,
Unfetter'd with her gross companion's fall.
E'en silent night proclaims my soul immortal:
E'en silent night proclaims eternal day.
For human weal, heav'n 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, rack'd up in dust, ethereal fire?

They live! they greatly live! a life on earth
Unkindled, unconceiv'd! and from an eye
Of tenderness, let heavenly pity fall
On me, more justly number'd with the dead.
This is the desart, this the solitude :
How populous, how vital, is the grave!
This is creation's melancholy vault,
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,
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,
The future embryo, slumb'ring 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.
Pris'ner 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.

On life's fair tree, fast by the throne of GOD,
What golden joys ambrosial clust❜ring 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,
Thrown into tumult, raptur'd, or alarm'd
At ought 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 incrusted by the world!
O how self-fetter'd was my grov❜ling soul!
How, like a worm, was I rapt round and round
In silken thought, which reptile fancy spun,
Till darken'd reason lay quite clouded o'er
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 dreamt
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 noon-tide traces hung
With gorgeous tapestries of pictur'd joys!
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's now my frenzy's pompous furniture?
The cobwebb'd cottage, with its ragged wall
Of mould'ring 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.

O ye bless'd 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,

The ghastly thought would drink up all your joy,
And quite unparadise the realms of light.
Safe are you lodg'd above these rolling spheres ;
The baneful influence of whose giddy dance
Sheds sad vicissitude on all beneath.
Here teems with revolutions ev'ry hour;

And rarely for the better; or the best,
More mortal than the common births of fate.
Each moment has its sickle, emulous

Of time's enormous scythe, whose ample sweep
Strikes empires from the root; each moment plays
His little weapon in the narrow 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!

A bold invasion of the rights of heav'n!
I clasp'd the phantoms, and I found them air;
O 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.
Amidst such mighty plunder, why exhaust
Thy partial quiver on a mark so mean?
Why thy peculiar rancor wreak'd on me?
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?

Thy shaft slew thrice; 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 neighbor? grieve to see thy wheel
Of ceaseless change outwhirl'd in human life?
How wanes my borrow'd bliss! from fortune's smile,
Precarious courtesy ! not virtue's sure,
Self-given, solar, ray of sound delight.

In ev'ry varied posture, place, and hour,
How widow'd every thought of ev'ry joy!
Thought, busy thought! too busy for my peace!
Thro' the dark postern of time long elasp'd,
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 num'rous train!
I rue the riches of my former fate;
Sweet comfort's blasted clusters I lament;