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 wo's wide empire, where deep troubles toss,
Loud sorrows howl, envenom'd passions bite,
Rav'nous calamities our vitals seize,
And threat'ning Fate wide opens to devour.
What then am I, who sorrow for myself?
In age, in infancy, from other's 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.
More gen'rous sorrow, while it sinks exalts,
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang.
No 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, Wouldst thou I should congratulate thy fate!
I know thou wouldst; thy pride demands it from me: Let thy pride pardon what thy nature needs,
The salutary censure of a friend.
Thou happy wreteh! by blindness thou art blest,
By dotage dandled to perpetual smiles.
Know, Smiler! at thy peril art thou pleas'd;
Thy pleasure is the promise of thy pain.
Misfortune, like a creditor severe,
But rises in demand for her delay;
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 Heav'n tremendous in its frowns? most sure;
And in its favours formidable too :
Its favours here are trials, not rewards;
A call to duty, not discharge from care,
And should alarm us full as much as woes,
Awake us to their cause and consequence,
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,
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 dy'd with thee, Philander ! thy last sigh 345
Dissolv'd the charm; the disenchanted earth
Lost all her lustre. Where her glitt'ring tow'rs?
Her golden mountains where? all darken'd down
To naked waste; a dreary vale of tears.
The great magician's dead! Thou poor, pale piece 350
Of outcast earth, in darkness! what a change
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, 355
(Sly, treach'rous miner!) working in the dark,
Smil'd 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!
Man's foresight is conditionally wise.
Lorenzo! wisdom into folly turns,
Oft' the first instant in idea fair
To labouring thought is bore. 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
Are mingled with the streaming sands of life.
By Fate's inviolable oath is sworn
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
Our mountain-hopes, spin out eternal schemes,
As we the Fatal Sisters could outspin,
And, big with life's futurities, expire.
Not ev'n Philander had bespoke his shroud,
Nor had he cause; a warning was deny'd.
How many fall as sudden, not as safe?
As sudden, tho' for years admonish'd home?
Of human ills the last extreine 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;
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
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 applauds. 405
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead !
Time lodg'd in their own hands is Folly's vails;
That lodg'd in Fate's to wisdom they consign;
The thing they cann't but purpose they postpone.
'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 thro' ev'ry 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;
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 425
|