Heaven, earth, ourselves; 'tis duty, glory, peace, 405
Affliction is the good man's fhining scene;
Profperity conceals his brightest ray;
As night to stars, woe luftre gives to man.
Heroes in battle, pilots in the storm,
And virtue in calamities, admire.
The crown of manhood is a winter-joy;
An evergreen, that stands the Northern blast,
And bloffoms in the rigour of our fate.
'Tis a prime part of happiness, to know
How much unhappiness must prove our lot;
A part which few poffefs! I'll pay life's tax,
Without one rebel murmur, from this hour,
Nor think it misery to be a man ;
Who thinks it is, fhall never be a God.
Some ills we wish for, when we wish to live.
What spoke proud passion ?" With my being loft?"
Prefumptuous! blafphemous! abfurd! and false!
The triumph of my foul is-That I am;
And therefore that I may be-what? Lorenzo!
Look inward, and look deep; and deeper ftill;
Unfathomably deep our treasure runs
In golden veins, through all eternity!
Ages, and ages, and fucceeding ftill
New ages, where the phantom of an hour,
Which courts, each night, dull slumber, for repair, 430 Shall wake, and wonder, and exult, and praise,
And fly through infinite, and all unlock;
And (if deserv'd) by heaven's redundant love,
* Referring to the First Night.
Made half-adorable itself, adore;
And find, in adoration, endless joy!
Where thou, not master of a moment here,
Frail as the flower, and fleeting as the gale,
May'ft boast a whole eternity, enrich'd
With all a kind Omnipotence can pour.
Since Adam fell, no mortal, uninspir'd,
Has ever yet conceiv'd, or ever shall,
How kind is God, how great (if good) is Man.
No man too largely from heaven's love can hope,
If what is hop'd he labours to fecure.
Ills?-there are none: All-gracious! none from thee;
From man full many! numerous is the race
Of blackest ills, and thofe immortal too,
Begot by madness on fair liberty;
Heaven's daughter, hell-debauch'd! ber hand alone
Unlocks deftruction to the fons of men,
Firft barr'd by thine: high-wall'd with adamant,
Guarded with terrors reaching to this world,
And cover'd with the thunders of thy law;
Whose threats are mercies, whofe injunctions, guides,
Affifting, not restraining, reason's choice;
Whofe fanctions, unavoidable refults
From nature's course, indulgently reveal'd;
If unreveal'd, more dangerous, nor less fure.
Thus, an indulgent father warns his fons,
"Do this; fly that"-nor always tells the cause; 460 Pleas'd to reward, as duty to his will,
A conduct needful to their own repofe.
Great God of wonders! (if, thy love survey'd,
Aught elfe the name of wonderful retains)
What rocks are thefe, on which to build our trust! 465 Thy ways admit no blemish; none I find ;
Or this alone" That none is to be found."
Not one, to soften cenfure's hardy crime;
Not one, to palliate peevish grief's Complaint,
Who like a dæmon, murmuring from the dust,
Dares into judgment call her Judge.-Supreme!
For all I blefs thee; moft, for the fevere;
* Her death-my own at hand--the fiery gulph,
That flaming bound of wrath omnipotent!
It thunders;but it thunders to preferve;
-It ftrengthens what it ftrikes; its wholfome dread
Averts the dreaded pain; its hideous groans
Join heaven's fweet hallelujahs in thy praise,
Great Source of good alone! How kind in all!
In vengeance kind! pain, death, gehenna, Save. 480
Thus, in thy world material, Mighty Mind!
Not that alone which folaces, and shines,
The rough and gloomy, challenges our praise.
The winter is as needful as the Spring;
The thunder, as the fun; a ftagnate mafs
Of vapours breeds a peftilential air :
Nor more propitious the Favonian breeze
And, in their use, eclipses learn to shine.
Man is responsible for ills receiv'd; Those we call wretched are a chofen band, Compell'd to refuge in the right, for peace. Amid my lift of bleffings infinite,
Stand this the foremost, “That my heart has bled.”
'Tis heaven's last effort of good-will to man ;
When pain can't blefs, heaven quits us in defpair. 500
Who fails to grieve, when just occafion calls,
Or grieves too much, deserves not to be blest;
Inhuman, or effeminate, his heart;
Reason abfolves the grief, which reason ends.
May heaven ne'er truft my friend with happiness, 505
Till it has taught him how to bear it well,
By previous pain; and made it safe to fmile!
Such fmiles are mine, and fuch may they remain;
Nor hazard their extinction, from excess.
My change of heart a change of ftyle demands;
The Confolation cancels the Complaint,
And makes a convert of my guilty song.
And when o'er-labour'd, and inclin'd to breathe,
A panting traveller fome rifing ground,
Some small afcent, has gain'd, he turns him round, 515
And measures with his eye the various vales,
The fields, woods, meads, and rivers, he has past;
And, fatiate of his journey, thinks of home,
Endear'd by distance, nor affects more toil;
Thus I, though small, indeed, is that ascent
The Mufe has gain'd, review the paths she trod;
Various, extenfive, beaten but by view;
And, confcious of her prudence in repose,
Paufe; and with pleasure meditate an end,
Though ftill remote; fo fruitful is my theme.
Through many a field of meral, and divine,
The Muse has stray'd; and much of forrow seen
In human ways; and much of false and vain;
Which none, who travel this bad road, can miss.
O'er friends deceas'd full heartily he wept;
Of love divine the wonders fhe display'd;
Prov'd man immortal; fhew'd the fource of joy
The grand tribunal rais'd; affign'd the bounds
Of human grief: in few, to close the whole,
The moral Mufe has fhadow'd out a fketch,
Though not in form, nor with a Raphael-stroke,
Of most our weakness needs believe, or do,
In this our land of travel and of hope,
For peace on earth, or profpect of the skies.
What then remains? Much! much! a mighty debt To be discharg'd: these thoughts, O Night! are thine From thee they came, like lovers' fecret fighs, While others flept. So Cynthia (poets feign) In fhadows veil'd, foft-fliding from her sphere, Her fhepherd chear'd; of her enamour'd lefs, Than I of thee.—And art thou still unfung, Beneath whofe brow, and by whose aid, I fing? Immortal filence! where fhall I begin? Where end? Or how steal mufic from the spheres, To footh their goddess ?.
Nature's great ancestor! day's elder-born! .
|