University of Virginia Library

“Grief from the future borrow'd peace, ere-while.
The future vanish'd, and the present pain'd!
Strange import of unprecedented ill!
Fall, how profound! Like Lucifer's, the fall!
Unequal fate: his fall, without his guilt!
From where fond Hope built her pavilion high,
The gods among, hurl'd headlong, hurl'd at once
To night, to nothing! darker still than night.
If 'twas a dream, why wake me, my worst foe?
Lorenzo! boastful of the name of friend!
O for delusion! O for error still!
Could vengeance strike much stronger than to plant
A thinking being in a world like this,
Not over-rich before, now beggar'd quite,
More cursed than at the fall?—The sun goes out!
The thorns shoot up! What thorns in every thought!
Why sense of better? It embitters worse.
Why sense? why life, if but to sigh, then sink
To what I was? Twice nothing! and much woe!
Woe from Heaven's bounties! woe from what was wont
To flatter most,—high intellectual powers.

“Thought, virtue, knowledge! blessings, by thy scheme
All poison'd into pains. First, knowledge, once
My soul's ambition, now her greatest dread.
To know myself, true wisdom? No, to shun
That shocking science. Parent of despair,
Avert thy mirror! if I see, I die.

“Know my Creator? Climb His bless'd abode
By painful speculation, pierce the veil,
Dive in His nature, read His attributes,
And gaze in admiration—on a foe,
Obtruding life, withholding happiness?
From the full rivers that surround His throne,
Not letting fall one drop of joy on man:
Man gasping for one drop, that he might cease
To curse his birth, nor envy reptiles more!
Ye sable clouds, ye darkest shades of night!
Hide Him, for ever hide Him, from my thought,
Once all my comfort, source and soul of joy!
Now leagued with furies, and with thee against me.

“Know His achievements? Study His renown?
Contemplate this amazing universe,
Dropp'd from His hand, with miracles replete?—
For what? 'Mid miracles of nobler name,
To find one miracle of misery?
To find the being, which alone can know
And praise His works, a blemish on His praise?
Through Nature's ample range, in thought, to stroll,
And start at man, the single mourner there,
Breathing high hope, chain'd down to pangs and death?

“Knowing is suffering: and shall Virtue share
The sigh of Knowledge?—Virtue shares the sigh.
By straining up the steep of excellent,
By battles fought, and from Temptation won,
What gains she, but the pang of seeing worth,
Angelic worth, soon shuffled in the dark
With every vice, and swept to brutal dust?
Merit is madness; virtue is a crime;
A crime to Reason, if it costs us pain
Unpaid: what pain, amidst a thousand more,
To think the most abandon'd, after days
Of triumph o'er their betters, find in death
As soft a pillow, nor make fouler clay!

“Duty! Religion!—These, our duty done,
Imply reward. Religion is mistake.
Duty!—There's none, but to repel the cheat.
Ye cheats, away! ye daughters of my Pride!
Who feign yourselves the favourites of the Skies:
Ye towering hopes, abortive energies!
That toss and struggle in my lying breast,
To scale the skies, and build presumptions there,
As I were heir of an eternity.
Vain, vain ambitions! trouble me no more.
Why travel far in quest of sure defeat?
As bounded as my being, be my wish.
All is inverted, Wisdom is a fool.
Sense! take the rein; blind Passion! drive us on;
And, Ignorance! befriend us on our way;
Ye new, but truest patrons of our peace!
Yes; give the Pulse full empire; live the Brute,
Since as the Brute we die. The sum of man,
Of godlike man, to revel and to rot!

“But not on equal terms with other brutes:
Their revels a more poignant relish yield,
And safer too; they never poisons choose.
Instinct, than Reason, makes more wholesome meals,
And sends all-marring Murmur far away.
For sensual life, they best philosophize;
Theirs that serene the sages sought in vain:
'Tis man alone expostulates with Heaven;
His all the power, and all the cause, to mourn.
Shall human eyes alone dissolve in tears?
And bleed in anguish none but human hearts?
The wide-stretch'd realm of intellectual woe,
Surpassing sensual far, is all our own.
In life so fatally distinguish'd, why
Cast in one lot, confounded, lump'd in death?

“Ere yet in being, was mankind in guilt?
Why thunder'd this peculiar clause against us,
All-mortal, and all-wretched?—Have the Skies
Reasons of state, their subjects may not scan,
Nor humbly reason when they sorely sigh?
All-mortal, and all-wretched!—'Tis too much;
Unparallel'd in Nature: 'tis too much
On being unrequested at Thy hands,
Omnipotent! for I see nought but Power.

“And why see that? Why Thought? To toil and eat,
Then make our bed in darkness, needs no thought.
What superfluities are reasoning souls!
O give eternity, or thought destroy!—
But without thought our curse were half unfelt;
Its blunted edge would spare the throbbing heart;
And therefore 'tis bestow'd. I thank thee, Reason,
For aiding Life's too small calamities,
And giving being to the dread of Death!
Such are thy bounties!—Was it then too much
For me to trespass on the brutal rights?
Too much for Heaven to make one emmet more?
Too much for Chaos to permit my mass
A longer stay with essences unwrought,
Unfashion'd, untormented into man?
Wretched preferment to this round of pains!
Wretched capacity of frenzy, Thought!
Wretched capacity of dying, Life!
Life, Thought, Worth, Wisdom, all (O foul revolt!)
Once friends to peace, gone over to the foe.

“Death, then, has changed its nature too. O Death,
Come to my bosom, thou best gift of Heaven!
Best friend of man! since man is Man no more.
Why in this thorny wilderness so long,
Since there's no Promised Land's ambrosial bower,
To pay me with its honey for my stings?
If needful to the selfish schemes of Heaven
To sting us sore, why mock'd our misery?
Why this so sumptuous insult o'er our heads?
Why this illustrious canopy display'd?
Why so magnificently lodged Despair?
At stated periods, sure-returning, roll
These glorious orbs, that mortals may compute
Their length of labours and of pains, nor lose
Their misery's full measure?—Smiles with flowers,
And fruits, promiscuous, ever-teeming earth,
That man may languish in luxurious scenes,
And in an Eden mourn his wither'd joys?
Claim Earth and Skies man's admiration, due
For such delights? Bless'd animals! too wise
To wonder, and too happy to complain!

“Our doom decreed demands a mournful scene:
Why not a dungeon dark for the condemn'd?
Why not the dragon's subterranean den,
For man to howl in? Why not his abode
Of the same dismal colour with his fate?
A Thebes, a Babylon, at vast expense
Of time, toil, treasure, art, for owls and adders,
As congruous, as for man this lofty dome,
Which prompts proud Thought, and kindles high Desire;
If, from her humble chamber in the dust,
While proud Thought swells, and high Desire inflames,
The poor worm calls us for her inmates there;
And, round us, Death's inexorable hand
Draws the dark curtain close; undrawn no more.

“Undrawn no more!—Behind the cloud of Death,
Once, I beheld a sun; a sun which gilt
That sable cloud, and turn'd it all to gold:
How the grave's alter'd! fathomless as hell,
A real hell to those who dreamt of heaven!
Annihilation! how it yawns before me!
Next moment I may drop from thought, from sense,
The privilege of angels and of worms,
An outcast from existence! and this spirit,
This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul,
This particle of energy Divine,
Which travels Nature, flies from star to star,
And visits gods, and emulates their powers,
For ever is extinguish'd. Horror! Death!
Death of that death I fearless once survey'd!
When horror universal shall descend,
And Heaven's dark concave urn all human race,
On that enormous, unrefunding tomb,
How just this verse, this monumental sigh!”
Beneath the lumber of demolish'd worlds,
Deep in the rubbish of the general wreck,
Swept ignominious to the common mass
Of matter never dignified with life,
Here lie proud Rationals, the sons of Heaven!
The lords of Earth, the property of worms!
Beings of yesterday, and no to-morrow!
Who lived in terror, and in pangs expired!
All gone to rot in chaos; or to make
Their happy transit into blocks or brutes,
Nor longer sully their Creator's name.