Stultifera Navis :: :: University of Virginia Library

The senseless fool, who oft delights
To laugh at all religious rites,
And ridicule the grave:
Will, when the hour of death draws near
Find all his courage end in fear;
And be no longer brave .

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Like gay Voltaire , whose shafts of wit
Religion's sacred altars hit,
And oft would death defy;

138

Who, when he drew his dying breath,
Although he'd scoff'd at God and death,
An atheist dar'd not die.

Thus, many a modern wit gives birth
To blasphemy and wicked mirth,
While health and pleasure reign;
But, sick in body, weak in mind,
These proud philosophers soon find
Their tenets all are vain.

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For pious hope alone bestows
The cordial drop which heals our woes;
To which this thought is giv'n,
That, when life's stormy voyage is o'er,
Death steers us to some peaceful shore,
To taste the joys of heav'n.

L'ENVOY OF THE POET.

That man, good sense with ideot name would brand,
Who, void of food and raiment, journey'd far:
Do thou prepare for that same unknown land;
Nor, by neglect, thy soul's bright prospects mar.

THE POET'S CHORUS TO FOOLS.

Come, trim the boat, let folly rear her whip,
For tho' but few, some fools will man my ship.

Shakspeare, in Measure for Measure, has delivered the horrors that oppress the mind, on contemplating death, in so beautiful a style, that the writer conceives no apology necessary for the introduction of the lines under this head:

Claud.
Death is a fearful thing.

Isab.
And shamed life a hateful.

Claud.
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot:
This sensible, warm motion, to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods; or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick ribbed ice,
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or, to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling!—'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

This verse of the poet is not only applicable to the renowned and free thinking Voltaire, but may, with equal justice, be applied to the Rev. Dr. Dodd, who, in his writings, held up to derision all idea of terror at the contemplation of futurity; yet, when condemned himself, by the dread behest of justice, no individual ever evinced less firmness, on encountering his doom, than did that unfortunate delinquent, to whom the following lines from Rowe's Fair Penitent may be well applied.

Sci.
Hast thou e'er dar'd to meditate on death?

Cal.
I have, as on the end of shame and sorrow.

Sci.
'Tis not the stoic's lessons got by rote,
The pomp of words, and pedant dissertations,
That can sustain thee in that hour of terror:
Books have taught cowards to talk nobly of it:
But, when the trial comes, they stand aghast.

It is no very difficult matter to deride that which we have not experienced: but, in order to meet the blow of death with becoming calmness, we should ever keep the words of Persius in remembrance, who saith,

Vive memor lethi!

in which concentrates more sterling good, than all the boasted arguments of philosophers can inculcate; whose dying moments have, generally speaking, given the lie to their professions while living.