 | The Poems of Ambrose Philips |  |
130
A MIDNIGHT THOUGHT.
When Gamesome Youth, and Love's unruly Fire,Are quell'd by Age, that deadens all Desire;
When Chearful Days and Jovial Nights are fled,
And drooping Health inclines her sickly Head;
When downy Sleep, tho' courted long, denies
To bless my Bed, and close my weary Eyes;
When Nature sickens, and with fainting Breath,
Struggles beneath the bitter pangs of Death;
When helpless Art no hopes of Life can give,
Nor Pray'r, nor Tears, the sentenc'd Wretch reprieve;
When all our Friends, then few, make heavy Moan;
And heighten all our Sorrows by their own:
Amid the Terrors of this solemn Woe,
The fleeting Soul begins her self to know;
Turns o'er the Register of Life in Haste,
Weighs all her Thoughts, her Words and Actions past.
Then, if no frightful Images appear,
No ghastly Ills awake her conscious Fear;
Gently she lays her down in Peace to rest,
As Infants sleep upon their Mother's Breast.
| The Poems of Ambrose Philips | |