University of Virginia Library

THE COMPLAINT.

NIGHT I. ON LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY.

HUMBLY INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE ARTHUR ONSLOW, ESQ., SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

NIGHT II. ON TIME, DEATH, AND FRIENDSHIP.

HUMBLY INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF WILMINGTON.

NIGHT III. NARCISSA.

HUMBLY INSCRIBED TO HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF PORTLAND.

NIGHT IV. THE CHRISTIAN TRIUMPH.

PREFACE.

As the occasion of this poem was real, not fictitious; so the method pursued in it was rather imposed by what spontaneously arose in the author's mind on that occasion, than meditated or designed: which will appear very probable from the nature of it; for it differs from the common mode of poetry, which is from long narrations to draw short morals. Here, on the contrary, the narrative is short, and the morality arising from it makes the bulk of the poem. The reason of it is, that the facts mentioned did naturally pour these moral reflections on the thought of the writer.

It is evident from the First Night, where three deaths are mentioned, that the plan is not yet completed; for two only of those three have yet been sung. But, since this Fourth Night finishes one principal and important theme, naturally arising from all three, namely, the subduing our fear of death, it will be a proper pausing-place for the reader, and the writer too. And it is uncertain whether Providence, or inclination, will permit him to go any farther.

I say “inclination,” for this thing was entered on purely as a refuge under uneasiness, when more proper studies wanted sufficient relish to detain the writer's attention to them. And that reason (thanks be to Heaven) ceasing, the writer has no farther occasion—I should rather say “excuse”—for giving-in so much to the amusements, amid the duties, of life.

A much-indebted Muse, O Yorke! intrudes.
Amid the smiles of Fortune, and of youth,
Thine ear is patient of a serious song.
How deep implanted in the breast of man
The Dread of Death! I sing its sovereign cure.
Why start at Death? Where is he? Death arrived
Is past; not come, or gone, he's never here.
Ere hope, sensation fails; black-boding man
Receives, not suffers, Death's tremendous blow.
The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave;
The deep, damp vault, the darkness, and the worm:—
These are the bugbears of a winter's eve,
The terrors of the living, not the dead.
Imagination's fool, and Error's wretch,
Man makes a Death which Nature never made;
Then on the point of his own fancy falls,
And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one.
But were Death frightful, what has Age to fear?
If prudent, Age should meet the friendly foe,
And shelter in his hospitable gloom.
I scarce can meet a monument but holds
My younger: every date cries, “Come away.”
And what recalls me? Look the world around
And tell me what: the wisest cannot tell.
Should any born of woman give his thought
Full range on just dislike's unbounded field;—
Of things, the vanity; of men, the flaws;
Flaws in the best; the many, flaw all o'er;
As leopards, spotted; or as Ethiops, dark;
Vivacious ill; good dying immature;
(How immature, Narcissa's marble tells!)
And at its death bequeathing endless pain;—
His heart, though bold, would sicken at the sight,
And spend itself in sighs for future scenes.
But grant to Life (and just it is to grant
To lucky Life) some perquisites of joy;
A time there is, when, like a thrice-told tale,
Long-rifled Life of sweet can yield no more,
But from our comment on the comedy,
Pleasing reflections on parts well-sustain'd,
Or purposed emendations where we fail'd,
Or hopes of plaudits from our candid Judge,
When, on their exit, souls are bid unrobe,
Toss Fortune back her tinsel, and her plume,
And drop this mask of flesh behind the scene.
With me, that time is come! my world is dead;
A new world rises, and new manners reign:
Foreign comedians, a spruce band, arrive,
To push me from the scene, or hiss me there.
What a pert race starts up! The strangers gaze,
And I at them: my neighbour is unknown;
Nor that the worst: ah me! the dire effect
Of loitering here, of Death defrauded long!
Of old so gracious, (and let that suffice,)
My very master knows me not.—
Shall I dare say, peculiar is the fate?
I've been so long remember'd, I'm forgot.
An object ever pressing dims the sight,
And hides behind its ardour to be seen.
When in his courtiers' ears I pour my plaint,
They drink it as the nectar of the great;
And squeeze my hand, and beg me come to-morrow!
Refusal! canst thou wear a smoother form?
Indulge me, nor conceive I drop my theme:
Who cheapens life, abates the fear of death.
Twice-told the period spent on stubborn Troy,
Court-favour, yet untaken, I besiege;
Ambition's ill judged effort to be rich.
Alas! Ambition makes my little less;
Embittering the possess'd. Why wish for more?
Wishing of all employments is the worst;
Philosophy's reverse, and health's decay:
Were I as plump as stall'd Theology,
Wishing would waste me to this shade again.
Were I as wealthy as a South-Sea dream,
Wishing is an expedient to be poor.
Wishing, that constant hectic of a fool,
Caught at a court; purged off by purer air,
And simpler diet; gifts of rural life!
Bless'd be the Hand Divine, which gently laid
My heart at rest, beneath this humble shed.
The world's a stately bark, on dangerous seas,
With pleasure seen, but boarded at our peril.
Here, on a single plank, thrown safe ashore,
I hear the tumult of the distant throng,
As that of seas remote, or dying storms;
And meditate on scenes more silent still;
Pursue my theme, and fight the fear of Death.
Here, like a shepherd gazing from his hut,
Touching his reed, or leaning on his staff,
Eager Ambition's fiery chase I see;
I see the circling hunt, of noisy men,
Burst Law's enclosure, leap the mounds of Right,
Pursuing, and pursued, each other's prey;
As wolves, for rapine; as the fox, for wiles;
Till Death, that mighty hunter, earths them all.
Why all this toil for triumphs of an hour?
What, though we wade in wealth, or soar in fame?
Earth's highest station ends in, “Here he lies:”
And “Dust to dust” concludes her noblest song.
If this song lives, posterity shall know
One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred,
Who thought e'en gold might come a day too late;
Nor on his subtle death-bed plann'd his scheme
For future vacancies in Church or State;
Some avocation deeming it—to die;
Unbit by rage canine of dying rich;
Guilt's blunder, and the loudest laugh of hell!
O my coëvals! remnants of yourselves!
Poor human ruins, tottering o'er the grave!
Shall we, shall aged men, like aged trees,
Strike deeper their vile root, and closer cling,
Still more enamour'd of this wretched soil?
Shall our pale, wither'd hands be still stretch'd out,
Trembling at once with eagerness and age,
With avarice and convulsions grasping hard?
Grasping at air! for what has earth beside?
Man wants but little; nor that little long:
How soon must he resign his very dust,
Which frugal Nature lent him for an hour!
Years unexperienced rush on numerous ills;
And soon as man, expert from time, has found
The key of Life, it opes the gates of Death.
When in this vale of years I backward look,
And miss such numbers, numbers too of such,
Firmer in health, and greener in their age,
And stricter on their guard, and fitter far
To play life's subtle game, I scarce believe
I still survive. And am I fond of life,
Who scarce can think it possible I live?
Alive by miracle; or, what is next,
Alive by Mead! if I am still alive,
Who long have buried what gives life to live,—
Firmness of nerve, and energy of thought.
Life's lee is not more shallow than impure
And vapid: Sense and Reason show the door,
Call for my bier, and point me to the dust.
O Thou great Arbiter of Life and Death!
Nature's immortal, immaterial Sun!
Whose all-prolific beam late call'd me forth
From darkness, teeming darkness, where I lay
The worm's inferior, and, in rank, beneath
The dust I tread on; high to bear my brow,
To drink the spirit of the golden day,
And triumph in existence; and couldst know
No motive but my bliss; and hast ordain'd
A rise in blessing!—with the patriarch's joy,
Thy call I follow to the land unknown;
I trust in Thee, and know in whom I trust:
Or life, or death, is equal; neither weighs;
All weight in this—O let me live to Thee!
Though Nature's terrors thus may be repress'd,
Still frowns grim Death; guilt points the tyrant's spear.
And whence all human guilt? From Death forgot.
Ah me! too long I set at nought the swarm
Of friendly warnings which around me flew;
And smiled unsmitten. Small my cause to smile!
Death's admonitions, like shafts upwards shot,
More dreadful by delay,—the longer ere
They strike our hearts, the deeper is their wound.
O think how deep, Lorenzo! here it stings:
Who can appease its anguish? How it burns!
What hand the barb'd, envenom'd thought can draw?
What healing hand can pour the balm of peace,
And turn my sight undaunted on the tomb?
With joy,—with grief, that healing hand I see;
Ah! too conspicuous! it is fix'd on high.
On high?—What means my frenzy? I blaspheme!
Alas! how low! how far beneath the skies!
The skies it form'd; and now it bleeds for me—
But bleeds the balm I want,—yet still it bleeds;
Draw the dire steel—ah no!—the dreadful blessing
What heart or can sustain, or dares forego?
There hangs all human hope; that nail supports
The falling universe: that gone, we drop;
Horror receives us, and the dismal wish
Creation had been smother'd in her birth—
Darkness his curtain, and his bed the dust;
When stars and sun are dust beneath his throne!
In heaven itself can such indulgence dwell?
O what a groan was there! a groan not His.
He seized our dreadful right; the load sustain'd;
And heaved the mountain from a guilty world.
A thousand worlds, so bought, were bought too dear:
Sensations new in angels' bosoms rise,
Suspend their song, and make a pause in bliss.
O for their song, to reach my lofty theme!
Inspire me, Night! with all thy tuneful spheres;
Whilst I with seraphs share seraphic themes,
And show to men the dignity of man;
Lest I blaspheme my subject with my song.
Shall Pagan pages glow celestial flame,
And Christian languish? On our hearts, not heads,
Falls the foul infamy. My heart, awake!
What can awake thee, unawaked by this,
“Expended Deity on human weal?”
Feel the great truths, which burst the tenfold night
Of Heathen error, with a golden flood
Of endless day. To feel, is to be fired;
And to believe, Lorenzo, is to feel.
Thou most indulgent, most tremendous Power!
Still more tremendous, for Thy wondrous love,
That arms, with awe more awful, Thy commands;
And foul transgression dips in sevenfold guilt:
How our hearts tremble at Thy love immense!
In love immense, inviolably just!
Thou, rather than Thy justice should be stain'd,
Didst stain the cross; and work of wonders far
The greatest, that Thy Dearest far might bleed.
Bold thought! shall I dare speak it, or repress?
Should man more execrate or boast the guilt
Which roused such vengeance, which such love inflamed?
O'er guilt (how mountainous!) with outstretch'd arms,
Stern Justice, and soft-smiling Love, embrace,
Supporting, in full majesty, thy throne,
When seem'd its majesty to need support,
Or that, or man, inevitably lost:
What but the fathomless of thought divine
Could labour such expedient from despair,
And rescue both? Both rescue! both exalt!
O how are both exalted by the deed!
The wondrous deed! or shall I call it more?
A wonder in Omnipotence itself!
A mystery no less to gods than men!
Not thus our infidels the' Eternal draw,—
A God all o'er, consummate, absolute,
Full-orb'd, in his whole round of rays complete:
They set at odds Heaven's jarring attributes,
And with one excellence another wound;
Maim Heaven's perfection, break its equal beams,
Bid Mercy triumph over—God himself,
Undeified by their opprobrious praise:
A God all mercy, is a God unjust.
Ye brainless wits, ye baptized infidels!
Ye worse for mending, wash'd to fouler stains!
The ransom was paid down; the fund of Heaven,
Heaven's inexhaustible, exhausted fund,
Amazing and amazed, pour'd forth the price,
All price beyond: though, curious to compute,
Archangels fail'd to cast the mighty sum:
Its value vast, ungrasp'd by minds create,
For ever hides and glows in the Supreme.
And was the ransom paid? It was: and paid
(What can exalt the bounty more?) for you.
The Sun beheld it—No, the shocking scene
Drove back his chariot: midnight veil'd his face;
Not such as this, not such as Nature makes;
A midnight Nature shudder'd to behold;
A midnight new! a dread eclipse, (without
Opposing spheres,) from her Creator's frown!
Sun! didst thou fly thy Maker's pain? or start
At that enormous load of human guilt
Which bow'd His blessed head, o'erwhelm'd His cross,
Made groan the centre, burst earth's marble womb
With pangs, strange pangs! deliver'd of her dead?
Hell howl'd; and Heaven that hour let fall a tear;
Heaven wept, that men might smile! Heaven bled, that man
Might never die!—
And is devotion virtue? 'Tis compell'd:
What heart of stone but glows at thoughts like these?
Such contemplations mount us, and should mount
The mind still higher; nor ever glance on man
Unraptured, uninflamed.—Where roll my thoughts
To rest from wonders? Other wonders rise;
And strike where'er they roll: my soul is caught;
Heaven's sovereign blessings, clustering from the cross,
Rush on her in a throng, and close her round,
The prisoner of amaze! In His bless'd life
I see the path, and in His death the price,
And in His great ascent the proof supreme,
Of immortality.—And did He rise?
Hear, O ye nations! Hear it, O ye dead!
He rose! He rose! He burst the bars of death.
Lift up your heads, ye everlasting gates,
And give the King of Glory to come in!
Who is the King of glory? He who left
His throne of glory for the pang of death.
Lift up your heads, ye everlasting gates,
And give the King of glory to come in!
Who is the King of Glory? He who slew
The ravenous foe that gorged all human race!
The King of Glory, He whose glory fill'd
Heaven with amazement at His love to man;
And with Divine complacency beheld
Powers most illumined wilder'd in the theme!
The theme, the joy, how then shall man sustain?
O the burst gates, crush'd sting, demolish'd throne,
Last gasp, of vanquish'd Death! Shout, Earth and Heaven,
This sum of good to man! whose nature then
Took wing, and mounted with Him from the tomb.
Then, then I rose; then first humanity
Triumphant pass'd the crystal ports of light,
(Stupendous guest!) and seized eternal youth,
Seized in our name. E'er since, 'tis blasphemous
To call man mortal. Man's mortality
Was then transferr'd to Death; and Heaven's duration
Unalienably seal'd to this frail frame,
This child of dust.—Man, all immortal, hail!
Hail, Heaven, all lavish of strange gifts to man!
Thine all the glory; man's the boundless bliss.
Where am I rapt by this triumphant theme,
On Christian joy's exulting wing, above
The' Aonian mount?—Alas, small cause for joy!
What, if to pain immortal? if extent
Of being, to preclude a close of woe?
Where, then, my boast of immortality?
I boast it still, though cover'd o'er with guilt:
For guilt, not innocence, His life He pour'd;
'Tis guilt alone can justify His death;
Nor that, unless His death can justify
Relenting guilt in Heaven's indulgent sight.
If, sick of folly, I relent, He writes
My name in heaven with that inverted spear
(A spear deep dipp'd in blood!) which pierced His side,
And open'd there a font for all mankind
Who strive, who combat crimes, to drink and live
This, only this, subdues the fear of death.
And what is this?—Survey the wondrous cure:
And at each step let higher wonder rise!
“Pardon for infinite offence; and pardon
Through means that speak its value infinite!
A pardon bought with blood; with blood Divine!
With blood Divine of Him I made my foe!
Persisted to provoke! though woo'd and awed,
Bless'd and chastised, a flagrant rebel still!
A rebel, 'midst the thunders of His throne!
Nor I alone; a rebel universe!
My species up in arms; not one exempt!
Yet for the foulest of the foul He dies:
Most joy'd, for the redeem'd from deepest guilt!
As if our race were held of highest rank;
And Godhead dearer, as more kind to man!”
Bound, every heart! and every bosom, burn!
O what a scale of miracles is here!
Its lowest round high-planted on the skies:
Its towering summit lost beyond the thought
Of man or angel! O that I could climb
The wonderful ascent, with equal praise!
Praise! flow for ever, (if astonishment
Will give thee leave,) my praise! for ever flow;
Praise ardent, cordial, constant, to high Heaven
More fragrant than Arabia sacrificed,
And all her spicy mountains in a flame.
So dear, so due to Heaven, shall Praise descend,
With her soft plume (from plausive angel's wing
First pluck'd by man) to tickle mortal ears,
Thus diving in the pockets of the great?
Is Praise the perquisite of every paw,
Though black as hell, that grapples well for gold?
O love of gold! thou meanest of amours!
Shall Praise her odours waste on Virtue's dead,
Embalm the base, perfume the stench of guilt,
Earn dirty bread by washing Ethiops fair,
Removing filth, or sinking it from sight,
A scavenger in scenes where vacant posts,
Like gibbets yet untenanted, expect
Their future ornaments? From courts and thrones
Return, apostate Praise! thou vagabond!
Thou prostitute! to thy first love return;
Thy first, thy greatest, once unrivall'd theme.
There flow redundant; like Meander, flow
Back to thy fountain; to that parent Power
Who gives the tongue to sound, the thought to soar,
The soul to be. Men homage pay to men;
Thoughtless beneath whose dreadful eye they bow
In mutual awe profound, of clay to clay,
Of guilt to guilt; and turn their backs on Thee,
Great Sire! whom thrones celestial ceaseless sing;
To prostrate angels an amazing scene!
O the presumption of man's awe for man!—
Man's Author, End, Restorer, Law, and Judge!
Thine, all; Day thine, and thine this gloom of Night,
With all her wealth, with all her radiant worlds.
What night eternal, but a frown from Thee?
What heaven's meridian glory, but Thy smile?
And shall not praise be Thine? not human praise,
While Heaven's high host on hallelujahs live?
O may I breathe no longer than I breathe
My soul in praise to Him who gave my soul,
And all her infinite of prospect fair,
Cut through the shades of hell, great Love, by thee,
O most adorable, most unadored!
Where shall that praise begin which ne'er should end?
Where'er I turn, what claim on all applause!
How is Night's sable mantle labour'd o'er!
How richly wrought with attributes divine!
What wisdom shines, what love! This midnight pomp,
This gorgeous arch with golden worlds inlaid!
Built with divine ambition! nought to Thee;
For others this profusion. Thou, apart,
Above, beyond! O tell me, mighty Mind,
Where art thou? Shall I dive into the deep?
Call to the sun, or ask the roaring winds,
For their Creator? Shall I question loud
The thunder, if in that the' Almighty dwells?
Or holds HE furious storms in straighten'd reins,
And bids fierce whirlwinds wheel his rapid car?
What mean these questions?—Trembling I retract;
My prostrate soul adores the present God.
Praise I a distant Deity? He tunes
My voice (if tuned); the nerve that writes, sustains:
Wrapt in His being, I resound His praise:
But though past all diffused, without a shore,
His essence; local is His throne (as meet)
To gather the dispersed (as standards call
The listed from afar); to fix a point,
A central point, collective of his sons,
Since finite every nature but his own.
The nameless He, whose nod is Nature's birth;
And Nature's shield, the shadow of His hand;
Her dissolution, His suspended smile!
The great First-Last! pavilion'd high He sits
In darkness, from excessive splendour born,
By gods unseen, unless through lustre lost.
His glory, to created glory, bright
As that to central horrors; He looks down
On all that soars, and spans immensity.
Though Night unnumber'd worlds unfolds to view,
Boundless Creation! what art thou? A beam,
A mere effluvium of His majesty.
And shall an atom of this atom-world
Mutter, in dust and sin, the theme of Heaven?
Down to the centre should I send my thought
Through beds of glittering ore, and glowing gems,
Their beggar'd blaze wants lustre for my lay;
Goes out in darkness. If, on towering wing,
I send it through the boundless vault of stars;
The stars, though rich, what dross their gold to Thee,
Great, good, wise, wonderful, eternal King!
If to those conscious stars thy throne around,
Praise ever pouring, and imbibing bliss,
And ask their strain; they want it, more they want,
Poor their abundance, humble their sublime,
Languid their energy, their ardour cold:
Indebted still, their highest rapture burns,
Short of its mark, defective, though Divine.
Still more,—this theme is man's, and man's alone;
Their vast appointments reach it not: they see
On earth a bounty not indulged on high,
And downward look for Heaven's superior praise!
First-born of ether, high in fields of light,
View man, to see the glory of your God!
Could angels envy, they had envied here;
And some did envy: and the rest, though gods,
Yet still gods unredeem'd, (there triumphs man,
Tempted to weigh the dust against the skies,)
They less would feel, though more adorn, my theme.
They sung Creation (for in that they shared);
How rose in melody that child of love!
Creation's great superior, man! is thine;
Thine is Redemption. They just gave the key;
'Tis thine to raise and eternize the song,
Though human, yet Divine; for should not this
Raise man o'er man, and kindle seraphs here?
Redemption! 'twas creation more sublime;
Redemption! 'twas the labour of the skies;
Far more than labour,—it was Death in heaven.
A truth so strange, 'twere bold to think it true,
If not far bolder still to disbelieve.
Here pause, and ponder. Was there death in heaven?
What then on earth? on earth, which struck the blow?
Who struck it? Who?—O how is man enlarged,
Seen through this medium! How the pigmy towers!
How counterpoised his origin from dust!
How counterpoised to dust his sad return!
How voided his vast distance from the skies!
How near he presses on the seraph's wing!
Which is the seraph? which the born of clay?
How this demonstrates, through the thickest cloud
Of guilt and clay condensed, the son of Heaven;
The double son; the made, and the re-made!
And shall Heaven's double property be lost?
Man's double madness only can destroy.
To man the bleeding Cross has promised all;
The bleeding Cross has sworn eternal grace;
Who gave his life, what grace shall He deny?
O ye, who from this Rock of Ages leap,
Disdainful, plunging headlong in the deep!
What cordial joy, what consolation strong,
Whatever winds arise, or billows roll,
Our interest in the Master of the storm!
Cling there, and in wreck'd Nature's ruins smile,
While vile apostates tremble in a calm.
“Man, know thyself!” All wisdom centres there;
To none man seems ignoble but to man.
Angels that grandeur men o'erlook admire;
How long shall human nature be their book,
Degenerate mortal, and unread by thee?
The beam dim Reason sheds shows wonders there;
What high contents, illustrious faculties!
But the grand comment, which displays at full
Our human height, scarce sever'd from Divine,
By Heaven composed, was publish'd on the cross.
Who looks on that, and sees not in himself
An awful stranger, a terrestrial god?
A glorious partner with the Deity
In that high attribute, immortal life?
If a God bleeds, he bleeds not for a worm:
I gaze, and, as I gaze, my mounting soul
Catches strange fire, Eternity! at thee;
And drops the world,—or rather, more enjoys.
How changed the face of Nature! how improved!
What seem'd a chaos, shines a glorious world;
Or what a world, an Eden; heighten'd all!
It is another scene, another self;
And still another, as time rolls along;
And that a self far more illustrious still.
Beyond long ages, yet roll'd up in shades
Unpierced by bold Conjecture's keenest ray,
What evolutions of surprising fate!
How Nature opens, and receives my soul
In boundless walks of raptured thought! where gods
Encounter and embrace me! What new births
Of strange adventure, foreign to the sun;
Where what now charms, perhaps whate'er exists,
Old Time and fair Creation, are forgot!
Is this extravagant? Of man we form
Extravagant conception, to be just:
Conception unconfined wants wings to reach him:
Beyond its reach the Godhead only more.
He, the great Father, kindled at one flame
The world of rationals; one spirit pour'd
From Spirit's awful fountain; pour'd Himself
Through all their souls; but not in equal stream;
Profuse or frugal of the' inspiring God,
As His wise plan demanded; and, when past
Their various trials in their various spheres,
If they continue rational, as made,
Resorbs them all into Himself again;
His throne their centre, and His smile their crown.
Why doubt we, then, the glorious truth to sing,
Though yet unsung, as deem'd, perhaps, too bold?
Angels are men of a superior kind;
Angels are men in lighter habit clad,
High o'er celestial mountains wing'd in flight;
And men are angels loaded for an hour,
Who wade this miry vale, and climb, with pain
And slippery step, the bottom of the steep.
Angels their failings, mortals have their praise;
While here, of corps ethereal, such enroll'd,
And summon'd to the glorious standard soon,
Which flames eternal crimson through the skies.
Nor are our brothers thoughtless of their kin,
Yet absent; but not absent from their love.
Michael has fought our battles; Raphael sung
Our triumphs; Gabriel on our errands flown,
Sent by the SOVEREIGN: and are these, O man,
Thy friends, thy warm allies? and thou (shame burn
The cheek to cinder!) rival to the brute?
Religion's all. Descending from the skies
To wretched man, the goddess in her left
Holds out this world, and in her right the next.
Religion! the sole voucher man is man;
Supporter sole of man above himself;
E'en in this night of frailty, change, and death,
She gives the soul a soul that acts a god.
Religion! Providence! an after-state!
Here is firm footing; here is solid rock;
This can support us: all is sea besides;
Sinks under us; bestorms, and then devours.
His hand the good man fastens on the skies,
And bids earth roll, nor feels her idle whirl.
As when a wretch, from thick, polluted air,
Darkness, and stench, and suffocating damps,
And dungeon-horrors, by kind Fate discharged,
Climbs some fair eminence, where ether pure
Surrounds him, and Elysian prospects rise,
His heart exults, his spirits cast their load;
As if new-born, he triumphs in the change;
So joys the soul, when, from inglorious aims,
And sordid sweets, from feculence and froth
Of ties terrestrial, set at large, she mounts
To Reason's region, her own element,
Breathes hopes immortal, and affects the skies.
Religion! thou the soul of happiness,
And, groaning Calvary, of thee! There shine
The noblest truths; there strongest motives sting;
There sacred violence assaults the soul;
There nothing but compulsion is forborne.
Can love allure us, or can terror awe?
He weeps!—the falling drop puts out the sun;
He sighs!—the sigh earth's deep foundation shakes.
If in His love so terrible, what then
His wrath inflamed, His tenderness on fire?
Like soft, smooth oil, outblazing other fires!
Can prayer, can praise avert it?—Thou, my all!
My theme, my inspiration, and my crown!
My strength in age, my rise in low estate!
My soul's ambition, pleasure, wealth, my world!
My light in darkness, and my life in death!
My boast through time, bliss through eternity!
Eternity, too short to speak Thy praise,
Or fathom Thy profound of love to man!
To man of men the meanest, e'en to me;
My Sacrifice, my God!—what things are these?
What then art THOU? By what name shall I call Thee?
Knew I the name devout archangels use,
Devout archangels should the name enjoy,
By me unrivall'd: thousands more sublime,
None half so dear as that which, though unspoke,
Still glows at heart. O how Omnipotence
Is lost in Love! Thou great PHILANTHROPIST!
Father of angels, but the friend of man!
Like Jacob, fondest of the younger born!
Thou, who didst save him, snatch the smoking brand
From out the flames, and quench it in Thy blood!
How art Thou pleased, by bounty to distress,
To make us groan beneath our gratitude,
Too big for birth! to favour, and confound!
To challenge and to distance all return!
Of lavish love stupendous heights to soar,
And leave Praise panting in the distant vale!
Thy right too great defrauds Thee of Thy due;
And sacrilegious our sublimest song.
But since the naked will obtains Thy smile,
Beneath this monument of praise unpaid,
And future life symphonious to my strain,
(That noblest hymn to Heaven,) for ever lie
Entomb'd my Fear of Death! and every fear,
The dread of every evil, but Thy frown.
Whom see I yonder so demurely smile?
Laughter a labour, and might break their rest.
Ye Quietists, in homage to the skies!
Serene, of soft address! who mildly make
An unobtrusive tender of your hearts,
Abhorring violence! who halt indeed;
But for the blessing wrestle not with Heaven!
Think you my song too turbulent, too warm?
Are passions, then, the Pagans of the soul?
Reason alone baptized? alone ordain'd
To touch things sacred? O for warmer still!
Guilt chills my zeal, and age benumbs my powers:
O for an humbler heart, and prouder song!
THOU, my much-injured theme! with that soft eye
Which melted o'er doom'd Salem, deign to look
Compassion to the coldness of my breast,
And pardon to the winter in my strain.
O ye cold-hearted, frozen formalists!
On such a theme, 'tis impious to be calm;
Passion is reason, transport temper, here.
Shall Heaven, which gave us ardour, and has shown
Her own for man so strongly, not disdain
What smooth emollients in theology
Recumbent Virtue's downy doctors preach,
That prose of piety, a lukewarm praise?
Rise odours sweet from incense uninflamed?
Devotion, when lukewarm, is undevout;
But when it glows, its heat is struck to heaven;
To human hearts her golden harps are strung;
High heaven's orchestra chants Amen to man.
Hear I, or dream I hear, their distant strain,
Sweet to the soul, and tasting strong of heaven,
Soft-wafted on celestial Pity's plume,
Through the vast spaces of the universe,
To cheer me in this melancholy gloom?
O when will Death, (now stingless,) like a friend,
Admit me of their choir? O when will Death
This mouldering, old partition-wall throw down?
Give beings, one in nature, one abode?
O Death Divine! that giv'st us to the skies!
Great Future! glorious Patron of the Past
And Present! when shall I thy shrine adore?
From Nature's continent, immensely wide,
Immensely bless'd, this little isle of life,
This dark, incarcerating colony,
Divides us. Happy day that breaks our chain!
That manumits; that calls from exile home;
That leads to Nature's great metropolis,
And re-admits us, through the guardian hand
Of elder brothers, to our Father's throne,
Who hears our Advocate, and, through his wounds
Beholding man, allows that tender name.
'Tis this makes Christian triumph a command;
'Tis this makes joy a duty to the wise:
'Tis impious in a good man to be sad.
Seest thou, Lorenzo, where hangs all our hope?
Touch'd by the Cross, we live, or more than die;
That touch which touch'd not angels; more Divine
Than that which touch'd confusion into form,
And darkness into glory: partial touch!
Ineffably pre-eminent regard!
Sacred to man, and sovereign through the whole
Long golden chain of miracles, which hangs
From heaven through all duration, and supports,
In one illustrious and amazing plan,
Thy welfare, Nature, and thy God's renown;
That touch, with charm celestial, heals the soul
Diseased, drives pain from guilt, lights life in death,
Turns earth to heaven, to heavenly thrones transforms
The ghastly ruins of the mouldering tomb.
Dost ask me when? When HE who died returns!
Returns, how changed! Where then the Man of Woe?
In glory's terrors all the Godhead burns;
And all His courts, exhausted by the tide
Of deities triumphant in His train,
Leave a stupendous solitude in heaven;
Replenish'd soon, replenish'd with increase
Of pomp and multitude; a radiant band
Of angels new, of angels from the tomb.
Is this by Fancy thrown remote? and rise
Dark doubts between the promise and event?
I send thee not to volumes for thy cure;
Read Nature; Nature is a friend to truth;
Nature is Christian; preaches to mankind,
And bids dead matter aid us in our creed.
Hast thou ne'er seen the comet's flaming flight?
The' illustrious stranger, passing, terror sheds
On gazing nations, from his fiery train
Of length enormous; takes his ample round
Through depths of ether; coasts unnumber'd worlds
Of more than solar glory; doubles wide
Heaven's mighty cape; and then revisits earth,
From the long travel of a thousand years.
Thus, at the destined period, shall return
HE, once on earth, who bids the comet blaze;
And, with Him, all our triumph o'er the tomb.
Nature is dumb on this important point,
Or Hope precarious in low whisper breathes:
Faith speaks aloud, distinct; e'en adders hear,
But turn, and dart into the dark again.
Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of Death,
To break the shock blind Nature cannot shun,
And lands Thought smoothly on the farther shore.
Death's terror is the mountain Faith removes,
That mountain-barrier between man and peace.
'Tis Faith disarms Destruction, and absolves
From every clamorous charge the guiltless tomb.
Why disbelieve, Lorenzo?—“Reason bids,
All-sacred Reason.”—Hold her sacred still;
Nor shalt thou want a rival in thy flame.
All-sacred Reason! source and soul of all
Demanding praise, on earth, or earth above!
My heart is thine: deep in its inmost folds
Live thou with life; live dearer of the two.
Wear I the blessed Cross, by Fortune stamp'd
On passive Nature before Thought was born?
My birth's blind bigot! fired with local zeal!
No; Reason re-baptized me when adult,
Weigh'd true and false in her impartial scale;
My heart became the convert of my head,
And made that choice which once was but my fate.
“On argument alone my faith is built:”
Reason pursued is Faith; and, unpursued,
Where proof invites, 'tis Reason then no more;
And such our proof, that or our Faith is right,
Or Reason lies, and Heaven design'd it wrong.
Absolve we this? what then is blasphemy?
Fond as we are, and justly fond, of Faith,
Reason, we grant, demands our first regard;
The mother honour'd, as the daughter dear.
Reason the root, fair Faith is but the flower:
The fading flower shall die, but Reason lives
Immortal as her Father in the skies.
When Faith is virtue, Reason makes it so.
Wrong not the Christian: think not Reason yours;
'Tis Reason our great Master holds so dear;
'Tis Reason's injured rights His wrath resents;
'Tis Reason's voice obey'd His glories crown:
To give lost Reason life, He pour'd His own.
Believe, and show the reason of a man;
Believe, and taste the pleasure of a God;
Believe, and look with triumph on the tomb.
Through Reason's wounds alone thy Faith can die;
Which, dying, tenfold terror gives to Death,
And dips in venom his twice-mortal sting.
Learn hence what honours, what loud pæans, due
To those who push our antidote aside;
Those boasted friends to Reason and to man,
Whose fatal love stabs every joy, and leaves
Death's terror heighten'd, gnawing on his heart.
These pompous sons of Reason idolized,
And vilified at once; of Reason dead,
Then deified, as monarchs were of old;
What conduct plants proud laurels on their brow?
While love of truth through all their camp resounds,
They draw Pride's curtain o'er the noon-tide ray,
Spike up their inch of reason on the point
Of philosophic wit, call'd Argument,
And then, exulting in their taper, cry,
“Behold the sun!” and, Indian-like, adore.
Talk they of morals? O Thou bleeding Love!
Thou Maker of new morals to mankind!
The grand morality is love of Thee.
As wise as Socrates, if such they were,
(Nor will they 'bate of that sublime renown,)
“As wise as Socrates,” might justly stand
The definition of a modern fool.
A CHRISTIAN is the highest style of man.
And is there who the blessed cross wipes off,
As a foul blot, from his dishonour'd brow?
If angels tremble, 'tis at such a sight;
The wretch they quit, desponding of their charge,—
More struck with grief or wonder who can tell?
Ye sold to sense! ye citizens of earth!
(For such alone the Christian banner fly,)
Know ye how wise your choice, how great your gain?
Behold the picture of earth's happiest man:
“He calls his wish, it comes; he sends it back,
And says he call'd another; that arrives,
Meets the same welcome; yet he still calls on;
Till One calls him, who varies not his call,
But holds him fast in chains of darkness bound,
Till Nature dies, and Judgment sets him free;
A freedom far less welcome than his chain.”
But grant man happy; grant him happy long;
Add to life's highest prize her latest hour;
That hour, so late, is nimble in approach,
That, like a post, comes on in full career.
How swift the shuttle flies that weaves thy shroud!
Where is the fable of thy former years?
Thrown down the gulf of time; as far from thee
As they had ne'er been thine; the day in hand,
Like a bird struggling to get loose, is going;
Scarce now possess'd, so suddenly 'tis gone;
And each swift moment, fled, is death advanced
By strides as swift. Eternity is all;
And whose eternity? who triumphs there?
Bathing for ever in the font of bliss!
For ever basking in the Deity!
Lorenzo, who?—Thy conscience shall reply.
O give it leave to speak; 'twill speak ere long,
Thy leave unask'd: Lorenzo, hear it now,
While useful its advice, its accent mild.
By the great edict, the divine decree,
Truth is deposited with man's last hour;
An honest hour, and faithful to her trust.
Truth, eldest daughter of the Deity!
Truth, of his council when he made the worlds;
Nor less, when he shall judge the worlds he made!
Though silent long, and sleeping ne'er so sound,
Smother'd with errors, and oppress'd with toys,
That heaven-commission'd hour no sooner calls
But from her cavern in the soul's abyss,
Like him they fable under Ætna whelm'd,
The goddess bursts in thunder and in flame,
Loudly convinces, and severely pains.
Dark demons I discharge, and hydra-stings:
The keen vibration of bright Truth—is hell:
Just definition! though by schools untaught.
Ye deaf to Truth, peruse this parson'd page,
And trust, for once, a prophet and a priest:
“Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.”

NIGHT V. THE RELAPSE.

HUMBLY INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF LICHFIELD.

NIGHT VI. THE INFIDEL RECLAIMED. IN TWO PARTS. CONTAINING THE NATURE, PROOF, AND IMPORTANCE OF IMMORTALITY. PART I.

PREFACE.

Few ages have been deeper in dispute about religion than this. The dispute about religion, and the practice of it, seldom go together. The shorter, therefore, the dispute, the better. I think it may be reduced to this single question, “Is man immortal, or is he not?” If he is not, all our disputes are mere amusements, or trials of skill. In this case, truth, reason, religion, which give our discourses such pomp and solemnity, are (as will be shown) mere empty sounds, without any meaning in them. But if man is immortal, it will behove him to be very serious about eternal consequences; or, in other words, to be truly religious. And this great fundamental truth unestablished, or unawakened, in the minds of men, is, I conceive, the real source and support of all our infidelity; how remote soever the particular objections advanced may seem to be from it.

Sensible appearances affect most men much more than abstract reasonings; and we daily see bodies drop around

us, but the soul is invisible. The power which inclination has over the judgment, is greater than can be well conceived by those that have not had an experience of it; and of what numbers is it the sad interest, that souls should not survive! The Heathen world confessed that they rather hoped than firmly believed immortality: and how many Heathens have we still amongst us! The sacred page assures us, that life and immortality is brought to light by the gospel: but by how many is the gospel rejected or overlooked! From these considerations, and from my being, accidentally, privy to the sentiments of some particular persons, I have been long persuaded, that most, if not all, our infidels (whatever name they take, and whatever scheme, for argument's sake, and to keep themselves in countenance, they patronize) are supported in their deplorable error by some doubt of their immortality at the bottom. And I am satisfied that men, once thoroughly convinced of their immortality, are not far from being Christians. For it is hard to conceive that a man fully conscious eternal pain or happiness will certainly be his lot, should not earnestly and impartially inquire after the surest means of escaping one and securing the other. And of such an earnest and impartial inquiry I well know the consequence.

Here, therefore, in proof of this most fundamental truth, some plain arguments are offered; arguments derived from principles which infidels admit in common with believers; arguments which appear to me altogether irresistible; and such as, I am satisfied, will have great weight with all who give themselves the small trouble of looking seriously into their own bosoms, and of observing, with any tolerable degree of attention, what daily passes round about them in the world. If some arguments shall here occur which others have declined, they are submitted, with all deference, to better judgments in this, of all points the most important. For as to the being of a God, that is no longer disputed; but it is undisputed for this reason only, viz., because, where the least pretence to reason is admitted, it must for ever be indisputable. And, of consequence, no man can be betrayed into a dispute of that nature by vanity, which has a principal share in animating our modern combatants against other articles of our belief.

She (for I know not yet her name in heaven)
Not early, like Narcissa, left the scene;
Nor sudden, like Philander. What avail?
This seeming mitigation but inflames;
This fancied medicine heightens the disease.
The longer known, the closer still she grew;
And gradual parting is a gradual death.
'Tis the grim tyrant's engine, which extorts
By tardy pressure's still-increasing weight,
From hardest hearts, confession of distress.
O the long, dark approach through years of pain,
Death's gallery, (might I dare to call it so,)
With dismal doubt and sable terror hung;
Sick Hope's pale lamp its only glimmering ray!
There Fate my melancholy walk ordain'd,
Forbid Self-love itself to flatter there.
How oft I gazed, prophetically sad!
How oft I saw her dead, while yet in smiles!
In smiles she sunk her grief, to lessen mine.
She spoke me comfort, and increased my pain.
Like powerful armies trenching at a town,
By slow and silent, but resistless, sap,
In his pale progress gently gaining ground,
Death urged his deadly siege; in spite of Art,
Of all the balmy blessings Nature lends
To succour frail humanity. Ye stars,
(Not now first made familiar to my sight,)
And thou, O Moon, bear witness! many a night
He tore the pillow from beneath my head,
Tied down my sore attention to the shock,
By ceaseless depredations on a life
Dearer than that he left me. Dreadful post
Of observation, darker every hour!
Less dread the day that drove me to the brink,
And pointed at Eternity below;
When my soul shudder'd at futurity;
When, on a moment's point, the' important die
Of life and death spun doubtful, ere it fell,
And turn'd up life; my title to more woe.
But why more woe? More comfort let it be.
Nothing is dead but that which wish'd to die;
Nothing is dead but wretchedness and pain;
Nothing is dead but what encumber'd, gall'd,
Block'd up the pass, and barr'd from real life.
Where dwells that wish most ardent of the wise?
Too dark the sun to see it; highest stars
Too low to reach it; Death, great Death alone,
O'er stars and sun triumphant, lands us there.
Nor dreadful our transition; though the mind,
An artist at creating self-alarms,
Rich in expedients for inquietude,
Is prone to paint it dreadful. Who can take
Death's portrait true? The tyrant never sat.
Our sketch all random strokes, conjecture all;
Close shuts the Grave, nor tells one single tale.
Death, and his image rising in the brain,
Bear faint resemblance; never are alike:
Fear shakes the pencil; Fancy loves excess;
Dark Ignorance is lavish of her shades:
And these the formidable picture draw.
But grant the worst; 'tis past; new prospects rise,
And drop a veil eternal o'er her tomb.
Far other views our contemplation claim;
Views that o'erpay the rigours of our life,
Views that suspend our agonies in death.
Wrapt in the thought of immortality,
Wrapt in the single, the triumphant thought,
Long life might lapse, age unperceived come on,
And find the soul unsated with her theme.
Its nature, proof, importance, fire my song.
O that my song could emulate my soul!
Like her, immortal. No!—the soul disdains
A mark so mean; far nobler hope inflames;
If endless ages can outweigh an hour,
Let not the laurel, but the palm, inspire.
Thy nature, Immortality, who knows?
And yet who knows it not? It is but life
In stronger thread of brighter colour spun,
And spun for ever; dipp'd by cruel Fate
In Stygian dye, how black, how brittle here!
How short our correspondence with the sun,
And, while it lasts, inglorious! Our best deeds,
How wanting in their weight! Our highest joys,
Small cordials to support us in our pain,
And give us strength to suffer. But how great
To mingle interests, converse, amities,
With all the sons of Reason, scatter'd wide
Through habitable space, wherever born,
Howe'er endow'd; to live free citizens
Of universal nature; to lay hold,
By more than feeble faith, on the Supreme!
To call Heaven's rich unfathomable mines
(Mines which support archangels in their state)
Our own! to rise in science as in bliss,
Initiate in the secrets of the skies!
To read Creation, read its mighty plan
In the bare bosom of the Deity!
The plan and execution to collate!
To see, before each glance of piercing thought,
All cloud, all shadow, blown remote, and leave
No mystery—but that of love Divine,
Which lifts us on the seraph's flaming wing,
From earth's Aceldama, this field of blood,
Of inward anguish, and of outward ill,
From darkness and from dust, to such a scene;
Love's element, true joy's illustrious home,
From earth's sad contrast (now deplored) more fair!
What exquisite vicissitude of fate!
Bless'd absolution of our blackest hour!
Lorenzo, these are thoughts that make man Man,
The wise illumine, aggrandize the great.
How great, (while yet we tread the kindred clod,
And every moment fear to sink beneath
The clod we tread, soon trodden by our sons,)
How great, in the wild whirl of Time's pursuits,
To stop, and pause; involved in high presage,
Through the long vista of a thousand years,
To stand contemplating our distant selves,
As in a magnifying mirror seen,
Enlarged, ennobled, elevate, Divine!
To prophesy our own futurities,
To gaze in thought on what all thought transcends!
To talk, with fellow-candidates, of joys
As far beyond conception as desert,
Ourselves the' astonish'd talkers, and the tale!
Lorenzo, swells thy bosom at the thought?
The swell becomes thee; 'tis an honest pride.
Revere thyself,—and yet thyself despise.
His nature no man can o'er-rate, and none
Can under-rate his merit. Take good heed,
Nor there be modest where thou shouldst be proud;
That almost universal error shun.
How just our pride, when we behold those heights!
Not those Ambition paints in air, but those
Reason points out, and ardent Virtue gains,
And angels emulate. Our pride, how just!
When mount we? when these shackles cast? when quit
This cell of the creation? this small nest,
Stuck in a corner of the universe,
Wrapp'd up in fleecy cloud and fine-spun air?
Fine-spun to sense, but gross and feculent
To souls celestial; souls ordain'd to breathe
Ambrosial gales, and drink a purer sky;
Greatly triumphant on Time's farther shore,
Where Virtue reigns, enrich'd with full arrears,
While Pomp imperial begs an alms of Peace.
In empire high, or in proud science deep,
Ye born of earth, on what can you confer,
With half the dignity, with half the gain,
The gust, the glow of rational delight,
As on this theme, which angels praise and share?
Man's fates and favours are a theme in heaven.
What wretched repetition cloys us here!
What periodic potions for the sick,
Distemper'd bodies, and distemper'd minds!
In an eternity what scenes shall strike,
Adventures thicken, novelties surprise!
What webs of wonder shall unravel there!
What full day pour on all the paths of Heaven,
And light the' Almighty's footsteps in the deep!
How shall the blessed day of our discharge
Unwind, at once, the labyrinths of Fate,
And straighten its inextricable maze!
If inextinguishable thirst in man
To know, how rich, how full, our banquet there!
There, not the moral world alone unfolds;
The world material, lately seen in shades,
And in those shades by fragments only seen,
And seen those fragments by the labouring eye,
Unbroken, then, illustrious and entire,
Its ample sphere, its universal frame,
In full dimensions, swells to the survey,
And enters, at one glance, the ravish'd sight.
From some superior point, (where, who can tell?
Suffice it, 'tis a point where gods reside,)
How shall the stranger man's illumined eye,
In the vast ocean of unbounded space,
Behold an infinite of floating worlds
Divide the crystal waves of ether pure,
In endless voyage, without port! The least
Of these disseminated orbs, how great!
Great as they are, what numbers these surpass,
Huge as Leviathan to that small race,
Those twinkling multitudes of little life,
He swallows unperceived! Stupendous these!
Yet what are these stupendous to the whole?
As particles, as atoms ill-perceived;
As circulating globules in our veins;
So vast the plan. Fecundity Divine!
Exuberant Source! perhaps I wrong thee still.
If admiration is a source of joy,
What transport hence! yet this the least in heaven.
What this to that illustrious robe He wears
Who toss'd this mass of wonders from His hand,
A specimen, an earnest of His power?
'Tis to that glory, whence all glory flows,
As the mead's meanest floweret to the sun
Which gave it birth. But what this Sun of heaven?
This bliss supreme of the supremely bless'd?
Death, only Death, the question can resolve.
By Death, cheap-bought the' ideas of our joy;
The bare ideas! solid happiness
So distant from its shadow chased below.
And chase we still the phantom through the fire,
O'er bog, and brake, and precipice, till death?
And toil we still for sublunary pay,
Defy the dangers of the field and flood?
Or, spider-like, spin out our precious all,
Our more than vitals spin (if no regard
To great futurity) in curious webs
Of subtle thought, and exquisite design,
(Fine net-work of the brain!) to catch a fly,
The momentary buzz of vain renown,
A name, a mortal immortality?
Or, (meaner still,) instead of grasping air,
For sordid lucre plunge we in the mire?
Drudge, sweat, through every shame, for every gain,
For vile contaminating trash; throw up
Our hope in heaven, our dignity with man,
And deify the dirt, matured to gold?
Ambition, Avarice! the two demons these,
Which goad through every slough our human herd,
Hard travell'd from the cradle to the grave.
How low the wretches stoop! how steep they climb!
These demons burn mankind; but most possess
Lorenzo's bosom, and turn out the skies.
Is it in Time to hide Eternity?
And why not in an atom on the shore
To cover ocean? or a mote, the sun?
Glory and wealth! have they this blinding power?
What, if to them I prove Lorenzo blind?
Would it surprise thee? Be thou then surprised:
Thou neither know'st: their nature learn from me.
Mark well, as foreign as these subjects seem,
What close connexion ties them to my theme.
First, what is true ambition? The pursuit
Of glory, nothing less than man can share.
Were they as vain as gaudy-minded man,
As flatulent with fumes of self-applause,
Their arts and conquests animals might boast,
And claim their laurel crowns as well as we;
But not celestial. Here we stand alone;
As in our form, distinct, pre-eminent:
If prone in thought, our stature is our shame,
And man should blush his forehead meets the skies.
The Visible and Present are for brutes,
A slender portion, and a narrow bound!
These Reason, with an energy Divine,
O'erleaps, and claims the Future and Unseen;
The vast Unseen, the Future fathomless!
When the great soul buoys up to this high point,
Leaving gross Nature's sediments below,
Then, and then only, Adam's offspring quits
The sage and hero of the fields and woods,
Asserts his rank, and rises into man.
This is ambition: this is human fire.
Can Parts or Place (two bold pretenders!) make
Lorenzo great, and pluck him from the throng?
Genius and Art, Ambition's boasted wings,
Our boast but ill deserve. A feeble aid!
Dædalian engin'ry! if these alone
Assist our flight, Fame's flight is Glory's fall.
Heart-merit wanting, mount we ne'er so high,
Our height is but the gibbet of our name.
A celebrated wretch when I behold,
When I behold a genius bright and base,
Of towering talents, and terrestrial aims;
Methinks I see, as thrown from her high sphere,
The glorious fragments of a soul immortal,
With rubbish mix'd, and glittering in the dust.
Struck at the splendid, melancholy sight
At once compassion soft, and envy, rise—
But wherefore envy? Talents angel-bright,
If wanting worth, are shining instruments
In false Ambition's hand, to finish faults
Illustrious, and give Infamy renown.
Great ill is an achievement of great powers:
Plain Sense but rarely leads us far astray.
Reason the means, Affections choose our end;
Means have no merit, if our end amiss.
If wrong our hearts, our heads are right in vain;
What is a Pelham's head to Pelham's heart?
Hearts are proprietors of all applause.
Right ends and means make wisdom; worldly-wise
Is but half-witted, at its highest praise.
Let Genius then despair to make thee great;
Nor flatter Station. What is Station high?
'Tis a proud mendicant; it boasts, and begs;
It begs an alms of homage from the throng,
And oft the throng denies its charity.
Monarchs and ministers are awful names;
Whoever wear them, challenge our devoir.
Religion, public order, both exact
External homage, and a supple knee,
To beings pompously set up, to serve
The meanest slave: all more is Merit's due,
Her sacred and inviolable right;
Nor ever paid the monarch, but the man.
Our hearts ne'er bow but to superior worth,
Nor ever fail of their allegiance there.
Fools, indeed, drop the man in their account,
And vote the mantle into majesty.
Let the small savage boast his silver fur;
His royal robe unborrow'd and unbought,
His own, descending fairly from his sires.
Shall man be proud to wear his livery,
And souls in ermine scorn a soul without?
Can place or lessen us or aggrandize?
Pigmies are pigmies still, though perch'd on Alps;
And pyramids are pyramids in vales.
Each man makes his own stature, builds himself:
Virtue alone outbuilds the pyramids;
Her monuments shall last when Egypt's fall.
Of these sure truths dost thou demand the cause?
The cause is lodged in immortality.
Hear, and assent. Thy bosom burns for power;
What station charms thee? I'll install thee there;
'Tis thine. And art thou greater than before?
Then thou before wast something less than man.
Has thy new post betray'd thee into pride?
That treacherous pride betrays thy dignity;
That pride defames humanity, and calls
The being mean which staffs or strings can raise.
That pride, like hooded hawks, in darkness soars,
From blindness bold, and towering to the skies.
'Tis born of Ignorance, which knows not man
An angel's second; nor his second long.
A Nero, quitting his imperial throne,
And courting glory from the tinkling string,
But faintly shadows an immortal soul,
With empire's self, to pride or rapture fired.
If nobler motives minister no cure,
E'en Vanity forbids thee to be vain.
High worth is elevated place: 'tis more;
It makes the post stand candidate for thee;
Makes more than monarchs, makes an honest man;
Though no exchequer it commands, 'tis wealth;
And though it wears no riband, 'tis renown;
Renown, that would not quit thee, though disgraced,
Nor leave thee pendent on a master's smile.
Other ambition Nature interdicts;
Nature proclaims it most absurd in man,
By pointing at his origin and end;
Milk and a swathe, at first, his whole demand;
His whole domain, at last, a turf or stone;
To whom, between, a world may seem too small.
Souls truly great dart forward, on the wing
Of just Ambition, to the grand result,
The curtain's fall; there see the buskin'd chief
Unshod behind this momentary scene,
Reduced to his own stature, low or high,
As vice, or virtue, sinks him, or sublimes;
And laugh at this fantastic mummery,
This antic prelude of grotesque events,
Where dwarfs are often stilted, and betray
A littleness of soul by worlds o'er-run,
And nations laid in blood. Dread sacrifice
To Christian pride! which had with horror shock'd
The darkest Pagans, offer'd to their gods.
O thou most Christian enemy to peace!
Again in arms? again provoking Fate?
That prince, and that alone, is truly great,
Who draws the sword reluctant, gladly sheathes;
On empire builds what empire far outweighs,
And makes his throne a scaffold to the skies.
Why this so rare? Because forgot of all
The day of death; that venerable day,
Which sits as judge; that day which shall pronounce
On all our days, absolve them or condemn.
Lorenzo, never shut thy thought against it;
Be levees ne'er so full, afford it room,
And give it audience in the cabinet.
That friend consulted (flatteries apart)
Will tell thee fair if thou art great or mean.
To dote on aught may leave us, or be left,—
Is that ambition? Then let flames descend,
Point to the centre their inverted spires,
And learn humiliation from a soul
Which boasts her lineage from celestial fire.
Yet these are they the world pronounces wise;
The world which cancels Nature's right and wrong,
And casts new wisdom: e'en the grave man lends
His solemn face to countenance the coin.
Wisdom for parts is madness for the whole.
This stamps the paradox, and gives us leave
To call the wisest weak, the richest poor,
The most ambitious unambitious, mean;
In triumph mean, and abject on a throne.
Nothing can make it less than mad in man,
To put forth all his ardour, all his art,
And give his soul her full unbounded flight,
But reaching Him who gave her wings to fly.
When blind Ambition quite mistakes her road,
And downward pores for that which shines above,
Substantial happiness, and true renown;
Then, like an idiot, gazing on the brook,
We leap at stars, and fasten in the mud;
At glory grasp, and sink in infamy.
Ambition! powerful source of good and ill!
Thy strength in man, like length of wing in birds,
When disengaged from earth, with greater ease
And swifter flight, transports us to the skies:
By toys entangled, or in guilt bemired,
It turns a curse; it is our chain and scourge
In this dark dungeon, where confined we lie,
Close-grated by the sordid bars of sense;
All prospect of eternity shut out;
And, but for execution, ne'er set free.
With error in ambition justly charged,
Find we Lorenzo wiser in his wealth?
What, if thy rental I reform, and draw
An inventory new to set thee right?
Where thy true treasure? Gold says, “Not in me;”
And, “Not in me,” the diamond. Gold is poor;
India's insolvent: seek it in thyself;
Seek in thy naked self, and find it there;
In being so descended, form'd, endow'd;
Sky-born, sky-guided, sky-returning race!
Erect, immortal, rational, Divine!
In senses, which inherit earth and heavens;
Enjoy the various riches Nature yields;
Far nobler! give the riches they enjoy;
Give taste to fruits, and harmony to groves,
Their radiant beams to gold, and gold's bright sire;
Take-in, at once, the landscape of the world,
At a small inlet, which a grain might close,
And half-create the wondrous world they see.
Our senses, as our reason, are Divine.
But for the magic organ's powerful charm,
Earth were a rude, uncolour'd chaos still.
Objects are but the' occasion: ours the' exploit;
Ours is the cloth, the pencil, and the paint,
Which Nature's admirable picture draws,
And beautifies Creation's ample dome.
Like Milton's Eve, when gazing on the lake,
Man makes the matchless image man admires.
Say then, shall man, his thoughts all sent abroad,
(Superior wonders in himself forgot,)
His admiration waste on objects round,
When Heaven makes him the soul of all he sees?
Absurd, not rare! so great, so mean, is man!
What wealth in senses such as these! What wealth
In Fancy fired to form a fairer scene
Than Sense surveys! in Memory's firm record!
Which, should it perish, could this world recall
From the dark shadows of o'erwhelming years,
In colours fresh, originally bright,
Preserve its portrait, and report its fate!
What wealth in Intellect, that sovereign power,
Which Sense and Fancy summons to the bar;
Interrogates, approves, or reprehends;
And from the mass those underlings import,
From their materials sifted, and refined,
And in Truth's balance accurately weigh'd,
Forms art and science, government and law;
The solid basis and the beauteous frame,
The vitals and the grace, of civil life;
And, manners (sad exception!) set aside,
Strikes out, with master-hand, a copy fair
Of His idea, whose indulgent thought,
Long, long ere Chaos teem'd, plann'd human bliss!
What wealth in souls that soar, dive, range around,
Disdaining limit or from place or time:
And hear at once, in thought extensive, hear
The' Almighty fiat, and the trumpet's sound!
Bold on Creation's outside walk, and view
What was, and is, and more than e'er shall be;
Commanding, with omnipotence of thought,
Creations new in Fancy's field to rise!
Souls, that can grasp whate'er the' Almighty made,
And wander wild through things impossible!
What wealth in faculties of endless growth,
In quenchless passions violent to crave,
In liberty to choose, in power to reach,
And in duration, (how thy riches rise!)
Duration to perpetuate—boundless bliss!
Ask you, what power resides in feeble man
That bliss to gain? Is Virtue's, then, unknown?
Virtue, our present peace, our future prize!
Man's unprecarious, natural estate,
Improvable at will, in Virtue lies;
Its tenure sure; its income is Divine.
High-built abundance, heap on heap! for what?
To breed new wants, and beggar us the more!
Then, make a richer scramble for the throng.
Soon as this feeble pulse, which leaps so long
Almost by miracle, is tired with play,
Like rubbish from disploding engines thrown,
Our magazines of hoarded trifles fly;
Fly diverse; fly to foreigners, to foes;
New masters court, and call the former fool
(How justly!) for dependence on their stay.
Wide scatter, first, our playthings; then our dust.
Dost court abundance for the sake of peace?
Learn, and lament thy self-defeated scheme:
Riches enable to be richer still;
And richer still what mortal can resist?
Thus Wealth (a cruel task-master) enjoins
New toils, succeeding toils, an endless train!
And murders Peace, which taught it first to shine.
The poor are half as wretched as the rich,
Whose proud and painful privilege it is
At once to bear a double load of woe;
To feel the stings of Envy and of Want,
Outrageous Want, both Indies cannot cure.
A competence is vital to content.
Much wealth is corpulence, if not disease:
Sick, or encumber'd, is our happiness.
A competence is all we can enjoy.
O be content where Heaven can give no more!
More, like a flash of water from a lock,
Quickens our spirit's movement for an hour;
But soon its force is spent, nor rise our joys
Above our native temper's common stream.
Hence Disappointment lurks in every prize,
As bees in flowers, and stings us with success.
The rich man who denies it, proudly feigns,
Nor knows the wise are privy to the lie.
Much learning shows how little mortals know;
Much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy:
At best it babies us with endless toys,
And keeps us children till we drop to dust.
As monkeys at a mirror stand amazed,
They fail to find what they so plainly see:
Thus men, in shining riches, see the face
Of Happiness, nor know it is a shade;
But gaze, and touch, and peep, and peep again
And wish, and wonder it is absent still.
How few can rescue opulence from want!
Who lives to Nature rarely can be poor;
Who lives to Fancy never can be rich.
Poor is the man in debt; the man of gold,
In debt to Fortune, trembles at her power:
The man of Reason smiles at her and Death.
O what a patrimony this! A being
Of such inherent strength and majesty,
Not worlds possess'd can raise it; worlds destroy'd
Can't injure; which holds on its glorious course,
When thine, O Nature! ends; too bless'd to mourn
Creation's obsequies. What treasure this!
The monarch is a beggar to the man.
IMMORTAL! Ages past, yet nothing gone!
Morn without eve! a race without a goal,
Unshorten'd by progression infinite!
Futurity for ever future! Life
Beginning still where computation ends!
'Tis the description of a Deity!
'Tis the description of the meanest slave:
The meanest slave dares, then, Lorenzo scorn?
The meanest slave thy sovereign glory shares.
Proud youth, fastidious of the lower world!
Man's lawful pride includes humility;
Stoops to the lowest; is too great to find
Inferiors: all immortal! brothers all!
Proprietors eternal of thy love!
IMMORTAL! What can strike the sense so strong,
As this the soul? It thunders to the thought;
Reason amazes; gratitude o'erwhelms.
No more we slumber on the brink of fate;
Roused at the sound, the' exulting soul ascends,
And breathes her native air; an air that feeds
Ambitions high, and fans ethereal fires;
Quick kindles all that is Divine within us,
Nor leaves one loitering thought beneath the stars.
Has not Lorenzo's bosom caught the flame?
Immortal! Were but one immortal, how
Would others envy! how would thrones adore!
Because 'tis common, is the blessing lost?
How this ties up the bounteous hand of Heaven!
O vain, vain, vain, all else! Eternity!
A glorious and a needful refuge, that,
From vile imprisonment in abject views.
'Tis immortality, 'tis that alone,
Amid Life's pains, abasements, emptiness,
The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill.
That only, and that amply, this performs,
Lifts us above Life's pains, her joys above;
Their terror those, and these their lustre, lose:
Eternity depending covers all;
Eternity depending all achieves;
Sets Earth at distance; casts her into shades;
Blends her distinctions; abrogates her powers:
The low, the lofty, joyous, and severe,
Fortune's dread frowns and fascinating smiles,
Make one promiscuous and neglected heap,
The man beneath; if I may call him man,
Whom immortality's full force inspires.
Nothing terrestrial touches his high thought:
Suns shine unseen, and thunders roll unheard,
By minds quite conscious of their high descent,
Their present province, and their future prize;
Divinely darting upward every wish,
Warm on the wing, in glorious absence lost!
Doubt you this truth? Why labours your belief?
If Earth's whole orb, by some due-distanced eye,
Were seen at once, her towering Alps would sink,
And levell'd Atlas leave an even sphere.
Thus Earth, and all that earthly minds admire,
Is swallow'd in Eternity's vast round.
To that stupendous view when souls awake,
So large of late, so mountainous to man,
Time's toys subside; and equal all below.
Enthusiastic this? then all are weak,
But rank enthusiasts. To this godlike height
Some souls have soar'd, or martyrs ne'er had bled:
And all may do what has by man been done.
Who, beaten by these sublunary storms,
Boundless, interminable joys can weigh,
Unraptured, unexalted, uninflamed?
What slave, unbless'd, who from to-morrow's dawn
Expects an empire? He forgets his chain,
And, throned in thought, his absent sceptre waves.
And what a sceptre waits us! what a throne!
Her own immense appointments to compute,
Or comprehend her high prerogatives,
In this her dark minority, how toils,
How vainly pants, the human soul Divine!
Too great the bounty seems for earthly joy.
What heart but trembles at so strange a bliss?
In spite of all the truths the Muse has sung,
Ne'er to be prized enough, enough revolved!
Are there who wrap the world so close about them,
They see no farther than the clouds; and dance
On heedless Vanity's fantastic toe,
Till, stumbling at a straw, in their career,
Headlong they plunge, where end both dance and song?
Are there, Lorenzo? is it possible?
Are there on earth (let me not call them men)
Who lodge a soul immortal in their breasts;
Unconscious as the mountain of its ore;
Or rock, of its inestimable gem?
When rocks shall melt, and mountains vanish, these
Shall know their treasure; treasure then no more.
Are there (still more amazing!) who resist
The rising thought? who smother, in its birth,
The glorious truth? who struggle to be brutes?
Who through this bosom-barrier burst their way;
And, with reversed ambition, strive to sink?
Who labour downwards through the' opposing powers
Of Instinct, Reason, and the World against them,
To dismal hopes, and shelter in the shock
Of endless night, night darker than the grave's?
Who fight the proofs of immortality?
With horrid zeal and execrable arts,
Work all their engines, level their black fires,
To blot from man this attribute Divine,
(Than vital blood far dearer to the wise,)
Blasphemers, and rank atheists to themselves?
To contradict them, see all Nature rise!
What object, what event, the moon beneath,
But argues, or endears, an after-scene?
To Reason proves, or weds it to Desire?
All things proclaim it needful; some advance
One precious step beyond, and prove it sure.
A thousand arguments swarm round my pen,
From Heaven, and Earth, and Man. Indulge a few,
By nature, as her common habit, worn;
So pressing Providence a truth to teach,
Which truth untaught, all other truths were vain.
THOU! whose all-providential eye surveys,
Whose hand directs, whose Spirit fills and warms
Creation, and holds empire far beyond!
Eternity's Inhabitant august;
Of two eternities amazing Lord!
One past, ere man's or angel's had begun:
Aid! while I rescue from the foe's assault
Thy glorious immortality in man:
A theme for ever, and for all, of weight,
Of moment infinite! but relish'd most
By those who love Thee most, who most adore.
Nature, Thy daughter, ever-changing birth
Of Thee the great Immutable, to man
Speaks wisdom; is his oracle supreme;
And he who most consults her is most wise.
Lorenzo, to this heavenly Delphos haste;
And come back all-immortal, all-Divine:
Look Nature through, 'tis revolution all;
All change, no death. Day follows night; and night,
The dying day; stars rise, and set, and rise;
Earth takes the' example. See, the Summer gay,
With her green chaplet and ambrosial flowers,
Droops into pallid Autumn: Winter grey,
Horrid with frost, and turbulent with storm,
Blows Autumn and his golden fruits away;
Then melts into the Spring: soft Spring, with breath
Favonian, from warm chambers of the south
Recalls the first. All, to re-flourish, fades;
As in a wheel, all sinks, to re-ascend:
Emblems of man, who passes, not expires.
With this minute distinction, emblems just,—
Nature revolves, but man advances: both
Eternal; that a circle, this a line;
That gravitates, this soars. The' aspiring Soul,
Ardent and tremulous, like flame, ascends;
Zeal and Humility her wings to heaven.
The world of matter, with its various forms,
All dies into new life. Life, born from Death,
Rolls the vast mass, and shall for ever roll.
No single atom, once in being, lost,
With change of counsel charges the Most High.
What hence infers Lorenzo? Can it be?
Matter immortal? And shall spirit die?
Above the nobler, shall less noble rise?
Shall man alone, for whom all else revives,
No resurrection know? Shall man alone,
Imperial man! be sown in barren ground,
Less privileged than grain on which he feeds?
Is man, in whom alone is power to prize
The bliss of being, or with previous pain
Deplore its period, by the spleen of Fate,
Severely doom'd Death's single unredeem'd?
If Nature's revolution speaks aloud,
In her gradation hear her louder still.
Look Nature through; 'tis neat gradation all.
By what minute degrees her scale ascends!
Each middle nature join'd at each extreme,
To that above it join'd, to that beneath.
Parts into parts reciprocally shot
Abhor divorce. What love of union reigns!
Here, dormant matter waits a call to life;
Half-life, half-death, join there: here, life and sense;
There, sense from reason steals a glimmering ray;
Reason shines out in man. But how preserved
The chain unbroken upward, to the realms
Of incorporeal life? those realms of bliss
Where Death hath no dominion? Grant a make
Half-mortal, half-immortal; earthy part,
And part ethereal: grant the soul of man
Eternal; or in man the series ends.
Wide yawns the gap; connexion is no more;
Check'd Reason halts; her next step wants support;
Striving to climb, she tumbles from her scheme;
A scheme Analogy pronounced so true:
Analogy, man's surest guide below.
Thus far all Nature calls on thy belief.
And will Lorenzo, careless of the call,
False attestation on all Nature charge,
Rather than violate his league with Death?
Renounce his reason, rather than renounce
The dust beloved, and run the risk of heaven?
O what indignity to deathless souls!
What treason to the majesty of man,
Of man immortal hear the lofty style:—
“If so decreed, the' almighty will be done.
Let earth dissolve, yon ponderous orbs descend,
And grind us into dust: the soul is safe;
The man emerges; mounts above the wreck.
As towering flame from Nature's funeral pyre;
O'er Devastation, as a gainer, smiles;
His charter, his inviolable rights,
Well-pleased to learn from Thunder's impotence,
Death's pointless darts, and Hell's defeated storms.”
But these chimeras touch not thee, Lorenzo!
The glories of the world thy sevenfold shield.
Other ambition than of crowns in air,
And superlunary felicities,
Thy bosom warms. I'll cool it, if I can;
And turn those glories that enchant, against thee.
What ties thee to this life proclaims the next.
If wise, the cause that wounds thee is thy cure.
Come, my ambitious! let us mount together,
(To mount, Lorenzo never can refuse,)
And from the clouds, where Pride delights to dwell,
Look down on Earth.—What seest thou? Wondrous things!
Terrestrial wonders, that eclipse the skies.
What lengths of labour'd lands! what loaded seas!
Loaded by man for pleasure, wealth, or war!
Seas, winds, and planets, into service brought,
His art acknowledge, and promote his ends.
Nor can the' eternal rocks his will withstand:
What levell'd mountains, and what lifted vales!
O'er vales and mountains sumptuous cities swell,
And gild our landscape with their glittering spires.
Some 'mid the wondering waves majestic rise;
And Neptune holds a mirror to their charms.
Far greater still! (what cannot mortal might?)
See wide dominions ravish'd from the deep:
The narrow'd deep with indignation foams.
Or southward turn: to delicate and grand
The finer arts there ripen in the sun.
How the tall temples, as to meet their gods,
Ascend the skies! The proud triumphal arch
Shows us half heaven beneath its ample bend.
High through mid-air, here streams are taught to flow;
Whole rivers, there, laid by in basins, sleep.
Here, plains turn oceans; there, vast oceans join
Through kingdoms channell'd deep from shore to shore,
And changed Creation takes its face from man.
Beats thy brave breast for formidable scenes.
Where fame and empire wait upon the sword?
See fields in blood; hear naval thunders rise,—
Britannia's voice, that awes the world to peace!
How yon enormous mole projecting breaks
The mid-sea furious waves! Their roar amidst,
Out-speaks the Deity, and says, “O main!
Thus far, nor farther! new restraints obey.”
Earth's disembowell'd! measured are the skies!
Stars are detected in their deep recess!
Creation widens! vanquish'd Nature yields!
Her secrets are extorted! Art prevails!
What monuments of genius, spirit, power!
And now, Lorenzo, raptured at this scene,
Whose glories render heaven superfluous! say,
Whose footsteps these?—Immortals have been here.
Could less than souls immortal this have done?
Earth's cover'd o'er with proofs of souls immortal,
And proofs of immortality forgot.
To flatter thy grand foible, I confess,
These are Ambition's works; and these are great:
But this the least immortal souls can do:
Transcend them all.—“But what can these transcend?”
Dost ask me, what?—One sigh for the distress'd.
“What then for infidels?”—A deeper sigh.
'Tis moral grandeur makes the mighty man:
How little they who think aught great below!
All our ambitions Death defeats, but one;
And that it crowns.—Here cease we; but, ere long,
More powerful proof shall take the field against thee,
Stronger than Death, and smiling at the tomb.

NIGHT VII. BEING THE SECOND PART OF THE INFIDEL RECLAIMED: CONTAINING THE NATURE, PROOF, AND IMPORTANCE OF IMMORTALITY.

PREFACE.

As we are at war with the power, it were well if we were at war with the manners, of France. A land of levity is a land of guilt. A serious mind is the native soil of every virtue, and the single character that does true honour to mankind. The soul's immortality has been the favourite theme with the serious of all ages. Nor is it strange; it is a subject by far the most interesting and important that can enter the mind of man. Of highest moment this subject always was, and always will be. Yet this its highest moment seems to admit of increase, at this day; a sort of occasional importance is superadded to the natural weight of it, if that opinion which is advanced in the Preface to the preceding Night be just. It is there supposed, that all our infidels, whatever scheme, for argument's sake, and to keep themselves in countenance, they patronize, are betrayed into their deplorable error by some doubt of their immortality at the bottom. And the more I consider this point, the more am I persuaded of the truth of that opinion. Though the distrust of a futurity is a strange error, yet it is an error into which bad men may naturally be distressed. For it is impossible to bid defiance to final ruin, without some refuge in imagination, some presumption of escape. And what presumption is there? There are but two in nature; but two within the compass of human thought; and these are,—That either God will not, or cannot, punish. Considering the Divine attributes, the first is too gross to be digested by our strongest wishes. And, since omnipotence is as much a Divine attribute as

holiness, that God cannot punish, is as absurd a supposition as the former. God certainly can punish, as long as wicked men exist. In non-existence, therefore, is their only refuge; and, consequently, non-existence is their strongest wish. And strong wishes have a strange influence on our opinions; they bias the judgment in a manner almost incredible. And since on this member of their alternative there are some very small appearances in their favour, and none at all on the other, they catch at this reed, they lay hold on this chimera, to save themselves from the shock and horror of an immediate and absolute despair.

On reviewing my subject by the light which this argument, and others of like tendency, threw upon it, I was more inclined than ever to pursue it, as it appeared to me to strike directly at the main root of all our infidelity. In the following pages, it is accordingly pursued at large; and some arguments for immortality, new at least to me, are ventured on in them. There, also, the writer has made an attempt to set the gross absurdities and horrors of annihilation in a fuller and more affecting view than is, I think, to be met with elsewhere.

The gentlemen for whose sake this attempt was chiefly made, profess great admiration for the wisdom of Heathen antiquity: what pity it is they are not sincere! If they were sincere, how would it mortify them to consider with what contempt and abhorrence their notions would have been received by those whom they so much admire! What degree of contempt and abhorrence would fall to their share, may be conjectured by the following matter of fact, in my opinion, extremely memorable. Of all their Heathen worthies, Socrates, it is well known, was the most guarded, dispassionate, and composed: yet this great master of temper was angry; and angry at his last hour; and angry with his friend; and angry for what deserved acknowledgment; angry for a right and tender instance of true friendship towards him. Is not this surprising? What could be the cause? The cause was for his honour: it was a truly noble, though, perhaps, a too punctilious, regard for immortality; for his friend asking him, with such an affectionate concern as became a friend, where he should deposit his remains, it was resented by Socrates, as implying a dishonourable supposition that he could be so mean as to have regard for any thing, even in himself, that was not immortal.

This fact, well considered, would make our infidels withdraw their admiration from Socrates; or make them endeavour, by their imitation of this illustrious example, to share his glory; and, consequently, it would incline them to peruse the following pages with candour and impartiality; which is all I desire, and that for their sakes; for I am persuaded, that an unprejudiced infidel must, necessarily, receive some advantageous impressions from them.

CONTENTS OF NIGHT VII.

In the Sixth Night arguments were drawn from Nature, in proof of immortality. Here, others are drawn from Man: from his discontent, p. 117—from his passions and powers, 118—from the gradual growth of reason, 118—from his fear of death, 119—from the nature of hope, 119—and of virtue, 120, &c.—from knowledge, and love, as being the most essential properties of the soul, 122—from the order of creation, 123—from the nature of ambition, 124, &c.—avarice, 127—pleasure, 127.—A digression on the grandeur of the passions, 128.—Immortality alone renders our present state intelligible, 129.— An objection from the Stoics' disbelief of immortality, answered, 129.—Endless questions unresolvable, but on supposition of our immortality, 130, 131.—The natural, most melancholy, and pathetic complaint of a worthy man under the persuasion of no futurity, 132, &c.—The gross absurdities and horrors of annihilation urged home on Lorenzo, 136, &c.—The soul's vast importance, 140, 141—from whence it arises, 142.—The difficulty of being an infidel, 143.— The infamy, 144—the cause, 144—and the character, 144, of an infidel state.—What true free-thinking is, 145.—The necessary punishment of the false, 146.—Man's ruin is from himself, 147.—An infidel accuses himself of guilt and hypocrisy, and that of the worst sort, 147.—His obligation to Christians, 148.—What danger he incurs by virtue, 149.—Vice recommended to him, 149.—His high pretences to virtue and benevolence exploded, 149.—The conclusion, on the nature of faith, 150—reason, 150—and hope, 150—with an apology for this attempt, 151.

Heaven gives the needful, but neglected, call.
What day, what hour, but knocks at human hearts,
To wake the soul to sense of future scenes?
Deaths stand like Mercurys in every way,
And kindly point us to our journey's end.
Pope, who couldst make immortals! art thou dead?
I give thee joy: nor will I take my leave,
So soon to follow. Man but dives in death;
Dives from the sun, in fairer day to rise:
The grave his subterranean road to bliss.
Yes, infinite Indulgence plann'd it so:
Through various parts our glorious story runs;
Time gives the preface, endless Age unrolls
The volume (ne'er unroll'd) of human fate.
This, Earth and Skies already have proclaim'd.
The world's a prophecy of worlds to come;
And who what God foretells (who speaks in things,
Still louder than in words) shall dare deny?
If Nature's arguments appear too weak,
Turn a new leaf, and stronger read in man.
If man sleeps on, untaught by what he sees,
Can he prove infidel to what he feels?
He whose blind thought futurity denies,
Unconscious bears, Bellerophon! like thee,
His own indictment; he condemns himself:
Who reads his bosom, reads immortal life;
Or Nature, there, imposing on her sons,
Has written fables; man was made a lie.
Why Discontent for ever harbour'd there?
Incurable consumption of our peace!
Resolve me, why the cottager and king,—
He whom sea-sever'd realms obey, and he
Who steals his whole dominion from the waste,
Repelling winter blasts with mud and straw,—
Disquieted alike, draw sigh for sigh,
In fate so distant, in complaint so near.
Is it that things terrestrial can't content?
Deep in rich pasture will thy flocks complain?
Not so; but to their master is denied
To share their sweet serene. Man, ill at ease
In this, not his own place, this foreign field,
Where Nature fodders him with other food
Than was ordain'd his cravings to suffice,
Poor in abundance, famish'd at a feast,
Sighs on for something more, when most enjoy'd.
Is Heaven then kinder to thy flocks than thee?
Not so: thy pasture richer, but remote;
In part, remote: for that remoter part
Man bleats from Instinct, though, perhaps, debauch'd
By Sense, his Reason sleeps, nor dreams the cause.
The cause how obvious, when his Reason wakes!
His grief is but his grandeur in disguise;
And discontent is immortality.
Shall sons of Ether, shall the blood of Heaven,
Set up their hopes on earth, and stable here,
With brutal acquiescence in the mire?
Lorenzo, no! They shall be nobly pain'd;
The glorious foreigners, distress'd, shall sigh
On thrones; and thou congratulate the sigh:
Man's misery declares him born for bliss:
His anxious heart asserts the truth I sing,
And gives the sceptic in his head the lie.
Our heads, our hearts, our passions, and our powers,
Speak the same language; call us to the skies.
Unripen'd these, in this inclement clime,
Scarce rise above conjecture and mistake;
And for this land of trifles those too strong
Tumultuous rise, and tempest human life:
What prize on earth can pay us for the storm?
Meet objects for our passions Heaven ordain'd,
Objects that challenge all their fire, and leave
No fault but in defect. Bless'd Heaven! avert
A bounded ardour for unbounded bliss!
O for a bliss unbounded! Far beneath
A soul immortal is a mortal joy.
Nor are our powers to perish immature;
But, after feeble effort here, beneath
A brighter sun, and in a nobler soil,
Transplanted from this sublunary bed,
Shall flourish fair, and put forth all their bloom.
Reason progressive, Instinct is complete:
Swift Instinct leaps; slow Reason feebly climbs.
Brutes soon their zenith reach; their little all
Flows in at once; in ages they no more
Could know, or do, or covet, or enjoy.
Were man to live coëval with the sun,
The patriarch pupil would be learning still;
Yet, dying, leave his lesson half unlearnt.
Men perish in advance, as if the sun
Should set ere noon, in eastern oceans drown'd;
If fit, with dim ILLUSTRIOUS to compare,
The sun's meridian with the soul of man.
To man why, step-dame Nature, so severe?
Why thrown aside thy master-piece half-wrought,
While meaner efforts thy last hand enjoy?
Or, if abortively poor man must die,
Nor reach what reach he might, why die in dread?
Why cursed with foresight, wise to misery?
Why of his proud prerogative the prey?
Why less pre-eminent in rank than pain?
His immortality alone can tell;
Full ample fund to balance all amiss,
And turn the scale in favour of the just!
His immortality alone can solve
That darkest of enigmas, human Hope;
Of all the darkest, if at death we die.
Hope, eager Hope, the' assassin of our joy,
All present blessings treading under foot,
Is scarce a milder tyrant than Despair.
With no past toils content, still planning new,
Hope turns us o'er to Death alone for ease.
Possession, why more tasteless than pursuit?
Why is a wish far dearer than a crown?
That wish accomplish'd, why the grave of bliss?
Because, in the great future buried deep,
Beyond our plans of empire and renown,
Lies all that man with ardour should pursue;
And HE who made him, bent him to the right.
Man's heart the' Almighty to the future sets,
By secret and inviolable springs;
And makes his hope his sublunary joy.
Man's heart eats all things, and is hungry still:
“More, more!” the glutton cries: for something new
So rages Appetite, if man can't mount,
He will descend. He starves on the possess'd.
Hence, the world's master, from Ambition's spire,
In Caprea plunged, and dived beneath the brute.
In that rank sty why wallow'd Empire's son
Supreme? Because he could no higher fly;
His riot was Ambition in despair.
Old Rome consulted birds; Lorenzo! thou,
With more success, the flight of Hope survey;
Of restless Hope, for ever on the wing.
High-perch'd o'er every thought that falcon sits,
To fly at all that rises in her sight;
And, never stooping but to mount again
Next moment, she betrays her aim's mistake,
And owns her quarry lodged beyond the grave.
There should it fail us, (it must fail us there,
If being fails,) more mournful riddles rise,
And Virtue vies with Hope in mystery.
Why Virtue? where its praise, its being fled?
Virtue is true self-interest pursued:
What true self-interest of quite mortal man?
To close with all that makes him happy here.
If Vice (as sometimes) is our friend on earth,
Then Vice is Virtue; 'tis our sovereign good.
In self-applause is Virtue's golden prize;
No self-applause attends it on thy scheme.
Whence self-applause? From conscience of the right.
And what is right, but means of happiness?
No means of happiness when Virtue yields:
That basis failing, falls the building too,
And lays in ruin every virtuous joy.
The rigid guardian of a blameless heart,
So long revered, so long reputed wise,
Is weak; with rank knight-errantries o'er-run.
Why beats thy bosom with illustrious dreams
Of self-exposure, laudable and great,
Of gallant enterprise, and glorious death?
Die for thy country?—Thou romantic fool!
Seize, seize the plank thyself, and let her sink.
Thy country! what to thee?—The Godhead, what,
(I speak with awe!) though He should bid thee bleed?
If, with thy blood, thy final hope is spilt,
Nor can Omnipotence reward the blow,
Be deaf; preserve thy being; disobey.
Nor is it disobedience: know, Lorenzo!
Whate'er the' Almighty's subsequent command,
His first command is this:—“Man, love thyself.”
In this alone, free-agents are not free.
Existence is the basis, bliss the prize:
If Virtue costs existence, 'tis a crime,
Bold violation of our law supreme,
Black suicide; though nations, which consult
Their gain at thy expense, resound applause.
Since Virtue's recompence is doubtful here,
If man dies wholly, well may we demand,
Why is man suffer'd to be good in vain?
Why, to be good in vain, is man enjoin'd?
Why, to be good in vain, is man betray'd?
Betray'd by traitors lodged in his own breast,
By sweet complacencies from Virtue felt?
Why whispers Nature lies on Virtue's part?
Or if blind Instinct (which assumes the name
Of sacred Conscience) plays the fool in man,
Why Reason made accomplice in the cheat?
Why are the wisest loudest in her praise?
Can man by Reason's beam be led astray?
Or, at his peril, imitate his God?
Since Virtue sometimes ruins us on earth,
Or both are true, or man survives the grave.
Or man survives the grave, or own, Lorenzo,
Thy boast supreme a wild absurdity.
Dauntless thy spirit: cowards are thy scorn.
Grant man immortal, and thy scorn is just.
The man immortal, rationally brave,
Dares rush on death—because he cannot die.
But if man loses all when life is lost,
He lives a coward, or a fool expires.
A daring infidel, (and such there are,
From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge,
Or pure heroical defect of thought,)
Of all Earth's madmen, most deserves a chain.
When to the grave we follow the renown'd
For Valour, Virtue, Science, all we love,
And all we praise; for Worth, whose noon-tide beam,
Enabling us to think in higher style,
Mends our ideas of ethereal powers;
Dream we that lustre of the moral world
Goes out in stench, and rottenness the close?
Why was he wise to know, and warm to praise,
And strenuous to transcribe in human life,
The Mind Almighty? Could it be, that Fate,
Just when the lineaments began to shine,
And dawn the Deity, should snatch the draught,
With night eternal blot it out, and give
The Skies alarm, lest angels too might die?
If human souls, why not angelic too
Extinguish'd? and a solitary God,
O'er ghastly ruin, frowning from His throne?
Shall we this moment gaze on God in man?
The next, lose man for ever in the dust?
From dust we disengage, or man mistakes;
And there, where least his judgment fears a flaw.
Wisdom and Worth how boldly he commends!
Wisdom and Worth are sacred names; revered,
Where not embraced; applauded, deified!
Why not compassion'd too? If spirits die,
Both are calamities; inflicted both
To make us but more wretched: Wisdom's eye
Acute, for what? To spy more miseries;
And Worth, so recompensed, new-points their stings.
Or man surmounts the grave, or gain is loss,
And Worth exalted humbles us the more.
Thou wilt not patronize a scheme that makes
Weakness and Vice the refuge of mankind.
“Has Virtue, then, no joys?”—Yes, joys dear-bought.
Talk ne'er so long, in this imperfect state,
Virtue and Vice are at eternal war.
Virtue's a combat; and who fights for nought,
Or for precarious or for small reward?
Who Virtue's self-reward so loud resound,
Would take degrees angelic here below,
And Virtue, while they compliment, betray,
By feeble motives and unfaithful guards.
The crown, the' unfading crown, her soul inspires:
'Tis that, and that alone, can countervail
The Body's treacheries, and the World's assaults:
On Earth's poor pay our famish'd Virtue dies.
Truth incontestable, in spite of all
A Bayle has preach'd, or a Voltaire believed!
In man, the more we dive, the more we see
Heaven's signet stamping an immortal make.
Dive to the bottom of his soul, the base
Sustaining all, what find we? Knowledge, love.
As light and heat essential to the sun,
These to the soul. And why, if souls expire?
How little lovely here! How little known!
Small knowledge we dig up with endless toil;
And love unfeign'd may purchase perfect hate.
Why starved, on earth, our angel-appetites,
While brutal are indulged their fulsome fill?
Were then capacities Divine conferr'd,
As a mock diadem, in savage sport,
Rank insult of our pompous poverty,
Which reaps but pain from seeming claims so fair?
In future age lies no redress? and shuts
Eternity the door on our complaint?
If so, for what strange ends were mortals made!
The worst to wallow, and the best to weep;
The man who merits most, must most complain.
Can we conceive a disregard in Heaven,
What the worst perpetrate, or best endure?
This cannot be. To love, and know, in man
Is boundless appetite, and boundless power:
And these demonstrate boundless objects too.
Objects, powers, appetites, Heaven suits in all;
Nor, Nature through, e'er violates this sweet,
Eternal concord on her tuneful string.
Is man the sole exception from her laws?
Eternity struck off from human hope,
(I speak with truth, but veneration too,)
Man is a monster, the reproach of Heaven,
A stain, a dark impenetrable cloud
On Nature's beauteous aspect; and deforms,
(Amazing blot!) deforms her with her lord.
If such is man's allotment, what is Heaven?
Or own the soul immortal, or blaspheme.
Or own the soul immortal, or invert
All order. Go, mock-majesty! go, man!
And bow to thy superiors of the stall;
Through every scene of sense superior far:
They graze the turf untill'd; they drink the stream
Unbrew'd, and ever full, and unembitter'd
With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despairs;
Mankind's peculiar! Reason's precious dower!
No foreign clime they ransack for their robes;
Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar.
Their good is good entire, unmix'd, unmarr'd;
They find a paradise in every field,
On boughs forbidden, where no curses hang:
Their ill no more than strikes the sense; unstretch'd
By previous dread, or murmur in the rear:
When the worst comes, it comes unfear'd; one stroke
Begins and ends their woe: they die but once;
Bless'd, incommunicable privilege! for which
Proud man, who rules the globe, and reads the stars,
Philosopher or hero, sighs in vain.
Account for this prerogative in brutes.
No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot,
But what beams on it from eternity.
O sole and sweet solution! that unties
The difficult, and softens the severe;
The cloud on Nature's beauteous face dispels;
Restores bright order; casts the brute beneath;
And re-enthrones us in supremacy
Of joy, e'en here. Admit immortal life,
And virtue is knight-errantry no more:
Each Virtue brings in hand a golden dower,
Far richer in reversion; Hope exults,
And, though much bitter in our cup is thrown,
Predominates, and gives the taste of heaven.
O wherefore is the Deity so kind?
Astonishing beyond astonishment!
Heaven our reward—for heaven enjoy'd below.
Still unsubdued thy stubborn heart?—for there
The traitor lurks, who doubts the truth I sing.
Reason is guiltless! Will alone rebels.
What, in that stubborn heart if I should find
New, unexpected witnesses against thee?
Ambition, Pleasure, and the Love of Gain!
Canst thou suspect that these, which make the Soul
The slave of earth, should own her heir of heaven?
Canst thou suspect, what makes us disbelieve
Our immortality, should prove it sure?
First, then, Ambition summon to the bar.
Ambition's “shame, extravagance, disgust,
And inextinguishable nature,” speak.
Each much deposes: hear them in their turn.
Thy soul, how passionately fond of Fame!
How anxious that fond passion to conceal!
We blush, detected in designs on praise,
Though for best deeds, and from the best of men;
And why? Because immortal. Art Divine
Has made the body tutor to the soul;
Heaven kindly gives our blood a moral flow;
Bids it ascend the glowing cheek, and there
Upbraid that little heart's inglorious aim,
Which stoops to court a character from man;
While o'er us in tremendous judgment sit
Far more than man, with endless praise and blame.
Ambition's boundless appetite out-speaks
The verdict of its shame. When souls take fire
At high presumptions of their own desert,
One age is poor applause; the mighty shout,
The thunder by the living few begun,
Late time must echo; worlds unborn, resound.
We wish our names eternally to live:
Wild dream! which ne'er had haunted human thought
Had not our natures been eternal too.
Instinct points out an interest in hereafter;
But our blind Reason sees not where it lies;
Or, seeing, gives the substance for the shade.
Fame is the shade of immortality,
And in itself a shadow. Soon as caught,
Contemn'd; it shrinks to nothing in the grasp.
Consult the' ambitious,—'tis ambition's cure.
“And is this all?” cried Cæsar, at his height,
Disgusted. This third proof Ambition brings
Of immortality: The first in fame,
Observe him near, your envy will abate:
Shamed at the disproportion vast between
The passion and the purchase, he will sigh
At such success, and blush at his renown.
And why? Because far richer prize invites
His heart; far more illustrious glory calls;
It calls in whispers, yet the deafest hear.
And can Ambition a fourth proof supply?
It can, and stronger than the former three;
Yet quite o'erlook'd by some reputed wise.
Though disappointments in ambition pain,
And though success disgusts, yet still, Lorenzo!
In vain we strive to pluck it from our hearts;
By Nature planted for the noblest ends.
Absurd the famed advice to Pyrrhus given,
More praised than ponder'd; specious, but unsound:
Sooner that hero's sword the world had quell'd,
Than Reason his ambition. Man must soar.
An obstinate activity within,
An insuppressive spring, will toss him up,
In spite of Fortune's load. Not kings alone,
Each villager has his ambition too;
No sultan prouder than his fetter'd slave.
Slaves build their little Babylons of straw,
Echo the proud Assyrian in their hearts,
And cry, “Behold the wonders of my might!”
And why? Because immortal as their lord:
And souls immortal must for ever heave
At something great; the glitter, or the gold;
The praise of mortals, or the praise of Heaven.
Nor absolutely vain is human praise,
When human is supported by Divine.
I'll introduce Lorenzo to himself:
Pleasure and Pride (bad masters) share our hearts.
As Love of Pleasure is ordain'd to guard
And feed our bodies, and extend our race;
The Love of Praise is planted to protect
And propagate the glories of the mind.
What is it but the Love of Praise inspires,
Matures, refines, embellishes, exalts,
Earth's happiness? From that the delicate,
The grand, the marvellous, of civil life.
Want and Convenience, under-workers, lay
The basis, on which Love of Glory builds.
Nor is thy life, O Virtue! less in debt
To Praise, thy secret stimulating friend.
Were men not proud, what merit should we miss!
Pride made the virtues of the Pagan world.
Praise is the salt that seasons right to man,
And whets his appetite for moral good.
Thirst of Applause is Virtue's second guard;
Reason her first; but Reason wants an aid;
Our private Reason is a flatterer;
Thirst of Applause calls Public Judgment in,
To poise our own, to keep an even scale,
And give endanger'd Virtue fairer play.
Here a fifth proof arises, stronger still:
Why this so nice construction of our hearts;
These delicate moralities of Sense;
This constitutional reserve of aid
To succour Virtue, when our Reason fails;
If Virtue—kept alive by care and toil,
And oft the mark of injuries on earth,
When labour'd to maturity, (its bill
Of disciplines and pains unpaid,)—must die?
Why freighted rich to dash against a rock?
Were man to perish when most fit to live,
O how misspent were all these stratagems,
By skill Divine inwoven in our frame!
Where are Heaven's holiness and mercy fled?
Laughs Heaven at once at Virtue and at man?
If not, why that discouraged, this destroy'd?
Thus far Ambition. What says Avarice?
This her chief maxim, which has long been thine:
“The wise and wealthy are the same.” I grant it.
To store up treasure with incessant toil,—
This is man's province, this his highest praise,
To this great end keen Instinct stings him on.
To guide that Instinct, Reason! is thy charge;
'Tis thine to tell us where true treasure lies:
But, Reason failing to discharge her trust,
Or to the deaf discharging it in vain,
A blunder follows; and blind Industry,
Gall'd by the spur, but stranger to the course,
(The course where stakes of more than gold are won,)
O'erloading, with the cares of distant age,
The jaded spirits of the present hour,
Provides for an eternity below.
“Thou shalt not covet,” is a wise command;
But bounded to the wealth the sun surveys:
Look farther, the command stands quite reversed,
And avarice is a virtue most Divine.
Is faith a refuge for our happiness?
Most sure. And is it not for reason too?
Nothing this world unriddles, but the next.
Whence inextinguishable thirst of gain?
From inextinguishable life in man.
Man, if not meant, by worth, to reach the skies,
Had wanted wing to fly so far in guilt.
Sour grapes, I grant, ambition, avarice;
Yet still their root is immortality.
These its wild growths so bitter, and so base,
(Pain and reproach!) Religion can reclaim,
Refine, exalt, throw down their poisonous lee,
And make them sparkle in the bowl of bliss.
See, the third witness laughs at bliss remote,
And falsely promises an Eden here:
Truth she shall speak for once, though prone to lie,
A common cheat, and Pleasure is her name.
To Pleasure never was Lorenzo deaf;
Then hear her now, now first thy real friend.
Since Nature made us not more fond than proud
Of happiness, (whence hypocrites in joy,
Makers of mirth, artificers of smiles!)
Why should the joy most poignant Sense affords
Burn us with blushes, and rebuke our pride?—
Those heaven-born blushes tell us man descends,
E'en in the zenith of his earthly bliss.
Should Reason take her infidel repose,
This honest instinct speaks our lineage high:
This instinct calls on darkness to conceal
Our rapturous relation to the stalls.
Our glory covers us with noble shame,
And he that's unconfounded is unmann'd.
The man that blushes is not quite a brute.
Thus far with thee, Lorenzo, will I close:—
Pleasure is good, and man for pleasure made;
But pleasure full of glory as of joy;
Pleasure, which neither blushes nor expires.
The witnesses are heard; the cause is o'er;
Let Conscience file the sentence in her court,
Dearer than deeds that half a realm convey:
Thus, seal'd by Truth, the' authentic record runs:—
Whose constitution dictates to your pen,
Who, cold yourselves, think ardour comes from hell!
Think not our passions from Corruption sprung,
Though to Corruption now they lend their wings;
That is their mistress, not their mother. All
(And justly) Reason deem Divine: I see,
I feel a grandeur in the Passions too,
Which speaks their high descent, and glorious end;
Which speaks them rays of an eternal fire.
In Paradise itself they burnt as strong,
Ere Adam fell, though wiser in their aim.
Like the proud Eastern, struck by Providence,
What, though our passions are run mad, and stoop,
With low terrestrial appetite, to graze
On trash, on toys, dethroned from high desire?
Yet still, through their disgrace, no feeble ray
Of greatness shines, and tells us whence they fell:
But these (like that fallen monarch when reclaim'd)
When Reason moderates the rein aright,
Shall re-ascend, remount their former sphere,
Where once they soar'd illustrious; ere seduced,
By wanton Eve's debauch, to stroll on earth,
And set the sublunary world on fire.
But grant their frenzy lasts: their frenzy fails
To disappoint one providential end,
For which Heaven blew up ardour in our hearts:
Were Reason silent, boundless Passion speaks
A future scene of boundless objects too,
And brings glad tidings of eternal day.
Eternal day! 'Tis that enlightens all;
And all, by that enlighten'd, proves it sure.
Consider man as an immortal being,
Intelligible all; and all is great;
A crystalline transparency prevails,
And strikes full lustre through the human sphere:
Consider man as mortal, all is dark,
And wretched; Reason weeps at the survey.
The learn'd Lorenzo cries, “And let her weep,—
Weak, modern Reason! Ancient times were wise.
Authority, that venerable guide,
Stands on my part: the famed Athenian Porch
(And who for wisdom so renown'd as they?)
Denied this immortality to man.”
I grant it; but affirm, they proved it too.
A riddle this!—Have patience; I'll explain.
What noble vanities, what moral flights,
Glittering through their romantic wisdom's page,
Make us, at once, despise them, and admire!
Fable is flat to these high-season'd sires;
They leave the' extravagance of song below.
“Flesh shall not feel; or, feeling, shall enjoy
The dagger or the rack; to them alike
A bed of roses, or the burning bull.”
In men exploding all beyond the grave,
Strange doctrine, this!—As doctrine it was strange;
But not, as prophecy; for such it proved,
And, to their own amazement, was fulfill'd:
They feign'd a firmness Christians need not feign.
The Christian truly triumph'd in the flame;
The Stoic saw, in double wonder lost,
(Wonder at them, and wonder at himself,)
To find the bold adventures of his thought
Not bold, and that he strove to lie in vain.
Whence, then, those thoughts? those towering thoughts that flew
Such monstrous heights?—From instinct and from pride.
The glorious instinct of a deathless soul,
Confusedly conscious of her dignity,
Suggested truths they could not understand.
In Lust's dominion, and in Passion's storm,
Truth's system broken, scatter'd fragments lay:
(As light in chaos, glimmering through the gloom:)
Smit with the pomp of lofty sentiments,
Pleased Pride proclaim'd what Reason disbelieved.
Pride, like the Delphic priestess, with a swell,
Raved nonsense, destined to be future sense,
When life immortal in full day should shine,
And death's dark shadows fly the gospel sun.
They spoke what nothing but immortal souls
Could speak; and thus the truth they question'd, proved.
Can then absurdities, as well as crimes,
Speak man immortal? All things speak him so.
Much has been urged; and dost thou call for more?
Call; and with endless questions be distress'd,
All unresolvable, if earth is all.
“Why life, a moment? infinite, desire?
Our wish, eternity? our home, the grave?
Heaven's promise dormant lies in human hope;
Who wishes life immortal, proves it too.
Why happiness pursued, though never found?
Man's thirst of happiness declares It is;
(For Nature never gravitates to nought;)
That thirst unquench'd declares, It is not here.
My Lucia, thy Clarissa, call to thought.
Why cordial friendship riveted so deep,
(As hearts, to pierce at first, at parting rend,)
If friend and friendship vanish in an hour?
Is not this Torment in the mask of Joy?
Why by Reflection marr'd the joys of Sense?
Why Past and Future preying on our hearts,
And putting all our present joys to death?
Why labours Reason? Instinct were as well;
Instinct, far better; what can choose, can err:
O how infallible the thoughtless brute!
'Twere well His Holiness were half as sure.
Reason with Inclination why at war?
Why sense of guilt? Why Conscience up in arms?”
Conscience of guilt is prophecy of pain,
And bosom-counsel to decline the blow.
Reason with Inclination ne'er had jarr'd,
If nothing future paid forbearance here.
Thus on:—these, and a thousand pleas uncall'd,
All promise, some insure, a second scene;
Which, were it doubtful, would be dearer far
Than all things else most certain; were it false,
What truth on earth so precious as the lie?
This world it gives us, let what will ensue;
This world it gives, in that high cordial, hope;
The future of the present is the soul:
How this life groans when sever'd from the next!
Poor, mutilated wretch, that disbelieves!
By dark distrust, his being, cut in two,
In both parts perishes; life void of joy,
Sad prelude of eternity in pain!
Couldst thou persuade me the next life could fail
Our ardent wishes, how should I pour out
My bleeding heart in anguish, new as deep!
O with what thoughts thy hope, and my despair,
Abhorr'd Annihilation, blasts the soul,
And wide extends the bounds of human woe!
Could I believe Lorenzo's system true,
In this black channel would my ravings run:—
Lorenzo! hear, pause, ponder, and pronounce.
Just is this history? If such is man,
Mankind's historian, though Divine, might weep:
And dares Lorenzo smile?—I know thee proud:
For once let Pride befriend thee: Pride looks pale
At such a scene, and sighs for something more.
Amid thy boasts, presumptions, and displays,
And art thou then a shadow? less than shade?
A nothing? less than nothing? To have been,
And not to be, is lower than unborn.
Art thou ambitious? Why then make the worm
Thine equal? Runs thy taste of pleasure high?
Why patronize sure death of every joy?
Charm riches? Why choose beggary in the grave,
Of every hope a bankrupt, and for ever?
Ambition, Pleasure, Avarice, persuade thee
To make that world of glory, rapture, wealth,
They lately proved, thy soul's supreme desire.
What art thou made of? Rather, how unmade?
Great Nature's master-appetite destroy'd!
Is endless life, and happiness, despised?
Or both wish'd here, where neither can be found?
Such man's perverse, eternal war with Heaven!
Darest thou persist? And is there nought on earth
But a long train of transitory forms,
Rising, and breaking, millions in an hour?
Bubbles of a fantastic deity, blown up
In sport, and then in cruelty destroy'd?
O! for what crime, unmerciful Lorenzo,
Destroys thy scheme the whole of human race?
Kind is fell Lucifer, compared to thee:
O! spare this waste of being half-Divine;
And vindicate the' economy of Heaven.
Heaven is all love; all joy in giving joy:
It never had created but to bless:
And shall it, then, strike off the list of life
A being bless'd, or worthy so to be?
Heaven starts at an annihilating God.
Is that all Nature starts at, thy desire?
Art such a clod to wish thyself all clay?
What is that dreadful wish?—The dying groan
Of Nature, murder'd by the blackest guilt.
What deadly poison has thy nature drunk?
To Nature undebauch'd no shock so great;
Nature's first wish is endless happiness;
Annihilation is an after-thought,
A monstrous wish, unborn till Virtue dies.
And, O! what depth of horror lies enclosed!
For non-existence no man ever wish'd,
But first he wish'd the Deity destroy'd.
If so, what words are dark enough to draw
Thy picture true? The darkest are too fair.
Beneath what baleful planet, in what hour
Of desperation, by what Fury's aid,
In what infernal posture of the soul,
All hell invited, and all hell in joy
At such a birth, a birth so near of kin,
Did thy foul fancy whelp so black a scheme
Of hopes abortive, faculties half-blown,
And deities begun, reduced to dust?
“There's nought,” thou say'st, “but one eternal flux
Of feeble essences, tumultuous driven
Through Time's rough billows into Night's abyss.”
Say, in this rapid tide of human ruin,
Is there no rock on which man's tossing thought
Can rest from terror, dare his fate survey,
And boldly think it something to be born?
Amid such hourly wrecks of being fair,
Is there no central, all-sustaining base,
All-realizing, all-connecting power,
Which, as it call'd forth all things, can recall,
And force Destruction to refund her spoil?
Command the Grave restore her taken prey?
Bid Death's dark vale its human harvest yield,
And Earth, and Ocean, pay their debt of man,
True to the grand deposit trusted there?
Is there no Potentate, whose out-stretch'd arm,
When ripening Time calls forth the' appointed hour,
Pluck'd from foul Devastation's famish'd maw,
Binds Present, Past, and Future to his throne?
His throne, how glorious, thus divinely graced,
By germinating beings clustering round!
A garland worthy the Divinity!
A throne, by Heaven's omnipotence in smiles,
Built (like a Pharos towering in the waves)
Amidst immense effusions of His love,
An ocean of communicated bliss!
An all-prolific, all-preserving God!
This were a God indeed.—And such is man,
As here presumed: he rises from his fall.
Think'st thou Omnipotence a naked root,
Each blossom fair of Deity destroy'd?
Nothing is dead; nay, nothing sleeps; each soul
That ever animated human clay
Now wakes, is on the wing; and where, O where,
Will the swarm settle?—When the trumpet's call,
As sounding brass, collects us round Heaven's throne,
Conglobed we bask in everlasting day,
(Paternal splendour!) and adhere for ever.
Had not the soul this outlet to the skies,
In this vast vessel of the universe,
How should we gasp, as in an empty void!
How in the pangs of famish'd Hope expire!
How bright my prospect shines! How gloomy thine!
A trembling world! and a devouring God!
Earth but the shambles of Omnipotence!
Heaven's face all stain'd with causeless massacres
Of countless millions, born to feel the pang
Of being lost. Lorenzo, can it be?
This bids us shudder at the thoughts of life.
Who would be born to such a phantom world,
Where nought substantial but our misery?
Where joy (if joy) but heightens our distress,
So soon to perish, and revive no more?
The greater such a joy, the more it pains.
A world so far from great, (and yet how great
It shines to thee!) there's nothing real in it;
Being a shadow, consciousness a dream!
A dream how dreadful! Universal blank
Before it and behind! Poor man, a spark
From non-existence struck by wrath Divine,
Glittering a moment, nor that moment sure,
'Midst upper, nether, and surrounding night,
His sad, sure, sudden, and eternal tomb!
Lorenzo, dost thou feel these arguments?
Or is there nought but vengeance can be felt?
How hast thou dared the Deity dethrone?
How dared indict Him of a world like this?
If such the world, creation was a crime;
For what is crime, but cause of misery?
Retract, blasphemer! and unriddle this,
Of endless arguments, above, below,
Without us, and within, the short result,—
“If man's immortal, there's a God in heaven.”
But wherefore such redundancy, such waste
Of argument? One sets my soul at rest;
One obvious, and at hand, and O!—at heart.
So just the Skies, Philander's life so pain'd,
His heart so pure; that or succeeding scenes
Have palms to give, or ne'er had he been born.
“What an old tale is this!” Lorenzo cries.
I grant this argument is old; but truth
No years impair; and had not this been true,
Thou never hadst despised it for its age.
Truth is immortal as thy soul; and fable
As fleeting as thy joys. Be wise, nor make
Heaven's highest blessing vengeance: O be wise!
Nor make a curse of immortality.
Say, know'st thou what it is? or what thou art?
Know'st thou the' importance of a soul immortal?
Behold this midnight glory: worlds on worlds!
Amazing pomp! Redouble this amaze!
Ten thousand add, add twice ten thousand more;
Then weigh the whole: one soul outweighs them all;
And calls the' astonishing magnificence
Of unintelligent Creation, poor.
For this, believe not me; no man believe;
Trust not in words, but deeds; and deeds no less
Than those of the Supreme; nor His, a few;
Consult them all. Consulted, all proclaim
Thy soul's importance: tremble at thyself;
For whom Omnipotence has waked so long;
Has waked and work'd for ages; from the birth
Of Nature to this unbelieving hour.
In this small province of His vast domain,
(All Nature bow, while I pronounce His name!)
What has God done, and not for this sole end,—
To rescue souls from death? The soul's high price
Is writ in all the conduct of the Skies.
The soul's high price is the Creation's key,
Unlocks its mysteries, and naked lays
The genuine cause of every deed Divine:
That is the chain of ages which maintains
Their obvious correspondence, and unites
Most distant periods in one bless'd design:
That is the mighty hinge on which have turn'd
All revolutions, whether we regard
The natural, civil, or religious world;
The former two but servants to the third;
To that their duty done, they both expire,
Their mass new-cast, forgot their deeds renown'd;
And angels ask, “where once they shone so fair!”
To lift us from this abject to sublime;
This flux to permanent; this dark to day;
This foul to pure; this turbid to serene;
This mean to mighty!—for this glorious end
The' Almighty, rising, His long sabbath broke:
The world was made; was ruin'd; was restored;
Laws from the Skies were publish'd; were repeal'd;
On earth kings, kingdoms rose; kings, kingdoms fell;
Famed sages lighted up the Pagan world;
Prophets from Sion darted a keen glance
Through distant age; saints travell'd; martyrs bled;
By wonders sacred Nature stood controll'd;
The living were translated; dead were raised;
Angels, and more than angels, came from heaven;
And, O! for this, descended lower still;
Gilt was hell's gloom: astonish'd at his Guest,
For one short moment Lucifer adored:
Lorenzo! and wilt thou do less?—For this
That hallow'd page fools scoff at, was inspired,
Of all these truths thrice-venerable code!
Deists, perform your quarantine; and then
Fall prostrate ere you touch it, lest you die.
Nor less intensely bent infernal powers
To mar, than those of light this end to gain.
O what a scene is here!—Lorenzo, wake,
Rise to the thought: exert, expand thy soul
To take the vast idea: it denies
All else the name of great. Two warring worlds!
Not Europe against Afric; warring worlds
Of more than mortal, mounted on the wing!
On ardent wings of energy and zeal,
High-hovering o'er this little brand of strife!
This sublunary ball!—But strife, for what?
In their own cause conflicting? No; in thine,
In man's. His single interest blows the flame;
His the sole stake; his fate the trumpet sounds,
Which kindles war immortal. How it burns!
Tumultuous swarms of deities in arms!
Force, force opposing, till the waves run high,
And tempest Nature's universal sphere.
Such opposites eternal, steadfast, stern,
Such foes implacable, are Good and Ill;
Yet man, vain man, would mediate peace between them.
Think not this fiction. “There was war in heaven.”
From heaven's high crystal mountain, where it hung,
The' Almighty's out-stretch'd arm took down His bow,
And shot His indignation at the deep:
Re-thunder'd Hell, and darted all her fires.
And seems the stake of little moment still?
And slumbers man, who singly caused the storm?
He sleeps.—And art thou shock'd at mysteries?
The greatest, thou! How dreadful to reflect,
What ardour, care, and counsel mortals cause
In breasts Divine! how little in their own!
Where'er I turn, how new proofs pour upon me!
How happily this wondrous view supports
My former argument! How strongly strikes
Immortal life's full demonstration here!
Why this exertion? Why this strange regard
From Heaven's Omnipotent indulged to man?
Because in man the glorious dreadful power,
Extremely to be pain'd, or bless'd, for ever.
Duration gives importance; swells the price.
An angel, if a creature of a day,
What would he be? A trifle of no weight;
Or stand or fall,—no matter which,—he's gone.
Because IMMORTAL, therefore is indulged
This strange regard of deities to dust.
Hence Heaven looks down on earth with all her eyes;
Hence the soul's mighty moment in her sight;
Hence every soul has partisans above,
And every thought a critic in the skies:
Hence clay, vile clay, has angels for its guard,
And every guard a passion for his charge:
Hence, from all age, the Cabinet Divine
Has held high counsel o'er the fate of man.
Nor have the clouds those gracious counsels hid.
Angels undrew the curtain of the throne,
And Providence came forth to meet mankind.
In various modes of emphasis and awe,
He spoke His will, and trembling Nature heard:
He spoke it loud, in thunder and in storm.
Witness, thou Sinai! whose cloud-cover'd height,
And shaken basis, own'd the present God:
Witness, ye billows! whose returning tide,
Breaking the chain that fasten'd it in air,
Swept Egypt and her menaces to hell:
Witness, ye flames the' Assyrian tyrant blew
To sevenfold rage, as impotent as strong:
And thou, Earth! witness, whose expanding jaws
Closed o'er Presumption's sacrilegious sons:
Has not each element, in turn, subscribed
The soul's high price, and sworn it to the wise?
Has not flame, ocean, ether, earthquake, strove
To strike this truth through adamantine man?
If not all-adamant, Lorenzo! hear:
All is delusion; Nature is wrapp'd up,
In tenfold night, from Reason's keenest eye;
There's no consistence, meaning, plan, or end
In all beneath the sun, in all above,
(As far as man can penetrate,) or heaven
Is an immense, inestimable prize;
Or all is nothing, or that prize is all.—
And shall each toy be still a match for heaven?
And full equivalent for groans below?
Who would not give a trifle to prevent
What he would give a thousand worlds to cure?
Lorenzo, thou hast seen (if thine to see)
All Nature, and her God, (by Nature's course,
And Nature's course controll'd,) declare for me:
The Skies above proclaim “Immortal man!”
And “Man immortal!” all below resounds.
The world's a system of theology,
Read by the greatest strangers to the schools;
If honest, learn'd; and sages o'er a plough.
Is not, Lorenzo, then, imposed on thee
This hard alternative,—or to renounce
Thy reason and thy sense, or to believe?
What then is unbelief? 'Tis an exploit;
A strenuous enterprise: to gain it, man
Must burst through every bar of common sense,
Of common shame, magnanimously wrong.
And what rewards the sturdy combatant?
His prize, repentance; infamy, his crown.
But wherefore infamy?—For want of faith,
Down the steep precipice of wrong he slides;
There's nothing to support him in the right.
Faith in the future wanting, is, at least
In embryo, every weakness, every guilt;
And strong Temptation ripens it to birth.
If this life's gain invites him to the deed,
Why not his country sold, his father slain?
'Tis virtue to pursue our good supreme;
And his supreme, his only good is here.
Ambition, Avarice, by the wise disdain'd,
Is perfect wisdom, while mankind are fools,
And think a turf or tomb-stone covers all:
These find employment, and provide for Sense
A richer pasture, and a larger range;
And Sense by right Divine ascends the throne,
When Virtue's prize and prospect are no more:
Virtue no more we think the will of Heaven.
Would Heaven quite beggar Virtue, if beloved?
“Has Virtue charms?”—I grant her heavenly fair;
But if unportion'd, all will Interest wed;
Though that our admiration, this our choice.
The virtues grow on immortality;
That root destroy'd, they wither and expire.
A Deity believed will nought avail;
Rewards and punishments make God adored;
And hopes and fears give Conscience all her power.
As in the dying parent dies the child,
Virtue with Immortality expires.
Who tells me he denies his soul immortal,
Whate'er his boast, has told me he's a knave.
His duty 'tis to love himself alone;
Nor care, though mankind perish, if he smiles.
Who thinks ere long the man shall wholly die,
Is dead already; nought but brute survives.
And are there such?—Such candidates there are
For more than death; for utter loss of being;
Being, the basis of the Deity!
Ask you the cause?—The cause they will not tell:
Nor need they: O the sorceries of Sense!
They work this transformation on the soul,
Dismount her, like the serpent at the fall,
Dismount her from her native wing, (which soar'd
Erewhile ethereal heights,) and throw her down,
To lick the dust, and crawl in such a thought.
Is it in words to paint you? O ye fallen!
Fallen from the wings of Reason, and of Hope!
Erect in stature, prone in appetite!
Patrons of pleasure, posting into pain!
Lovers of argument, averse to sense!
Boasters of liberty, fast bound in chains!
Lords of the wide creation, and the shame!
More senseless than the' irrationals you scorn!
More base than those you rule! than those you pity,
Far more undone! O ye most infamous
Of beings, from superior dignity!
Deepest in woe, from means of boundless bliss!
Ye cursed by blessings infinite! because
Most highly favour'd, most profoundly lost!
Ye motley mass of contradictions strong!
And are you, too, convinced your souls fly off
In exhalation soft, and die in air,
From the full flood of evidence against you?
In the coarse drudgeries and sinks of Sense,
Your souls have quite worn out the make of Heaven,
By vice new-cast, and creatures of your own:
But though you can deform, you can't destroy;
To curse, not uncreate, is all your power.
Lorenzo, this black brotherhood renounce:
Renounce St. Evremont, and read St. Paul.
Ere rapt by miracle, by reason wing'd,
His mounting mind made long abode in heaven.
This is freethinking,—unconfined to parts,—
To send the soul, on curious travel bent,
Through all the provinces of human thought;
To dart her flight through the whole sphere of man;
Of this vast universe to make the tour;
In each recess of space and time at home;
Familiar with their wonders; diving deep,
And, like a prince of boundless interests there,
Still most ambitious of the most remote;
To look on truth unbroken and entire;
Truth in the system, the full orb; where truths,
By truths enlighten'd and sustain'd, afford
An arch-like strong foundation, to support
The' incumbent weight of absolute, complete
Conviction: Here the more we press, we stand
More firm; who most examine, most believe.
Parts, like half-sentences, confound: the whole
Conveys the sense, and God is understood;
Who not in fragments writes to human race:
Read His whole volume, sceptic! then reply.
This, this is thinking free,—a thought that grasps
Beyond a grain, and looks beyond an hour.
Turn up thine eye, survey this midnight scene;
What are Earth's kingdoms to yon boundless orbs,
Of human souls one day the destined range?
And what yon boundless orbs to godlike man?
Those numerous worlds that throng the firmament,
And ask more space in heaven, can roll at large
In man's capacious thought, and still leave room
For ampler orbs, for new creations, there.
Can such a soul contract itself, to gripe
A point of no dimension, of no weight?
It can: it does: the world is such a point;
And of that point, how small a part enslaves!
How small a part—of nothing, shall I say?
Why not?—Friends, our chief treasure! How they drop!
Lucia, Narcissa fair, Philander gone!
The grave, like fabled Cerberus, has oped
A triple mouth; and, in an awful voice,
Loud calls my soul, and utters all I sing.
How the world falls to pieces round about us,
And leaves us in a ruin of our joy!
What says this transportation of my friends?
It bids me love the place where now they dwell,
And scorn this wretched spot they leave so poor.
Eternity's vast ocean lies before thee;
There, there, Lorenzo, thy Clarissa sails.
Give thy mind sea-room; keep it wide of earth,
That rock of souls immortal; cut thy cord;
Weigh anchor; spread thy sails; call every wind;
Eye thy great Pole-star; make the land of life.
Two kinds of life has double-natured man,
And two of death: the last far more severe.
Life animal is nurtured by the sun;
Thrives on his bounties, triumphs in his beams.
Life rational subsists on higher food,
Triumphant in His beams who made the day.
When we leave that sun, and are left by this,
'The fate of all who die in stubborn guilt,)
'Tis utter darkness; strictly double death.
We sink by no judicial stroke of Heaven,
But Nature's course; as sure as plummets fall.
Since God or man must alter ere they meet,
(For light and darkness blend not in one sphere,)
'Tis manifest, Lorenzo! who must change.
If then that double death should prove thy lot,
Blame not the bowels of the Deity:
Man shall be bless'd as far as man permits.
Not man alone, all rationals Heaven arms
With an illustrious but tremendous power
To counteract its own most gracious ends;
And this of strict necessity, not choice:
That power denied, men, angels, were no more
But passive engines, void of praise or blame.
A nature rational implies the power
Of being bless'd, or wretched, as we please;
Else idle Reason would have nought to do;
And he that would be barr'd capacity
Of pain, courts incapacity of bliss.
Heaven wills our happiness, allows our doom;
Invites us ardently, but not compels;
Heaven but persuades, almighty man decrees;
Man is the maker of immortal fates.
Man falls by man, if finally he falls;
And fall he must, who learns from Death alone
The dreadful secret—that he lives for ever.
Why this to thee?—thee yet perhaps in doubt
Of second life? But wherefore doubtful still?
Eternal life is Nature's ardent wish:
What ardently we wish, we soon believe:
Thy tardy faith declares that wish destroy'd:
What has destroy'd it?—Shall I tell thee what?
When fear'd the future, 'tis no longer wish'd;
And when unwish'd, we strive to disbelieve.
“Thus infidelity our guilt betrays.”
Nor that the sole detection! Blush, Lorenzo
Blush for hypocrisy, if not for guilt.
The future fear'd?—An infidel, and fear!
Fear what? a dream? a fable? How thy dread,
Unwilling evidence, and therefore strong,
Affords my cause an undesign'd support!
How disbelief affirms what it denies!
“It, unawares, asserts immortal life.”—
Surprising! Infidelity turns out
A creed, and a confession of our sins:
Apostates, thus, are orthodox divines.
Lorenzo, with Lorenzo clash no more:
Nor longer a transparent vizor wear.
Think'st thou, Religion only has her mask?
Our infidels are Satan's hypocrites,
Pretend the worst, and at the bottom fail.
When visited by Thought, (Thought will intrude,)
Like him they serve, they “tremble, and believe.”
Is their hypocrisy so foul as this?
So fatal to the welfare of the world?
What detestation, what contempt their due!
And, if unpaid, be thank'd for their escape
That Christian candour they strive hard to scorn.
If not for that asylum, they might find
A hell on earth; nor 'scape a worse below.
With insolence and impotence of thought,
Instead of racking fancy to refute,
Reform thy manners, and the truth enjoy.—
But shall I dare confess the dire result?
Can thy proud reason brook so black a brand?
From purer manners, to sublimer faith,
Is Nature's unavoidable ascent:
An honest deist, where the gospel shines,
Matured to nobler, in the Christian ends.
When that bless'd change arrives, e'en cast aside
This song superfluous: life immortal strikes
Conviction, in a flood of light Divine.
A Christian dwells, like Uriel, in the sun.
Meridian Evidence puts Doubt to flight;
And ardent Hope anticipates the skies.
Of that bright sun, Lorenzo! scale the sphere:
'Tis easy; it invites thee; it descends
From heaven to woo, and waft thee whence it came:
Read and revere the sacred page; a page
Where triumphs Immortality; a page
Which not the whole creation could produce;
Which not the conflagration shall destroy;
In Nature's ruins not one letter lost:
'Tis printed in the minds of gods for ever.
In proud disdain of what e'en gods adore,
Dost smile?—Poor wretch! thy guardian-angel weeps.
Angels and men assent to what I sing;
Wits smile, and thank me for my midnight dream.
How vicious hearts fume frenzy to the brain!
Parts push us on to Pride, and Pride to Shame;
Pert Infidelity is Wit's cockade,
To grace the brasen brow that braves the Skies;
By loss of being dreadfully secure.
Lorenzo! if thy doctrine wins the day,
And drives my dreams, defeated, from the field;
If this is all, if earth a final scene,
Take heed: stand fast; be sure to be a knave;
A knave in grain; ne'er deviate to the right:
Shouldst thou be good—how infinite thy loss!
Guilt only makes annihilation gain.
Bless'd scheme! which Life deprives of comfort, Death
Of hope; and which Vice only recommends!
If so, where, infidels, your bait thrown out
To catch weak converts? Where your lofty boast
Of zeal for virtue, and of love to man?
Annihilation, I confess, in these.
What can reclaim you? Dare I hope profound
Philosophers the converts of a song?
Yet know, its title flatters you, not me;
Yours be the praise to make my title good:
Mine to bless Heaven, and triumph in your praise.
But since so pestilential your disease,
Though sovereign is the medicine I prescribe,
As yet I'll neither triumph nor despair:
But hope, ere long, my midnight dream will wake
Your hearts, and teach your wisdom—to be wise:
For why should souls immortal, made for bliss,
E'er wish (and wish in vain!) that souls could die?
What ne'er can die, O! grant to live; and crown
The wish, and aim, and labour of the Skies;
Increase, and enter on, the joys of heaven:
Thus shall my title pass a sacred seal,
Receive an imprimatur from above,
While angels shout—“An Infidel Reclaim'd!”
To close, Lorenzo! Spite of all my pains,
Still seems it strange that thou shouldst live for ever?
Is it less strange that thou shouldst live at all?
This is a miracle; and that no more.
Who gave beginning can exclude an end.
Deny thou art: then doubt if thou shalt be.
A miracle with miracles enclosed
Is man: and starts his faith at what is strange?
What less than wonders from the Wonderful?
What less than miracles from God can flow?
Admit a GOD, (that mystery supreme,
That Cause uncaused!)—all other wonders cease;
Nothing is marvellous for Him to do:
Deny Him—all is mystery besides;
Millions of mysteries! each darker far
Than that thy wisdom would unwisely shun.
If weak thy faith, why choose the harder side?
We nothing know but what is marvellous;
Yet what is marvellous we can't believe.
So weak our reason, and so great our God,
What most surprises in the sacred page,
Or full as strange, or stranger, must be true.
Faith is not Reason's labour, but repose.
To Faith and Virtue why so backward man?
From hence:—The Present strongly strikes us all;
The Future, faintly: can we, then, be men?
If men, Lorenzo! the reverse is right.
Reason is man's peculiar; Sense, the brute's.
The Present is the scanty realm of Sense;
The Future, Reason's empire unconfined:
On that expending all her godlike power,
She plans, provides, expatiates, triumphs there;
There builds her blessings; there expects her praise;
And nothing asks of Fortune or of men.
And what is Reason? Be she thus defined:
Reason is upright stature in the soul.
O! be a man;—and strive to be a god.
“For what?” (thou say'st:) “to damp the joys of life?”
No; to give heart and substance to thy joys.
That tyrant, Hope, mark how she domineers:
She bids us quit realities for dreams;
Safety and peace, for hazard and alarm:
That tyrant o'er the tyrants of the soul,—
She bids Ambition quit its taken prize,
Spurn the luxuriant branch on which it sits,
Though bearing crowns, to spring at distant game,
And plunge in toils and dangers—for repose.
If hope precarious, and of things, when gain'd,
Of little moment, and as little stay,
Can sweeten toils and dangers into joys;
What, then, that hope, which nothing can defeat,
Our leave unask'd? Rich hope of boundless bliss!
Bliss past man's power to paint it; Time's, to close!
This hope is earth's most estimable prize:
This is man's portion, while no more than man:
Hope, of all passions, most befriends us here;
Passions of prouder name befriend us less.
Joy has her tears; and Transport has her death:
Hope, like a cordial, innocent, though strong,
Man's heart at once inspirits and serenes;
Nor makes him pay his wisdom for his joys.
'Tis all our present state can safely bear,—
Health to the frame, and vigour to the mind!
A joy attemper'd, a chastised delight!
Like the fair summer evening, mild and sweet!
'Tis man's full cup, his Paradise below!
A bless'd hereafter, then, or hoped, or gain'd,
Is all;—our whole of happiness: full proof
I chose no trivial or inglorious theme.
And know, ye foes to song! (well-meaning men,
Though quite forgotten half your Bible's praise!)
Important truths, in spite of verse, may please:
Grave minds you praise; nor can you praise too much:
If there is weight in an Eternity,
Let the grave listen;—and be graver still.

NIGHT VIII. VIRTUE'S APOLOGY; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD ANSWERED.