Pregnant with all eternity can give;
Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile.
Who murders Time, he crushes in the birth
A pow'r ethereal, only not ador'd.
Ah, how unjust to Nature, and himself,
Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent Man!
Like children babbling nonsense in their sports,
We censure Nature for a span too short;
That span too short, we tax as tedious too;
Torture invention, all expedients tire,
To lash the ling'ring moments into speed,
And whirl us (happy riddance!) from ourselves.
Art, brainless Art! our furious charioteer
(For Nature's voice unstifled would recal),
Drives headlong tow'rds the precipice of Death; Death most our dread; Death thus more dreadful made; O what a riddle of absurdity!
Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot-wheels;
How heavily we drag the load of life!
Blest leisure is our curse; like that of CAIN,
It makes us wander; wander earth around
To fly that tyrant, Thought. As Atlas groan'd
The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour. 130
We cry for mercy to the next amusement;
The next amusement mortgages our fields!
Slight inconvenience! Prisons hardly frown,
From hateful Time if prisons set us free.
Yet when Death kindly tenders us relief,
We call him cruel; years to moments shrink,
Ages to years. The telescope is turn'd,
To Man's false optics (from his folly false)
Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings,
And seems to creep decrepit with his age:
Behold him, when past by; what then is seen,
But his broad pinions swifter than the winds?
And all Mankind, in contradiction strong,
Rueful, aghast! cry out on his carcer.
Leave to thy foes these errors, and these ills;
To Nature just, their cause and cure explore.
Not short Heav'n's bounty, boundless our expence;
No niggard, Nature; Men are prodigals.
We waste (not use) our time; we breathe, not live.
Time wasted is existence, us'd is life.
And bare existence, Man, to live ordain'd,
Wrings and oppresses with enormous weight.
And why; since time was giv'n for use, not waste.
Injoin'd to fly; with tempest, tide, and stars,
To keep his speed, nor ever wait for Man;
Time's use was doom'd a pleasure; waste, a pain;
That Man might feel his error, if unseen:
And, feeling, fly to labour for his cure;
Not, blund'ring, split on idleness for ease.
Life's cares are comforts, such by Heav'n design'd; 160 He that has none, must make them, or be wretched. Cares are employments; and without employ
The soul is on the rack; the rack of rest,
To souls most adverse; action all their joy.
Here, then, the riddle, mark'd above, unfolds; 165
Then Time turns torment, when Man turns a fool.
We rave, we wrestle with great Nature's plan;
We thwart the Deity; and 'tis decreed,
Who thwart His will shall contradict their own.
Hence our unnat❜ral quarrel with ourselves;
Our thoughts at enmity; our bosom-broil;
We push Time from us, and we wish him back;
Lavish of lustrums, and yet fond of life;
Life we think long and short-Death seek-and shun; Body, and soul, like peevish man and wife,
United jar, and yet are loth to part.
O the dark days of vanity! while here,
How tasteless! and how terrible when gone!
Gone! they ne'er go; when past, they haunt us still;
The spirit walks of ev'ry day deceas'd;
And smiles an angel, or a fury frowns.
Nor death, nor life, delight us.
And time possest, both pain us, what can please!
That which the Deity to please ordain'd,
Time us'd. The Man who consecrates his hours 185
By vig'rous effort, and an honest aim,
At once he draws the sting of life and death;
He walks with Nature; and her paths are peace.
Our error's cause and cure are seen. See next
Time's nature, origin, importance, speed;
And thy great gain from urging his career.
All-sensual Man, because untouch'd, unseen;
He looks on Time as nothing. Nothing else
Is truly Man's; 'tis Fortune's-Time's a god.
Hast thou ne'er heard of Time's omnipotence?
For, or against, what wonders can he do!
And will: To stand blank neuter he disdains.
Not on those terms was Time (Heav'n's stranger!) sent
On his important embassy to Man.
LORENZO! no: On the long-destin'd hour,
From everlasting ages growing ripe,
That memorable hour of wondrous birth,
When the dread SIRE, on emanation bent,
And big with Nature, rising in his might,
Call'd forth creation (for then Time was born), 205
By Godhead streaming through a thousand worlds;
Not on those terms, from the great days of Heav'n,
From old Eternity's mysterious orb,
Was Time cut off, and cast beneath the skies;
The skies, which watch him in his new abode, 210
Measuring his motions by revolving spheres;
That horologe machinery divine.
Hours, days, and months, and years, his children play,
Like num'rous wings, around him, as he flies:
Or, rather, as unequal plumes they shape
His ample pinions, swift as darted flame,
To gain his goal, to reach his ancient rest,
And join anew Eternity his sire;
In his immutability to nest,
When worlds, that count his circles now, unhing'd 220
(Fate the loud signal sounding) headlong rush
To timeless night and chaos, whence they rose.
Why spur the speedy? Why with levities
New-wing thy short, short day's too rapid flight?
Know'st thou, or what thou dost, or what is done? 225
Man flies from Time, and Time from Man; too soon
In sad divorce this double flight must end;
And then, where are we? where, LORENZO! then
Thy sports, thy pomps?-I grant thee, in a state
Not unambitious; in the ruffled shroud,
Thy Parian tomb's triumphant arch beneath.
Has Death his fopperies? Then well may
Put on her plume, and in her rainbow shine.
Ye well-array'd! Ye lilies of our land!
Ye lilies male! who neither toil nor spin,
(As sister lilies might,) if not so wise
As Solomon, more sumptuous to the sight!
Ye delicate! who nothing can support,
Yourselves most insupportable! for whom
The winter rose must blow, the Sun put on
A brighter beam in Leo, silky soft
Favonius breathe still softer, or be chid,
And other worlds send odours, sauce and song,
And robes, and notions, fram'd in foreign looms!
O ye LORENZO's of our age! who deem
One moment unamus'd, a misery
Not made for feeble Man! who call aloud
For ev'ry bauble, drivell'd o'er by sense,
For rattles, and conceits of ev'ry cast,
For change of follies, and relays of joy,
To drag your patient through the tedious length
Of a short winter's day—say, sages say!
Wit's oracles; say, dreamers of gay dreams;
How will you weather an eternal night,
Where such expedients fail?
O treach'rous Conscience! while she seems to sleep
On rose and myrtle, lull'd with syren song;
While she seems, nodding o'er her charge to drop
On headlong Appetite the slacken'd rein,
And give us up to License, unrecall'd,
Unmark'd;-see, from behind her secret stand,
The sly informer minutes ev'ry fault,
And her dread diary with horror fills.
Not the gross act alone employs her
She reconnoitres Fancy's airy band,
A watchful foe! The formidable spy,
List'ning, o'erhears the whispers of our camp:
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