This heaven-affum'd majestic robe of earth,
He deign'd to wear, who hung the vaft expanfe
With azure bright, and cloath'd the fun in gold. 195
When every paffion fleeps that can offend;
When strikes us every motive that can melt ;
When man can wreak his rancour uncontrol'd,
That strongest curb on infult and ill-will;
Then, fpleen to duft? the duft of innocence ? 200
An angel's duft ?-This Lucifer transcends;
When he contended for the patriarch's bones,
'Twas not the ftrife of malice, but of pride;
The ftrife of pontiff pride, not pontiff gall.
For less than This is shocking in a race
Moft wretched, but from ftreams of mutual love;
And uncreated, but for love divine ;
And, but for love divine, this moment loft,
By fate reforb'd, and funk in endless night.
Man hard of heart to man! of horrid things
Moft horrid! 'Mid ftupendous, highly strange!
Yet oft his courtefies are smoother wrongs;
Pride brandishes the favours He confers,
And contumelious his humanity:
What then his vengeance? Hear it not, yet stars!
And thou, pale moon! turn paler at the found;
Man is to man the foreft, fureft ill.
A previous blast foretels the rising storm;
O'erwhelming turrets threaten ere they fall;
Volcanos bellow ere they difembogue;
Earth trembles ere her yawning jaws devour;
And imoke betrays the wide-confuming fire:
Ruin from man is moft conceal'd when near,
And fends the dreadful tidings in the blow.
Is this the flight of fancy? Would it were!
Heaven's Sovereign faves all beings, but himself,
That hideous fight, a naked human heart.
Fir'd is the Mufe? And let the Muse be fir'd: Who not enflam'd, when what he speaks, he feels, And in the nerve most tender, in his friends? Shame to mankind! Philander had his foes: He felt the truths I fing, and I in Him. But He, nor I, feel more: patt ills, Narcissa ! Are funk in Thee, thou recent wound of heart! Which bleeds with other cares, with other pangs; 235 Pangs numerous, as the numerous ills that fwarm'd O'er thy diftinguifh'd fate, and, clustering There Thick as the locufts on the land of Nile,
Made death more deadly, and more dark the grave.
Reflect (if not forgot my touching tale)
How was each circumstance with aspics arm'd ?
An afpic, Each! and All, an Hydra woe :
What ftrong Herculean virtue could fuffice?
Or is it virtue to be conquer'd Here?
This hoary cheek a train of tears bedews;
And each tear mourns its own distinct distress;
And each distress, diftinctly mourn'd, demands
Of grief still more, as heighten'd by the whole.
A grief like this proprietors excludes:
Not friends alone fuch obfequies deplore ;
They make mankind the mourner; carry fighs
Far as the fatal Fame can wing her way;
And turn the gayeft thought of gayeft age,
Down their right channel, through the vale of death.
The vale of death! that hush'd Cimmerian vale, 255
Where darkness, brooding o'er unfinish'd fates,
With raven wing incumbent, waits the day
(Dread day!) that interdicts all future change!
'That fubterranean world, that land of ruin!
Fit walk, Lorenzo, for proud human thought!
There let my thought expatiate, and explore
Balfamic truths and healing sentiments,
Of all moft wanted, and most welcome, here.
For gay Lorenzo's fake, and for thy own,
My foul! The fruits of dying friends furvey; 265 Expose the vain of life; weigh life and death;
"Give death his eulogy; thy fear subdue;
"And labour that first palm of noble minds,
"A manly fcorn of terror from the tomb."
This harvest reap from thy Narciffa's grave.
As poet's feign'd from Ajax' ftreaming blood
Arofe, with grief inscrib'd, a mournful flower;
Let wisdom blossom from my mortal wound.
And first, of dying friends; what fruit from these ?
It brings us more than triple aid; an aid
To chase our thoughtlessness, fear, pride and guilt.
Our dying friends come o'er us like a cloud,
To damp our brainless ardors; and abate
That glare of life which often blinds the wife.
Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth
Our rugged pafs to death; to break thofe bars
Of terror, and abhorrence, nature throws
Crofs our obftructed way; and, thus to make
Welcome, as fafe, our port from every ftorm.
Each friend by fate fnatch'd from us, is a plume 285 Pluck'd from the wing of human vanity,
Which makes us ftoop from our aërial heights,
And, dampt with omen of our own decease,
On drooping pinions of ambition lower'd,
Juft fkim earth's furface, ere we break it up,
O'er putrid earth to scratch a little duft,
And fave the world a nuisance. Smitten friends.
Are angels fent on errands full of love;
For us they languish, and for us they die :
And shall they languish, fhall they die, in vain ? 295
Ungrateful, fhall we grieve their hovering shades,
Which wait the revolution in our hearts?
Shall we difdain their filent, foft addrefs;
Their pofthumous advice, and pious prayer?
Senfelefs, as herds that graze their hallow'd graves, 300
Tread under-foot their agonies and groans;
Fruftrate their anguish, and destroy their deaths?
Lorenzo no; the thought of death indulge;
Give it its wholesome empire! let it reign,
That kind chastiser of thy foul in joy!
Its reign will spread thy glorious conquests far,
And ftill the tumults of thy ruffled breast :
Aufpicious æra! golden days, begin!
The thought of death fhall, like a god, inspire.
And why not think on death? Is life the theme 310
Of every thought? and wish of every hour?
And fong of every joy? Surprising truth!
The beaten spaniel's fondness not so strange.
To wave the numerous ills that feize on life
As their own property, their lawful prey ;
Ere man has meafur'd half his weary stage,
His luxuries have left him no referve,
No maiden relithes, unbroach'd delights;
On cold ferv'd repetitions he subsists,
And in the tastelefs prefent chews the past;
Difgufted chews, and fcarce can swallow down.
Like lavish ancestors, his earlier years
Have difinherited his future hours,
Which ftarve on orts, and glean their former field.
Live ever here, Lorenzo !-fhocking thought! 325.
So fhocking, they who wish, difown it too;
Difown from shame, what they from folly crave.
Live ever in the womb, nor fee the light?
For what live ever here ?-With labouring step
To tread our former footsteps? Pace the round 330
Eternal? To climb life's worn, heavy wheel,
Which draws up nothing new? To beat, and beat
The beaten track? To bid each wretched day
The former mock? To furfeit on the fame,
And yawn our joys? Or thank a mifery
For change, though fad? To fee what we have seen ? Hear, till unheard, the fame old flabber'd tale?
To tafte the tafted, and at each return
Lefs tafteful? O'er our palates to decant
Another vintage? Strain a fatter year,
Through loaded veffels, and a laxer tone?
Crazy machines to grind earth's wafted fruits!
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