PRE FACE.

As the occasion of this poem was real, not

fictitious ; fo 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 foort morals. Here, on the contrary, the narrative is bort, 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 reflečiions on the thought of the writer.

Τ Η Ε

T

IR'D Nature's sweet restorer, balmy Sleep!

He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where Fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes;
Swift on his dowry pinion flies from woe,
And lights on lids unsully'd with a tear,

From short (as usual) and disturb'd repose,
I wake: How happy they, who wake no more !
Yet that were vain, if dreams infeft the grave.

I wake,

B 3

I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams
Tumultuous; where my wreck'd defponding thought,
Froin wave to wave of fansy'd misery,
At random drove, her helm of reason loft,
Tho' now restor’d, 'tis only change of pain,
(A bitter change!) feverer for severe.
The Day too short for my distress; and Night,
Ev’n in the zenith of her dark domain,
Is sunshine to the colour of my fate.

Night, fable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world.
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound !
Nor eye, nor liftning ear, an object finds;
Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the gen'ral pulse
Of life stood ftill, and nature made a pause ;
An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
And let her prophesy be foon fulfillid;
Fate! drop the curtain ; I can lose no more.

Silence and Darkness! folemn fifters ! twins
From ancient Night, who nurse the tender thought
To Reason, and on Reason build Resolve,
(That column of true majesty in man)
Alift me: I will thank you in the grave;
The grave, your kingdom : There this frame shall fall
A victim sacred to your dreary shrine.
But what are ye?

THOU, who didit put to fight
Primæval Silence, when the morning stars,
Exulting, shouted o'er the rising ball ;