Know'st thou, or what thou dost, or what is done?
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,
230
Thy Parian tomb's triumphant arch beneath.
Has Death his fopperies? Then well may Life
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, framed in foreign looms! O ye Lorenzos of our age! who deem
One moment unamused 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?
Otreach'rous Conscience! while she seems to
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 pen :
She reconnoitres Fancy's airy band,
A watchful foe! the formidable spy,
List'ning, o'erhears the whispers of our camp,
Our dawning purposes of heart explores,
And steals our embryos of iniquity.
As all-rapacious usurers conceal
Their Doomsday-book from all-consuming heirs ;+
Thus, with indulgence most severe, she treats
Us spendthrifts of inestimable time;
Unnoted, notes each moment misapplied;
In leaves more durable than leaves of brass
Writes our whole history, which Death shall read
In ev'ry pale delinquent's private ear,
And judgment publish; publish to more worlds
Than this; and endless age in groans resound.
Lorenzo, such that sleeper in thy breast!
Such is her slumber, and her vengeance such
For slighted counsel: such thy future peace!
And think'st thou still thou canst be wise too soon?
But why on time so lavish is my song?
On this great theme kind Nature keeps a school, 285
To teach her sons herself. Each night we die;
Each morn are born anew;
each day a life!
And shall we kill each day? If trifling kills,
Sure vice must butcher. O what heaps of slain
Cry out for vengeance on us! Time destroy'd 290
Is suicide, where more than blood is spilt.
Time flies, death urges, knells call, Heav'n invites, Hell threatens : all exerts; in effort all;
More than creation labours !-labours more?
And is there in creation, what, amidst
This tumult universal, wing'd despatch,
And ardent energy, supinely yawns
?-
Man sleeps, and man alone; and man whose fate,
Fate irreversible, entire, extreme,
Endless, hair-hung, breeze-shaken, o'er the gulf 300
A moment trembles; drops! and man, for whom
All else is in alarm; man, the sole cause
Of this surrounding storm! and yet he sleeps,
As the storm rock'd to rest.-Throw years away?
Throw empires, and be blameless. Moments seize,
Heav'n's on their wing: a moment we may wish,
When worlds want wealth to buy. Bid Day stand
Bid him drive back his car, and re-import
The period past, re-give the given hour.
Lorenzo, more than miracles we want,
Lorenzo-O for yesterdays to come!
Such is the language of the man awake;
His ardour such for what oppresses thee.
And is his ardour vain, Lorenzo? No;
That more than miracle the gods indulge.
To-day is yesterday return'd; return'd
Full-power'd to cancel, expiate, raise, adorn,
And reinstate us on the rock of peace.
Let it not share its predecessor's fate,
Nor, like its eldest sisters, die a fool.
Shall it evaporate in fume, fly off
Fuliginous, and stain us deeper still?
Shall we be poorer for the plenty pour'd?
More wretched for the clemencies of Heav'n?
Where shall I find him? Angels, tell me where: You know him he is near you: point him out.
Shall I see glories beaming from his brow,
Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?
Your golden wings, now hov'ring o'er him, shed
Protection; now are waving in applause
To that blest son of foresight; lord of fate!
That awful independent on to-morrow!
Whose work is done; who triumphs in the past;
Whose yesterdays look backward with a smile;
Nor, like the Parthian, wound him as they fly: 335
That common but opprobrious lot! Past hours,
If not by guilt, yet wound us by their flight,
If folly bounds our prospect by the grave,
All feeling of futurity benumb'd;
All god-like passion for eternals quench'd;
All relish of realities expired;
Renounced all correspondence with the skies:
Our freedom chain'd; quite wingless our desire;
In sense dark-prison'd all that ought to soar;
Prone to the centre; crawling in the dust;
Dismounted ev'ry great and glorious aim;
Embruted ev'ry faculty divine:
Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world,
The world, that gulf of souls, immortal souls,
Souls elevate, angelic, wing'd with fire
To reach the distant skies, and triumph there
On thrones, which shall not mourn their masters
Though we from earth, ethereal they that fell.
Such veneration due, O man, to man.
Who venerate themselves the world despise. 355
For what, gay friend, is this escutcheon'd world,
Which hangs out death in one eternal night?
A night, that glooms us in the noon-tide ray,
And wraps our thought, at banquets, in the shroud.
Life's little stage is a small eminence,
Inch-high the grave above; that home of man,
Where dwells the multitude; we gaze around;
We read their monuments; we sigh; and while
We sigh, we sink; and are what we deplored;
Lamenting, or lamented, all our lot!
Is death at distance? No: he has been on thee; And giv'n sure earnest of his final blow.
Those hours which lately smiled, where are they now?
Pallid to thought, and ghastly! drown'd, all drown'd
In that great deep, which nothing disembogues! 370
And, dying, they bequeath'd thee small reno "n.
The rest are on the wing: how fleet their flight!
Already has the fatal train took fire;
A moment, and the world's blown up to thee;
The sun is darkness, and the stars are dust.
Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours;
And ask them, what report they bore to heav'n;
And how they might have borne more welcome news.
Their answers form what men experience call;
If Wisdom's friend, her best; if not, worst foe. 380
O reconcile them! Kind Experience cries,
There's nothing here, but what as nothing weighs;
The more our joy, the more we know it vain;
And by success are tutor'd to despair.'
Nor is it only thus, but must be so.
Who knows not this, though gray,
Loose then from earth the grasp of fond desire,
Weigh anchor, and some happier clime explore.
Art thou so moor'd thou canst not disengage, Nor give thy thoughts a ply to future scenes? Since by life's passing breath, blown up from earth, Light as the summer's dust, we take in air A moment's giddy flight, and fall again; Join the dull mass, increase the trodden soil,
And sleep, till Earth herself shall be no more; 395
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