In the Last Day' he hopes to illustrate the re-assembly of the atoms that compose the human body at the Trump of Doom,' by the collection of bees into a swarm at the tinkling of a pan.

The Prophet says of Tyre, that her Merchants are Princes.' Young says of Tyre in his Merchant,'

Her merchants Princes, and each deck a Throne.

Let burlesque try to go beyond him.

He has the trick of joining the turgid and familiar: to buy the alliance of Britain, Climes were paid down.' Antithesis is his favourite, They for kindness hate:' and because she's right, she's ever in the wrong.'

His versification is his own; neither his blank nor his rhyming lines have any resemblance to those of former writers; he picks up no hemisticks, he copies no favourite expressions; he seems to have laid up no stores of thought or diction, but to owe all to the fortuitous suggestions of the present moment. Yet I have reason to believe that, when once he had formed a new design, he then laboured it with very patient industry; and that he composed with great labour, and frequent revisions.

His verses are formed by no certain model; he is no more like himself in his different productions than he is like others. He seems never to have studied prosody, nor to have had any direction but from his own ear. But with all his defects,

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.

THE

COMPLAINT.

NIGHT I.

ON

LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY.

ΤΟ

THE RIGHT HON. ARTHUR ONSLOW, ESQ.

SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

TIR'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 downy pinion flies from woe,
And lights on lids unsullied 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 infest the grave.
I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams
Tumultuous; where my wreck'd desponding

From wave to wave of fancied misery
At random drove, her helm of reason lost.
Though now restor'd 'tis only change of pain,
(A bitter change!) severer 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, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world.
Silence how dead! and darkness how profound!
Nor eye nor listening ear an object finds;
Creation sleeps. "Tis as the general pulse
Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause;
An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
And let her prophecy be soon fulfill'd:

Fate! drop the curtain; I can lose no more.
Silence and Darkness! solemn sisters! twins
From ancient Night, who nurse the tender thought
To reason, and on reason build resolve,

(That column of true majesty in man)
Assist 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 didst put to flight

Primeval Silence, when the morning stars,
Exulting, shouted o'er the rising ball;

O Thou, whose word from solid darkness struck
That spark, the Sun, strike wisdom from my soul;
My soul, which flies to thee, her trust, her treasure,