True taste of life, and constant thought of death;
The thought of death, sole victor of its dread!
Hope be thy joy; and probity thy skill;
Thy patron He, whose diadem has dropp'd
Yon gems of heaven; eternity thy prize :
And leave the racers of the world their own,
Their feather, and their froth, for endless toils:
They part with all for that which is not bread;
They mortify, they starve, on wealth, fame, power;
And laugh to scorn the fools that aim at more.
How must a spirit, late escap'd from earth,
Suppose Philander's, Lucia's, or Narcissa's,
The truth of things new-blazing in its eye,
Look back, astonish'd, on the ways of men,
Whose lives, whole drift is to forget their graves!
And when our present privilege is past,
To scourge us with due sense of its abuse,
The same astonishment will seize us all.
What then must pain us, would preserve us now.
Lorenzo! 'tis not yet too late: Lorenzo!
Seize wisdom, ere 'tis torment to be wise;
That is, seize wisdom, ere she seizes thee.
For what, my small philosopher, is hell?
'Tis nothing, but full knowledge of the truth,
When truth, resisted long, is sworn our foe;
And calls eternity to do her right.
Thus darkness aiding intellectual light,
And sacred silence whispering truths divine,
And truths divine converting pain to peace,
My song the midnight raven has outwing'd,
And shot, ambitious of unbounded scenes,
Beyond the flaming limits of the world,
Her gloomy flight. But what avails the flight
Of fancy, when our hearts remain below?
Virtue abounds in flatterers, and foes;
'Tis pride to praise her; penance, to perform.
To more than words, to more than worth of tongue,
Lorenzo! rise, at this auspicious hour:
An hour, when heaven's most intimate with man;
When, like a falling star, the ray divine
Glides swift into the bosom of the just;
And just are all, determin'd to reclaim;