What years are squander'd, wisdom's debt unpaid!
Our wealth in days, all due to that discharge.
Haste, haste, he lies in wait, he's at the door,
Insidious death! should his strong hand arrest,
No composition sets the prisoner free.
Eternity's inexorable chain

Fast binds; and vengeance claims the full arrear.
How late I shudder'd on the brink! how late
Life call'd for her last refuge in despair!
That time is mine, O Mead! to thee I owe;
Fain would I pay thee with eternity.
But ill my genius answers my desire;
My sickly song is mortal, past thy cure.
Accept the will;-that dies not with my

strain.

For what calls thy disease, Lorenzo? not
For Esculapian, but for moral aid.
Thou think'st it folly to be wise too soon.
Youth is not rich in time, it may be poor;
Part with it as with money, sparing pay
No moment, but in purchase of its worth:
And what its worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.
Part with it as with life, reluctant; big
With holy hope of nobler time to come;
Time higher aim'd, still nearer the great mark
Of men and angels; virtue more divine.
Is this our duty, wisdom, glory, gain?
(These heaven benign in vital union binds)
And sport we like the natives of the bough,
When vernal suns inspire? Amusement reigns
Man's great demad: To trifle, is to live :
And is it then a trifle, too, to die?

Thou say st I preach, Lorenzo, 'tis confest.
What if, for once, I preach thee quite awake?
Who wants amusement in the flame of battle?
Is it not treason, in the soul immortal,
Her foes in arms, eternity the prize?

Will toys amuse, when medicines cannot cure?
When spirits ebb, when life's enchanting scenes
Their lustre lose, and lessen in our sight
As lands and cities with their glittering spires,
To the poor shatter'd bark, by sudden storm
Thrown off to sea, and soon to perish there

Will toys amuse? No: Thrones will then be toys,
And earth and skies seem dust upon the scale.

This leaves

Redeem we time?-Its loss we dearly buy. What pleads Lorenzo for his high-priz'd sports? He pleads time's numerous blanks; he loudly pleads The straw-like trifles on life's common stream. From whom those blanks and trifles, but from thee? No blank, no trifle, nature made, or meant. Virtue, or proposed virtue, still be thine; This cancels thy complaint at once. In act no trifle, and no blank in time. This greatens, fills, immortalizes all; This, the blest art of turning all to gold; This, the good heart's prerogative to raise A royal tribute from the poorest hours; Immense revenue! every moment pays, If nothing more than purpose in thy power; Thy purpose firm, is equal to the deed: Who does the best his circumstance allows, Does well, acts nobly; angels could no more. Our outward act indeed admits restraint; 'Tis not in things o'er thought to domineer;

Guard well thy thought; our thoughts are heard in heaven.

On all important time through every age,

Though much, and warm, the wise have urg'd; the

man

Is yet unborn, who duly weighs an hour.
"I've lost a day"-the prince who nobly cry'd
Had been an emperor without his crown;
Of Rome, say rather, lord of human race
He spoke, as if deputed by mankind,
So should all speak: So reason speaks in all:
From the soft whispers of that God in man,
Why fly to folly, why to phrenzy fly,
For rescue from the blessing we possess?
Time the supreme !-Time is eternity;
Pregnant with all eternity can give ;

Pregnant with all, that makes archangels smile.
Who murders time, he crushes in the birth
A power ethereal, only not ador'd.

Ah! how unjust to nature and himself,

Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!
Like children babbling nonsense in their sports
We censure nature for a span too short;
That span too short, we tax as tedious too;
Torture invention, all expedients tire,
To lash the lingering moments into speed,
And whirl us (happy riddance!) from ourselves.
Art, brainless art! our furious charioteer
(For nature's voice unstifled would recal),
Drives headlong towards the precipice of death;
Death, most our dread; death thus more dreadful made:
O what a riddle of absurdity!

Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot wheels
How heavily we drag the load of life!

Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain,
It makes us wander; wander earth around,
To fly that tyrant, thought, As Atlas groan'd
The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.
We cry for mercy to the next amusement;
The next amusement mortgages our fields;
Slight inconvenience! prisons hardly frown,
From hateful time if prisons set us free.
Yet when death kindly tenders us relief,
We call him cruel; years to moments shrink,
Ages to years. The telescope is turn'd.
To man's false optics (from his folly false)
Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings,
And seems to creep, decrepit with his age;
Behold him, when past by; what then is seen,
But his broad pinions swifter than the winds?
And all mankind, in contradiction strong,
Rueful, aghast! cry out on his career.

Leave to thy foes these errors, and these ills
s;
To nature just, their cause and cure explore.
Not short heaven's bounty, boundless our expense;
No niggard nature; men are prodigals.

We waste, not use our time; we breathe, not live.
Time wasted is existence, us'd is life,

And bare existence, man, to live ordain'd,
Wrings and oppresses with enormous weight.
And why? since time was given for use, not waste,
Enjoin'd to fly; with tempest, tide, and stars,

To keep his speed, nor ever wait for man;
Time's use was doom'd a pleasure: waste, a pain;
That man might feel his error, if unseen:
And, feeling, fly to labour for his cure;

Not, blundering, split on idleness for ease.
Life's cares are comforts; such by heaven design'd;
He that has none, must make them, or be wretched.
Cares are employments, and without employ
The soul is on a rack; the rack of rest,
To souls most adverse; action all their joy.

Here then the riddle mark'd above unfolds;
Then time turns torment, when man turns a fool.
We rave, we wrestle, with great nature's plan ;
We thwart the Deity; and 'tis decreed,
Who thwart his will, shall contradict their own.
Hence our unnatural quarrels with ourselves;
Our thoughts at enmity; our bosom broil;
We push time from us, and we wish him back:
Lavish of lustrums, and yet fond of life;

Life we think long, and short; death seek, and shun: Body and soul, like peevish man and wife,

United jar, and yet are loth to part.

Oh the dark days of vanity! while here, How tasteless! and how terrible, when gone! Gone! they ne'er go; when past they haunt us still; The spirit walks of every day deceas'd;

And smiles an angel, or a fury frowns.

Nor death, nor life delight us.

If time past,
And time possest, both pain us, what can please?
That which the Deity to please ordain'd,
Time us'd. The man who consecrates his hours
By vigorous effort, and an honest aim,

At once he draws the sting of life and death;
He walks with nature; and her paths are peace.
Our error's cause and cure are seen: See next
Time's nature, origin, importance, speed;
And thy great gain from urging his career.—
All-sensual man, because untouch'd, unseen,
He looks on time as nothing. Nothing else
Is truly man's; 'tis fortune's-time's a god.
Hast thou ne'er heard of time's omnipotence;
For, or against, what wonders he can do!

And will: To stand blank neuter he disdains.

Not on those terms was time (heaven's stranger!) sent
On his important embassy to man.

Lorenzo! no: On the long destin'd hour,
From everlasting ages growing ripe,
That memorable hour of wondrous birth,
When the Dread Sire, on emanation bent,
And big with nature, rising in his might,
Call'd forth creation (for then time was born),
By godhead streaming through a thousand worlds;
Not on these terms, from the great days of heaven,
From old eternity's mysterious orb

Was time cut off, and cast beneath the skies;
The skies, which watch him in his new abode,
Measuring his motions by revolving spheres;

That horologe machinery divine.

Hours, days, and months, and years, his children, play,
Like numerous wings around him, as he flies:
Or rather as unequal plumes, they shape

His ample pinions, swift as darted flame,

To gain his goal, to reach his ancient rest,
And join anew eternity his sire;

In his immutability to nest,

When worlds, that count his circles now, unhing'd
(Fate the loud signal sounding), headlong rush
To timeless night and chaos, whence they rose.
Why spur the speedy? why with levities

New wing thy short, short day's too rapid flight?
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,
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 not so wise
As Solomon, more sumptuous to the sight!
Ye delicate who nothing can support,