Trade wields the sword, and Agriculture leaves
Her half-turn'd furrow: other harvests fire
A nobler avarice, avarice of renown!
And laurels are the growth of every field.
In distant courts is our commotion felt;
And less like gods sit monarchs on their thrones.
What arm can want or sinews or success,
Which, lifted from an honest heart, descends,
With all the weight of British wrath, to cleave
The papal mitre, or the Gallic chain,
At every stroke, and save a sinking land?
Or death or victory must be resolv'd ;
To dream of mercy, O how tame! how mad!
Where, o'er black deeds the crucifix display'd,
Fools think Heaven purchas'd by the blood they
By giving, not supporting, pains and death! [shed;
Nor simple death! where they the greatest saints
Who most subdue all tenderness of heart;
Students in torture! where, in zeal to him,
Whose darling title is the Prince of Peace,
The best turn ruthless butchers for our sakes;
To save us in a world they recommend,
And yet forbear, themselves with Earth content;
What modesty !-such virtues Rome adorn!
And chiefly those who Rome's first honours wear,
Whose name from Jesus, and whose hearts from
Hell!
And shall a pope-bred princeling crawl ashore,
Replete with venom, guiltless of a sting, [scrap'd
And whistle cut-throats, with those swords that
Their barren rocks for wretched sustenance,
To cut his passage to the British throne?
One that has suck'd-in malice with his milk,
Malice, to Britain, Liberty, and Truth?
Less savage was his brother-robber's nurse,
The howling nurse of plundering Romulus,
Ere yet far worse than Pagan harbour'd there.
Hail to the brave! be Britain Britain still:
Britain high favour'd of indulgent Heaven!
Nature's anointed empress of the deep!
The nurse of merchants, who can purchase crowns!
Supreme in commerce! that exuberant source
Of wealth, the nerve of war; of wealth, the blood,
The circling current in a nation's veins,
To set high bloom on the fair face of peace!
This once so celebrated seat of power,
From which escap'd the mighty Cæsar triumph'd!
Of Gallic lilies this eternal blast!
This terrour of armadas! this true bolt
Ethereal-temper'd, to repress the vain
Salmonean thunders from the papal chair!
This small isle wide-realm'd monarchs eye with awe!
Which says to their ambition's foaming waves,
"Thus far, nor farther!"-Let her hold, in life,
Nought dear disjoin'd from freedom and renown;
Renown, our ancestors' great legacy,
To be transmitted to their latest sons.
By thoughts inglorious, and un-British deeds,
Their cancel'd will is impiously profan'd,
Inhumanly disturb'd their sacred dust.
Their sacred dust with recent laurels crown,
By your own valour won. This sacred isle,
Cut from the continent, that world of slaves;
This temple built by Heaven's peculiar care,
In a recess from the contagious world,
With ocean pour'd around it for its guard,
And dedicated, long, to liberty,
That health, that strength, that bloom, of civil life!
This temple of still more divine; of faith
Sifted from errours, purify'd by flames,
Like gold, to take anew Truth's heavenly stamp,
And (rising both in lustre and in weight)
With her bless'd Master's unmaim'd image shine;
Why should she longer droop? why longer act
As an accomplice with the plots of Rome?
Why longer lend an edge to Bourbon's sword,
And give him leave, among his dastard troops,
To muster that strong succour, Albion's crimes?
Send his self-impotent ambition aid,
And crown the conquest of her fiercest foes?
Where are her foes most fatal? Blushing Truth,
"In her friends' vices,"-with a sigh replies.
Empire on Virtue's rock unshaken stands;
Flux as the billows, when in vice dissolv'd.
If Heaven reclaims us by the scourge of war,
What thanks are due to Paris and Madrid?
Would they a revolution ?-Aid their aim,
But be the revolution-in our hearts!
Wouldst thou (whose hand is at the helm) the
The shaken bark of Britain, should out-ride [bark,
The present blast, and every future storm?
Give it that balast which alone has weight
With Him whom wind, and waves, and war, obey,
Persist. Are others subtle? Thou be wise:
Above the Florentine's court-science raise;
Stand forth a patriot of the moral world;
The pattern, and the patron, of the just:
Thus strengthen Britain's military strength;
Give its own terrour to the sword she draws.
Ask you, "What mean I?"-The most obvious
Armies and fleets alone ne'er won the day. [truth;
When our proud arms are once disarm'd, disarm'd
Of aid from Him by whom the mighty fall;
Of aid from Him by whom the feeble stand;
Who takes away the keenest edge of battle,
Or gives the sword commission to destroy;
Who blasts, or bids the martial laurel bloom-
Emasculated, then, most manly might;
Or, though the might remains, it nought avails:
Then wither'd weakness foils the sinewy arm
Of man's meridian and high-hearted power:
Our naval thunders, and our tented fields
With travel'd banners fanning southern climes,
What do they? This; and more what can they do?
When heap'd the measure of a kingdom's crimes,
The prince most dauntless, the first plume of war,
By such bold inroads into foreign lands,
Such elongation of our armaments,
But stretches out the guilty nation's neck,
While Heaven commands her executioner,
Some less abandon'd nation, to discharge
Her full-ripe vengeance in a final blow,
And tell the world, "Not strong is human strength;
And that the proudest empire holds of Heaven.”
O Britain often rescued, often crown'd,
Beyond thy merit and most sauguine hopes,
With all that's great in war, or sweet in peace!
Know from what source thy signal blessings flow,
Though bless'd with spirits ardent in the field,
Though cover'd various oceans with thy fleets,
Though fenc'd with rocks, and moated by the main,
Thy trust repose in a far stronger guard ;
In Him, who thee, though naked, could defend;
Tho' weak, could strengthen; ruin'd, could restore.
How oft, to tell what arın defends thine isle,
To guard her welfare, and yet check her pride,
Have the winds snatch'd the victory from war?
Or, rather, won the day, when war despair'd?
How oft has providential succour aw'd,
Aw'd while it bless'd us, conscious of our guilt;
Struck dead all confidence in human aid,
And, while we triumph'd, made us tremble too!
Well may we tremble now; what manners reign?
But wherefore ask we, when a true reply
Would shock too much? Kind Heaven! avert events
Whose fatal nature might reply too plain!
Heaven's half-bar'd arm of vengeance has been
In northern skies, and pointed to the south. [wav'd
Vengeance delay'd but gathers and ferments;
More formidably blackens in the wind;
Brews deeper draughts of unrelenting wrath,
And higher charges the suspended storm.
"That public vice portends a public fall”—
Is this conjecture of adventurous thought!
Or pious coward's pulpit-cushion'd dream;
Far from it. This is certain; this is fate.
What says Experience, in her awful chair
Of ages, her authentic annals spread
Around her? What says Reason eagle-eyed?
Nay, what says Common Sense, with common care
Weighing events, and causes, in her scale?
All give one verdict, one decision sign;
And this the sentence Delphos could not mend:
"Whatever secondary props may rise
From politics, to build the public peace,
The basis is the manners of the land.
When rotten these, the politician's wiles
But struggle with destruction, as a child
With giants huge, or giants with a Jove.
The statesman's arts to conjure up a peace,
Or military phantoms void of force,
But scare away the vultures for an hour;
The scent cadaverous (for, oh! how rank
The stench of profligates!) soon lures them back;
On the proud flutter of a Gallic wing
Soon they return; soon make their full descent;
Soon glut their rage, and riot in our ruin;
Their idols grac'd and gorgeous with our spoils,
Of universal empire sure presage !
Till now repell'd by seas of British blood."
And whence the manners of the multitude?
The colours of their manners, black or fair,
Falls from above; from the complexion falls
Of state Othellos, or white men in power:
And from the greater height example falls,
Greater the weight, and deeper its impress
In ranks inferior, passive to the stroke:
From the court-mint, of hearts the current coin,
The pupil presses, but the pattern drives.
And changing for spruce plaid his dirty shroud,
With succour suitable from lower still)
A foe who, these concurring to the charm,
Excites those storins that shall o'erturn the state,
Rend up her antient honours by the root,
And lay the boast of ages, the rever'd
Of nations, the dear-bought with sumless wealth
And blood illustrious, (spite of her La Hogues,
Her Cresseys, and her Blenheims) in the dust.
How must this strike a horrour through the breast,
Through every generous breast where honour reigns,
Through every breast where honour claims a share!
Yes, and through every breast of honour void!
This thought might animate the dregs of men ;
Ferment them into spirit; give them fire
To fight the cause, the black opprobrious cause,
Foul core of all!-corruption at our hearts.
What wreck of empire has the stream of time
Swept, with her vices, from the mountain height
Of grandeur, deified by half mankind,
To dark Oblivion's melancholy lake,
Or flagrant Infamy's eternal brand!
Those names, at which surrounding nations shook,
Those names ador'd, a nuisance! or forgot!
Nor this the caprice of a doubtful die,
But Nature's course; no single chance against it.
For know, my lord! 't is writ in adamant,
'Tis fixt, as is the basis of the world,
Whose kingdoms stand or fall by the decree.
What saw these eyes, surpris'd!-Yet why sur-
pris'd-
For aid divine the crisis seem'd to call,
And how divine was the monition given!
As late I walk'd the night in troubled thought,
My peace disturb'd by rumours from the North,
While thunder o'er my head, porpentous, roll'd,
As giving signal of some strange event,
And ocean groan'd beneath for her he lov❜d,
Albion the fair! so long his empire's queen,
Whose reign is, now, contested by her foes,
On her white cliffs (à tablet broad and bright,
Strongly reflecting the pale lunar ray)
By Fate's own iron pen I saw it writ,
And thus the title ran:
THE STATESMAN'S CREED.
"Ye states! and empires! nor of empires least, Though least in size, hear, Britain! thou whose lot, Whose final lot, is in the balance laid,
What bonds then, bouds how manifold, and strong Irresolutely play the doubtful scales,
To duty, double duty, are the great!
And are there Samsons that can burst them all?
Yes; and great minds that stand in need of none,
Whose pulse beats virtues, and whose generous
Aids mental motives to push on renown,
In emulation of their glorious sires,
From whom rolls down the consecrated stream.
Some sow good seeds in the glad people's hearts,
Some cursed tares, like Satan in the text:
This makes a foe most fatal to the state;
A foe who (like a wizard in his cell)
In his dark cabinet of crooked schemes,
Re cmbling Cuma's gloomy grot, the forge
O casted oracles, and real lies,
(Aided, perhaps. by second-sighted Scots,
French Magi, relies riding post from Rome,
A Gothic hero rising from the dead,
Nor know'st thou which will win.-Know then from
As govern'd well or ill, states sink or rise:
State-ministers, as upright or corrupt,
Are balm or poison in a nation's veins!
Health or distemper, hasten or retard
The period of her pride, her day of doom:
And though, for reasons obvious to the wise,
Just Providence deals otherwise with men,
Yet believe, Britons! nor too late believe,
'Tis fix'd! by Fate irrevocably fix'd!
Virtue and vice are empire's life and death."
Thus it is written-Heard you not a groan?
Is Britain on her death-bed?-No, that groan
Was utter'd by her foes-But soon the scale,
If this divine monition is despis'd,
May turn against us. Read it, ye who rule!
With reverence read; with steadfastness believe;
With courage act as such belief inspires;
The invader affects the character of Charles Then shall your glory stand like Fate's decree ; XII. of Sweden.
Then shall your name in adamant be writ,
In records that defy the tooth of Time,
By nations sav'd, resounding your applause.
While deep beyond your monument's proud base,
In black Oblivion's kennel, shall be trod
Their execrable names, who, high in power,
And deep in guilt, most ominously shine,
(The meteors of the state!) give Vice her head,
To License lewd let loose the public rein;
Quench every spark of conscience in the land,
And triumph in the profligate's applause:
Or who to the first bidder sell their souls,
Their country sell, sell all their fathers bought
With funds exhausted and exhausted veins,
To demons, by his Holiness ordain'd
To propagate the gospel-penn'd at Rome;
Hawk'd through the world by consecrated bulls;
And how illustrated?-by Smithfield flames:
Who plunge (but not like Curtius) down the gulf,
Down narrow-minded Self's voracious gulf,
Which gapes, and swallows all they swore to save:
Hate all that lifted heroes into gods,
And hug the horrours of a victor's chain :
Of bodies politic that destin'd Hell,
Inflicted here, since here their beings end;
And fall from foes detested and despis'd,
On disbelievers of the Statesman's Creed.
Note, here, my lord, (unnoted yet it lies
By most, or all) these truths political
Serve more than public ends: this Creed of States
Seconds, and irresistibly supports,
The Christian Creed. Are you surpris'd?—Attend;
And on the Statesman's build a nobler name.
This punctual justice exercis'd on states,
With which authentic chronicle abounds,
As all men know, and therefore must believe;
This vengeance pour'd on nations ripe in guilt,
Pour'd on them here, where only they exist,
What is it but an argument of sense,
Or rather demonstration, to support
Our feeble faith-"That they who states compose,
That men who stand not bounded by the grave,
Shall meet like measure at their proper hour?”
For God is equal, similarly deals
With states and persons, or he were not God!
What means a rectitude immutable ?
A pattern here of universal right.
What, then, shall rescue an abandon'd man?
Nothing, it is reply'd. Reply'd, by whom?
Reply'd by politicians well as priests:
Writ sacred set aside, mankind's own writ,
The whole world's annals; these pronounce his
doom.
Thus (what might seem a daring paradox)
E'en politics advance divinity:
True masters there are better scholars here,
Who travel history in quest of schemes
To govern nations, or perhaps oppress,
May there start truths that other aims inspire,
And, like Candace's eunuch, as they read,
By Providence turn Christians on their road:
Digging for silver, they may strike on gold;
May be surpris'd with better than they sought,
And entertain an angel unawares.
Nor is divinity ungrateful found.
As politics advance divinity,
Thus, in return, divinity promotes
True politics, and crowns the statesman's praise.
All wisdoms are but branches of the chief,
And statesmen found but shoots of honest men.
Are this world's witchcrafts pleaded in excuse
For deviations in our moral line?
This, and the next world, view'd with such an eye
As suits a statesman, such as keeps in view
His own exalted science, both conspire
To recommend and fix us in the right.
If we reward the politics of Heaven,
The grand administration of the whole,
What's the next world? A supplement of this:
Without it, justice is defective here;
Just as to states, defective as to men :
If so, what is this world? as sure as Right
Sits in Heaven's throne, a prophet of the next.
Prize you the prophet? then believe him too:
His prophecy more precious than his smile.
How comes it then to pass, with most on Earth,
That this should charm us, that should discompose?
Long as the statesman finds this case his own,
So long his politics are uncomplete;
In danger he; nor is the nation safe,
But soon must rue his inauspicious power.
What hence results?
truth that should resound For ever awful in Britannia's ear: "Religion crowns the statesman and the man, Sole source of public and of private peace." This truth all men must own, and therefore will, And praise and preach it too:-and when that's done,
Their compliment is paid, and 't is forgot.
What highland pole-axe half so deep can wound?
But how dare I, so mean, presume so far?
Assume my seat in the dictator's chair?
Pronounce, predict (as if indeed inspir'd),
Promulge my censures, lay out all my throat,
Till hoarse in clamour on enormous crimes?
Two mighty columns rise in my support;
In their more awful and authentic voice,
Record profane and sacred, drown the Muse,
Though loud, and far out-thread her threatening
Still further, Holles! suffer me to plead
That I speak freely, as I speak to thee:
Guilt only startles at the name of guilt;
And truth, plain truth, is welcome to the wise.
Thus what seem'd my presumption is thy praise.
Praise, and immortal praise, is Virtue's claim;
And Virtue's sphere is action: yet we grant
Some merit to the trumpet's loud aların,
Whose clangour kindles cowards into men.
Nor shall the verse, perhaps, be quite forgot,
Which talks of immortality, and bids,
In every British breast, true glory rise,
As now the warbling lark awakes the morn,
To close, my lord! with that which all should close
And all begin, and strike us every hour,
Though no war wak'd us, no black tempest frown'd.
The morning rises gay; yet gayest morn
Less glorious after night's incumbent shades;
Less glorious far bright Nature, rich array'd
With golden robes, in all the pomp of noon,
Than the first feeble dawn of Moral day?
Sole day, (let those whom statesmen serve attend)
Though the Sun ripens diamonds for their crowns;
Sole day worth his regard whom Heaven ordains,
Undarken'd, to behold noon dark, and date,
From the Sun's death, and every planet's fall,
His all-illustrious and eternal year;
Where statesmen and their monarchs, (names of
And distance here) shall rank with common men, Yet own their glory never dawn'd before.
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.
LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY.
TO THE RIGHT HON. ARTHUR ONSLOW, SPEAKER OF THE
HOUSE OF COMMONS.
TIA'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
I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams
Through this opaque of Nature, and of soul,
This double night, transmit one pitying ray,
To lighten, and to cheer. O lead my mind,
(A mind that fain would wander from its woe)
Lead it through various scenes of life and death;
And from each scene, the noblest truths inspire,
Nor less inspire my conduct, than my song;
Teach my best reason, reason; my best will
Teach rectitude; and fix my firm resolve
Wisdom to wed, and pay her long arrear:
Nor let the phial of thy vengeance, pour'd
On this devoted head, be pour'd in vain.
The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
But from its loss. To give it then a tongue,
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,
I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright,
It is the knell of my departed hours:
Where are they? With the years beyond the flood.
It is the signal that demands dispatch;
How much is to be done? My hopes and fears
Start up alarm'd, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down-On what? a fathomless abyss ;
A dread eternity! how surely mine!
And can eternity belong to me,
Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!
How passing wonder he, who made him such!
Who centred in our make such strange extremes !
From different natures marvelously mixt,
Connection exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguish'd link in being's endless chain!
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
A beam ethereal, sully'd and absorpt!
Though sully'd and dishonour'd, still divine!
Dim miniature of greatness absolute !
Tumultuous; where my wreck'd desponding thought, An heir of glery! a frail child of dust!
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,
E'en 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 antient 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;
Helpless immortal! insect infinite !
A worm! a god!-1 tremble at myself,
And in myself am lost! at home a stranger,
Thought wanders up and down, surpris'd, aghast,
And wondering at her own: How Reason reels!
what a miracle to man is man,
Triumphantly distress'd! what joy, what dread!
Alternately transported, and alarm'd!
What can preserve my life! or what destroy!
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave;
Legions of angels can't confine me there.
'Tis past conjecture; all things rise in proof:
While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread,
What though my soul fantastic measures trod
O'er fairy fields; or mourn'd along the gloom
Of pathless woods; or, down the craggy steep
Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool;
Or scal'd the cliff; or danc'd on hollow winds,
With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain?
Her ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her
Of subtler essence than the trodden clod; [nature
Active, aërial, towering, unconfin'd,
The grave, your kingdom: there this frame shall Unfetter'd with her gross companion's 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 trea-
As misers to their gold, while others rest. [sure,
E'en silent night proclaims my soul immortal:
E'en silent night proclaims eternal day.
For human weal, Heaven husbands all events;
Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain.
Why then their loss deplore, that are not lost?
Why wanders wretched thought their tombs around,
In infidel distress? Are angels there?
Slumbers, rak'd up in dust, ethereal fire?
They live! they greatly live a life on Earth
Unkindled, unconceiv'd; and from an eye
A perpetuity of bliss is bliss.
Of tenderness let heavenly pity fall
On me, more justly number'd with the dead.
This is the desert, this the solitude:
How populous, how vital, is the grave!
This is creation's melancholy vault,
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom;
The land of apparitions, empty shades!
All, all on Earth, is shadow, all beyond
Is substance; the reverse is folly's creed:
How solid all, where change shall be no more!
This is the bud of being, the dim dawn,
The twilight of our day, the vestibule;
Life's theatre as yet is shut, and Death,"
Strong Death, alone can heave the massy bar,
This gross impediment of clay remove,
And make us embryos of existence free.
From real life, but little more remote
Is he, not yet a candidate for light,
The future embryo, slumbering in his sire.
Embryos we must be, till we burst the shell,
Yon ambient azure shell, and spring to life,
The life of gods, O transport! and of man.
Yet man, fool man! here buries all his thoughts;
Inters celestial hopes without one sigh.
Prisoner of Earth, and pent beneath the Moon,
Here pinions all his wishes; wing'd by Heaven
To fly at infinite; and reach it there,
Where seraphs gather immortality,
On life's fair tree, fast by the throne of God.
What golden joys ambrosial clustering glow,
In his full beam, and ripen for the just,
Where momentary ages are no more! [pire!
Where Time, and Pain, and Chance, and Death ex-
And is it in the flight of threescore years,
To push eternity from human thought,
And smother souls immortal in the dust?
A soul immortal, spending all her fires,
Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness,
Thrown into tumult, raptur'd or alarm'd,
At aught this scene can threaten or indulge,
Resembles ocean into tempest wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.
Where falls this censure? It o'erwhelms myself;
How was my heart incrusted by the world!
O how self-fetter'd was my grovelling soul!
How, like a worm, was I wrapt round and round
In silken thought, which reptile Fancy spun,
Till darken'd Reason lay quite clouded o'er
With soft conceit of endless comfort here,
Nor yet put forth her wings to reach the skies!
Night-visions may befriend (as sung above):
Our waking dreams are fatal. How I dreamt
Of things impossible! (Could sleep do more?)
Of joys perpetual in perpetual change!
Of stable pleasures on the tossing wave!
Eternal sunshine in the storms of life!
How richly were my noon-tide trances hung
With gorgeous tapestries of pictur'd joys!
Joy behind joy, in endless perspective!
Till at Death's toll, whose restless iron tongue
Calls daily for his millions at a meal,
Starting I woke, and found myself undone.
Where now my phrensy's pompous furniture?
The cobwel'd cottage, with its ragged wall
Of mouldering mud, is royalty to me!
The spider's most attenuated thread
Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie
On earthly bliss! it breaks at every breeze.
O ye blest scenes of permanent delight!
Full, above measure! lasting, beyond bound!
Could you, so rich in rapture, fear an end,
That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy,
And quite unparadise the realms of light."
Safe are you lodg'd above these rolling spheres ;
The baleful influence of whose giddy dance
Sheds sad vicissitude on all beneath.
Here teems with revolutions every hour;
And rarely for the better; or the best,
More mortal than the common births of fate.
Each moment has its sickle, emulous
Of Time's enormous scythe, whose ample sweep
Strikes empires from the root; each moment plays
His little weapon in the narrower sphere
Of sweet domestic comfort, aud cuts down
The fairest bloom of sublunary bliss.
Bliss! sublunary bliss!-proud words, and vain! Implicit treason to divine decree!
A bold invasion of the rights of Heaven!
I clasp'd the phantoms, and I found them air.
O had I weigh'd it ere my fond embrace!
What darts of agony had miss'd my heart!
Death! great proprietor of all! 't is thine
To tread out empire, and to quench the stars.
The Sun himself by thy permission shines;
And, one day, thou shalt pluck him from his sphere.
Amid such mighty plunder, why exhaust
Thy partial quiver on a mark so mean?
Why thy peculiar rancour wreak'd on me?
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice; and thrice my peace was slain;
And thrice, ere thrice yon Moon had fill'd her horn.
O Cynthia! why so pale? Dost thou lament
Thy wretched neighbour? Grieve to see thy wheel
Of ceaseless change outwhirl'd in human life?
How wanes my borrow'd bliss! from fortune's smile,
Precarious courtesy! not virtue's sure,
Self-given, solar ray of sound delight.
In every vary'd posture, place, and hour,
How widow'd every thought of every joy!
Thought, busy thought! too busy for my peace!
Through the dark postern of time long elaps'd,
Led softly, by the stillness of the night,
Led, like a murderer, (and such it proves!)
Strays (wretched rover!) o'er the pleasing past;
In quest of wretchedness perversely strays;
And finds all desert now; and meets the ghosts
Of my departed joys; a numerous train!
I rue the riches of my former fate;
Sweet comfort's blasted clusters I lament;
I tremble at the blessings once so dear;
And every pleasure pains me to the heart.
Yet why complain? or why complain for one ?
Hangs out the Sun his lustre but for me,
The single man? Are angels all beside?
I mourn for millions: 'Tis the common lot;
In this shape, or in that, has Fate entail'd
The mother's throes on all of woman born,
Not more the children, than sure heirs, of pain.
War, Famine, Pest, Volcano, Storm, and Fire,
Intestine broils, Oppression, with her heart
Wrapt up in triple brass, besiege mankind.
God's image disinherited of day,
Here, plung'd in mines, forgets a Sun was made.
There, beings deathless as their haughty lord,
Are hammer'd to the galling oar for life;
Aud plow the winter's wave, and reap despair.
Some, for hard masters, broken under arms,
In battle lopt away, with half their limbs,
Beg bitter bread through realms their valour sav'd,
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