And anguish after rapture, how severe!

He deigned to wear, who hung the vast expanse Rapture? bold man! who tempts the wrath divine, With azure bright, and clothed the sun in gold.

By plucking fruit denied to mortal taste,
While here presuming on the rights of Heaven.
For transport dost thou call on every hour,
Lorenzo? at thy friend's expense be wise:
Lean not on earth; 'twill pierce thee to the heart;
A broken reed at best; but oft a spear;
On its sharp point Peace bleeds, and Hope
pires.
Turn, hopeless thought! turn from her. The strife of pontiff pride, not pontiff gall.

When every passion sleeps that can offend;
When strikes us every motive that can melt;
When man can wreak his rancour uncontrolled,
That strongest curb on insult and ill-will;
Then! spleen to dust? the dust of innocence?
An angel's dust!-This Lucifer transcends;
ex-When he contended for the patriarch's bones,
'Twas not the strife of malice, but of pride;

Thought repelled,

Resenting rallies, and wakes every wo.
Snatched ere thy prime! and in thy bridal hour!
And when kind Fortune, with thy lover, smiled!
And when high-flavoured thy fresh-opening joys'
And when blind man pronounced thy bliss com-
plete!

And on a foreign shore where strangers wept!
Strangers to thee, and, more surprising still,
Strangers to kindness, wept. Their eyes let fall
Inhuman tears; strange tears! that trickled down
From marble hearts! obdurate tenderness!
A tenderness that called them more severe,
In spite of Nature's soft persuasion steeled:
While Nature melted, Superstition raved;
That mourned the dead, and this denied a grave.
Their sighs incensed; sighs foreign to the will!
Their will the tiger-sucked outraged the storm:
For, oh! the cursed ungodliness of Zeal!
While sinful flesh relented, spirit nursed
In blind Infallibility's embrace,
The sainted spirit petrified the breast:
Denied the charity of dust to spread
O'er dust! a charity their dogs enjoy.
What could I do? what succour? what resource?
With pious sacrilege a grave I stole ;
With impious piety that grave I wronged;
Short in my duty, coward in my grief!
More like her murderer than friend, I crept
With soft-suspended step, and, muffled deep
In midnight darkness, whispered my last sigh.
I whispered what should echo through their realms,
Nor writ her name, whose tomb should pierce the
skies.

Presumptuous fear! how durst I dread her foes,
While Naure's loudest dictates I obeyed?
Pardon necessity, blest shade! of grief
And indignation rival bursts I poured;
Half-execration mingled with my prayer;
Kindled at man, while I his God adored:
Sore grudged the savage land her sacred dust;
Stamped the curst soil; and with humanity
(Denied Narcissa) wished them all a grave.
Glows my resentment into guilt? what guilt
Can equal violations of the dead?

The dead how sacred! sacred is the dust
Of this heaven-laboured form, erect, divine!
This heaven assumed, majestic, robe of earth

Far less than this is shocking in a race
Most wretched, but from streams of mutual love,
And uncreated, but for love divine;
And but for love divine this moment lost,
By Fate resorbed, and sunk in endless night.
Man hard of heart to man! of horrid things
Most horrid! mid stupendous highly strange!
Yet oft his courtesies are smoother wrongs;
Pride brandishes the favours he confers,
And contumelious his humanity:
What then his vengeance? Hear it not, ye Stars!
And thou, pale Moon! turn paler at the sound,
Man is to man the sorest, surest ill.
A previous blast foretells the rising storm;
O'erwhelming turrets threaten, ere they fall;
Volcanos bellow, ere they disembogue;
Earth trembles, ere her yawning jaws devour;
And smoke betrays the wide-consuming fire:
Ruin from man is most concealed when near,
And sends the dreadful tidings in the blow.
Is this the flight of Fancy? would it were!
Heaven's Sovereign saves all beings, but Himself,
That hideous sight, a naked human heart.

Fired is the Muse? and let the Muse be fired:
Who not inflamed, when what he speaks he feels,
And in the nerve most tender, in his friends;
Shame to mankind! Philander had his foes;
He felt the truths I sing, and I in him:
But he nor I feel more. Past ills, Narcissa!
Are sunk in thee, thou recent wound of heart,
Which bleeds with other cares, with other pangs:
Pangs numerous as the numerous ills that swarmed
O'er thy distinguished fate, and clustering there,
Thick as the locust on the land of Nile,
Made death more deadly, and more dark the grave.
Reflect (if not forgot my touching tale)
How was each circumstance with aspics armed?
An aspic each, and all an hydra-wo.
What strong Herculean virtue could suffice?—
Or is it virtus to be conquered here?
This hoary cheek a train of tears bedews,
And each tear mourns its own distinct distress,
And each distress, distinctly mourn'd, demands
Of grief still more, as heightened by the whole.
A grief like this proprietors excludes:
Not friends alone such obsequies deplore;
They make mankind the mourner; carry sighs
Far as the fatal Fame can wing her way,'

And turn the gayest thought of gayest age

And why not think on death? Is life the theme Down their right channel, through the vale of Of every thought? and wish of every hour?

death.

The vale of death? that hush'd Cimmerian vale,
Where Darkness, brooding o'er unfinished fates,
With raven wing incumbent, waits the day
(Dread day!) that interdicts all future change;
That subterranean world, that land of ruin!
Fit walk, Lorenzo! for proud human thought!
There let my thoughts expatiate, and explore
Balsamic truths and healing sentiments,
Of all most wanted, and most welcome, here.
For gay Lorenzo's sake, and for thy own,
My soul! The fruits of dying friends survey;
Expose the vain of life; weigh life and death;
Give Death his eulogy; thy fear subdued;
And labour that first palm of noble minds,
A manly scorn of terror from the tomb.'

This harvest reap from thy Narcissa's grave.
As poets feigned from Ajax' streaming blood
Arose, with grief inscribed, a mournful flower,
Let wisdom blossom from my mortal wound.
And first, of dying friends; what fruit from these?
It brings us more than triple aid; an aid

And song of every joy? surprising truth!
The beaten spaniel's fondness not so strange.
To wave the numerous ills that seize on life
As their own property, their lawful prey;
Ere man has measured half his weary stage,
His luxuries have left him no reserve,
No maiden relishes, unbroached delights:
On cold-served repetitions he subsists,
And in the tasteless present chews the past;
Disgusted chews, and scarce can swallow down.
Like lavish ancestors, his earlier years
Have disinherited his future hours,

Which starve on orts, and glean their former
field.

Live ever here, Lorenzo !-shocking thought!
So shocking! they who wish disown it too;
Disown from shame, what they from folly crave.
Live ever in the womb, nor see the light?
For what, live ever here?—with labouring step
To tread our former footsteps? pace the round
Eternal? to climb life's worn heavy wheel,
Which draws up nothing new? to beat, and beat,

To chase our thoughtlessness, fear, pride, and The beaten track? to bid each wretched day guilt.

Our dying friends come o'er us like a cloud,
To damp our brainless ardours, and abate
That glare of light, which often blinds the wise.
Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth
Our rugged pass to death; to break those.bars
Of terror and abhorrence Nature throws
Cross our obstructed way, and thus to make
Welcome, as safe, our port from every storm.
Each friend by Fate snatched from us is a plume
Plucked from the wing of human vanity,
Which makes us stoop from our aërial heights,
And damped with omen of our own decease,
On drooping pinions of ambition lowered,
Just skim earth's surface ere we break it up,
O'er putrid earth to scratch a little dust,

The former mock? to surfeit on the same,

And yawn our joys? or thank a misery
For change though sad! to see what we have
seen?

Hear, till unheard, the same old slabbered tale?
To taste the tasted, and at each return
Less tasteful? o'er our palates to decant
Another vintage? strain a flatter year
Through loaded vessels, and a laxer tone?
Crazy machines to grind earth's wasted fruits!
Ill ground, and worse concocted! load, not life! ́
The rational foul kennels of excess!
Still-streaming thoroughfares of dull debauch!
Trembling each gulp, lest Death should snatch
the bowl.

Such of our fine ones is the wish refined!

And save the world a nuisance. Smitten friends So would they have it: elegant desire!
Are angels sent on errands full of love;
For us they languish, and for us they die:
And shall they languish, shall they die, in vain?
Ungrateful, shall we grieve their hovering shades,
Which wait the revolution in our hearts?
Shall we disdain their silent, soft, address,
Their posthumous advice, and pious prayer?
Senseless as herds that graze their hallowed graves,
Tread under foot their agonies and groans,
Frustrate their anguish, and destroy their deaths?
Lorenzo! no; the thought of death indulge;
Give it its wholesome empire! let it reign,
That kind chastiser of thy soul, in joy!
Its reign will spread thy glorious conquests far,
And still the tumults of thy ruffled breast.
Auspicious era! golden days, begin!
The thought of death shall, like a god, inspire.

Why not invite the bellowing stalls and wilds?
But such examples might their riot awe.
Through want of virtue, that is, want of thought,
(Though on bright thought they father all their
flights)

To what are they reduced? to love and hate
The same vain world; to censure and espouse
This painted shrew of life, who calls them fool
Each moment of each day; to flatter bad,
Through dread of worse; to cling to this rude
rock,

Barren to them of good, and sharp with ills,
And hourly blackened with impending storms,
And infamous for wrecks of human hope-
Scared at the gloomy gulf that yawns beneath.
Such are their triumphs! such their pangs of joy!
'Tis time, high time, to shift this dismal scene.

Whose worth, ambiguous, rises and declines?
Waxes and wanes? (in all propitious Night
Assists me here) compare it to the moon;
Dark in herself, and indigent, but rich
In borrowed lustre from a higher sphere.
When gross guilt interposes, labouring earth,
O'ershadow'd, mourns a deep eclipse of joy;
Her joys, at brightest, pallid to that font
Of full effulgent glory whence they flow.

Nor is that glory distant. Oh, Lorenzo!
A good man and an angel! these between
How thin the barrier! what divides their fate?
Perhaps a moment, or perhaps a year;
Or if an age it is a moment still;
A moment, or eternity's forgot.

Then be what once they were who now are gods
Be what Philander was, and claim the skies.
Starts timid Nature at the gloomy pass?
The soft transition call it, and be cheered:
Such it is often, and why not to thee?
To hope the best is pious, brave, and wise,
And may itself procure what it presumes.
Life is much flattered, Death is much traduced;
Compare the rivals, and the kinder crown.
'Strange competition!'-True, Lorenzo! strange
So little life can cast into the scale.

Life makes the soul dependent on the dust,
Death gives her wings to mount above the spheres.
Through chinks, stiled organs, dim life peeps at

dis-Life is the triumph of our mouldering clay;

Luxurious feast! a soul, a soul immortal,
In all the dainties of a brute bemired!
Lorenzo! blush at terror for a death

Which gives thee to repose in festive bowers,
Where nectars sparkle, angels minister,

And more than angels share, and raise and crown,
And eternize, the birth, bloom, bursts of bliss.

When shall I die to vanity, pain, death?
When shall I die?-when shall I live for ever?

NIGHT IV.

THE CHRISTIAN TRIUMPH.

What need I more?-O Death! the palm is thine. CONTAINING OUR ONLY CURE FOR THE FEAR OF

Then welcome, Death! thy dreaded harbingers,
Age and disease; Disease, though long my guest,
That plucks my nerves, those tender strings of life,
Which, plucked a little more, will toll the bell
That calls my few friends to my funeral;
Where feeble Nature drops, perhaps, a tear,
While Reason and Religion, better taught,
Congratulate the dead, and crown his tomb
With wreath triumphant. Death is victory!
It binds in chains the raging ills of life:
Lust and Ambition, Wrath and Avarice,
Dragged at his chariot-wheel, applaud his power.
That ills corrosive, cares importunate,
Are not immortal too, O Death! is thine.
Our day of dissolution!-name it right,
'Tis our great pay-day; 'tis our harvest, rich
And ripe. What though the sickle, sometimes
keen,

Just scars us as we reap the golden grain!
More than thy balm, O Gilead! heals the wound.
Birth's feeble cry, and Death's deep dismal groan,
Are slender tributes low-taxed Nature pays
For mighty gain: the gain of each a life!
But, O! the last the former so transcends,
Life dies, compared; Life lives beyond the grave.
And feel I, Death! no joy from thought of thee?
Death! the great counsellor, who man inspires
With every nobler thought and fairer deed!
Death! the deliverer, who rescues man!
Death! the rewarder, who the rescued crowns!
Death! that absolves my birth, a curse without it!
Rich Death! that realizes all my cares,
Toils, virtues, hopes; without it a chimera;
Death! of all pain the period, not of joy;
Joy's source and subject still subsist unhurt;
One in my soul, and one in her great sire,
Though the four winds were warring for my dust:
Yes, and from winds and waves, and central night,
Though prisoned there, my dust, too, I reclaim,
(To dust when drop proud Nature's proudest
spheres)

And live entire. Death is the crown of life!
Were death denied, poor man would live in vain
Were death denied, to live would not be life:
Were death denied, even fools would wish to die.
Death wounds to cure; we fall, we rise, we reign!
Spring from our fetters, fasten in the skies,
Where blooming Eden withers in our sight.
Death gives us more than was in Eden lost :
This king of terrors is the prince of peace.

:

DEATH, AND PROPER SENTIMENTS OF HEART ON
THAT INESTIMABLE BLESSING.

To the Hon. Mr. Yorke.

A MUCH-indebted Muse, O Yorke! intrudes
Amid the smiles of fortune and of youth,
Thine ear is patient of a serious song.

How deep implanted in the breast of man
The dread of death? I sing, its sovereign cure.
Why start at Death? where is he? Death arrived,
Is past; not come, or gone: he's never here.
Ere hope, sensation fails. Black-boding man
Receives, not suffers, Death's tremendous blow.
The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave;
The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm;
These are the bugbears of a winter's eve,
The terrors of the living, not the dead;
Imagination's fool, and Error's wretch.
Man makes a death which Nature never made,
Then on the point of his own fancy falls,
And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one.

But were Death frightful, what has age to fear?
If prudent, age should meet the friendly foe,
And shelter in his hospitable gloom.

I scarce can meet a monument but holds
My younger; every date cries—' Come away.'
And what recalls me? look the world around,
And tell me what. The wisest can not tell.
Should any born of woman give his thought
Full range, on just Dislike's unbounded field;
Of things the vanity, of men the flaws;
Flaws in the best; the many, flaw all o'er;
As leopards spotted, or as Ethiops dark;
Vivacious ill; good dying immature;
(How immature Narcissa's marble tells)
And at its death bequeathing endless pain;
His heart, though bold, would sicken at the sight,
And spend itself in sighs for future scenes.

But grant to life (and just it is to grant
To lucky life) some perquisites of joy ;
A time there is when, like a thrice-told tale,
Long-rifled life of sweet can yield no more,
But from our comment on the comedy;
Pleasing reflections on parts well-sustained,
Or purposed emendations where we failed,
Or hopes of plaudits from our candid Judge,
When, on their exit, souls are bid unrobe,
Toss Fortune back her tinsel and her plume,
And drop this mask of flesh behind the scene.

With me that time is come; my world is dead;