Assists me here) compare it to the moon;
Dark in herself, and indigent, but rich
In borrow'd 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 faté?
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 cheer'd:
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 flatter'd, Death is much traduc'd;
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, stil'd organs, dim life peeps at light;
Death bursts the' involving cloud, and all is day:
All eye, all ear, the disembody'd power.
Death has feign'd evils nature shall not feel;
Life, ills substantial wisdom cannot shun.
Is not the mighty mind, that sun of Heav'n!
By tyrant Life dethron'd, imprison'd, pain'd?
By Death enlarg'd, ennobled, deified?
Death but intombs the body, life the soul.
Is Death then guiltless? How he marks his way With dreadful waste of what deserves to shine! Art, genius, fortune, elevated power!
With various lustres these light up the world, Which Death puts out, and darkens human race.'
I grant, Lorenzo! this indictment just:
The sage, peer, potentate, king, conqueror !
Death humbles these; more barbarous Life, the man.
Life is the triumph of our mouldering clay;
Death of the spirit infinite! divine!
Death has no dread but what frail life imparts,
Nor life true joy but what kind death improves.
No bliss has life to boast, till death can give
Far greater. Life's a debtor to the grave;
Dark lattice! letting in eternal day.
Lorenzo! blush at fondness for a life
Which sends celestial souls on errands vile,
To cater for the sense, and serve at boards
Where every ranger of the wilds, perhaps
Each reptile, justly claims our upper-hand.
Luxurious feast! a soul, a soul immortal,
In all the dainties of a brute bemir'd!
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.
What need I more ?-O Death! the palm is thine.
Then welcome, Death! thy dreaded harbingers,
Age and disease; Disease, though long my guest,
That plucks my nerves, those tender strings of life,
Which pluck'd 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,
Dragg'd 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-tax'd Nature pays
For mighty gain: the gain of each a life!
But, O! the last the former so transcends,
Life dies compar'd; 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 prison'd 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, ev'n 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.
When shall I die to vanity, pain, death?
When shall I die?-when shall I live for ever?
To His Grace the Duke of Dorset.
--Tanto major famæ sitis est, quam
Y verse is Satire; Dorset! lend your ear, And patronise a Muse you cannot fear. To poets sacred is a Dorset's name,
Their wonted passport through the gates of Fame:
It bribes the partial reader into praise,
And throws a glory round the shelter'd lays:
The dazzled judgment fewer faults can see,
And gives applause to Blackmore, or to me.
But you decline the mistress we pursue;
Others are fond of Fame, but Fame of you.
Instructive Satire! true to Virtue's cause!
Thou shining supplement of public laws!
When flatter'd crimes of a licentious age
Reproach our silence, and demand our rage;
When purchas'd follies, from each distant land,
Like arts, improve in Britain's skilful hand;
When the Law shows her teeth but dares not bite,
And South-Sea treasures are not brought to light;
When Churchmen scripture for the classics quit,
Polite apostates from God's grace to wit:
When men grow great from their revenue spent,
And fly from bailiffs into parliament;
When dying sinners, to blot out their score,
Bequeath the Church the leavings of a whore;
To chafe our spleen, when themes like these increase,
Shall panegyric reign, and censure cease?
Shall poesy, like law, turn wrong to right, And dedications wash an Ethiop white? Set up each senseless wretch for Nature's boast, On whom praise shines, as trophies on a post? Shall funeral Eloquence her colours spread, And scatter roses on the wealthy dead? Shall authors smile on such illustrious days, And satirize with nothing-but their praise?
Why slumbers Pope, who leads the tuneful train,
Nor hears that virtue which he loves complain?
Donne, Dorset, Dryden, Rochester, are dead,
And guilt's chief foe in Addison is fled;
Congreve, who, crown'd with laurels fairly won,
Sits smiling at the goal while others run,
He will not write; and (more provoking still!)
Ye gods! he will not write, and Mævius will.
Doubly distress'd, what author shall we find
Discreetly daring, and severely kind,
The courtly Roman's shining path to tread,
And sharply smile prevailing folly dead?
Will no superior genius snatch the quill,
And save me, on the brink, from writing ill?
Though vain the strife, I'll strive my voice to raise:
What will not men attempt for sacred praise?
The love of praise, howe'er conceal'd by art,
Reigns, more or less, and glows in every heart;
The proud, to gain it, toils on toils endure;
The modest shun it, but to make it sure.
O'er globes and sceptres, now on thrones it swells,
Now trims the midnight lamp in college cells:
'Tis tory, whig; it plots, prays, preaches, pleads,
Harangues in senates, squeaks in masquerades:
Here to Steele's humour makes a bold pretence,
There, bolder, aims at Pulteney's eloquence:
It aids the dancer's heel, the writer's head,
And heaps the plain with mountains of the dead;
Nor ends with life, but nods in sable plumes,
Adorns our hearse, and flatters on our tombs.
What is not proud? the pimp is proud to see
So many like himself in high degree:
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