Short is the lesson, though my lecture long;
'Be good' and let Heaven answer for the rest!
Yet, with a sigh o'er all mankind, I grant,
In this our day of proof, our land of hope,
The good man has his clouds that intervene;
Clouds that obscure his sublunary day,

But never conquer: even the best must own,
Patience and resignation are the pillars
Of human peace on earth: the pillars these,
But those of Seth not more remote from thee,
Till this heroic lesson thou hast learned,
To frown at pleasure, and to smile in pain.
Fired at the prospect of unclouded bliss,
Heaven in reversion, like the sun, as yet
Beneath the horizon, cheers us in this world;
It sheds, on souls susceptible of light,
The glorious dawn of our eternal day.

'This (says Lorenzo) is a fair harangue!'

But can harangues blow back strong Nature's stream,

When public welfare calls, or private want,
They give to Fame; his bounty he conceals.
Their virtues varnish Nature, his exalt.
Mankind's esteem they court, and he his own.
Theirs the wild chase of false felicities;
His, the composed possession of the true.
Alike throughout is his consistent peace,
All of one colour, and an even thread;
While party-coloured shreds of happiness,
With hideous gaps between, patch up for them
A madman's robe; each puff of Fortune blows
The tatters by, and shows their nakedness.

He sees with other eyes than theirs: where they
Behold a sun, he spies a Deity.

What makes them only smile, makes him adore.
Where they see mountains, he but atoms sees.
An empire, in his balance, weighs a grain.
They things terrestrial worship as divine;
His hopes, immortal, blow them by as dust.
That dims his sight, and shortens his survey,

Or stem the tide Heaven pushes through our Which longs, in infinite, to lose all bound.
veins,

Which sweeps away man's impotent resolves,
And lays his labour level with the world?
Themselves men make their comment on man-
kind,

And think nought is, but what they find at home:
Thus weakness to chimera turns the truth.
Nothing romantic has the Muse prescribed.
Above, Lorenzo saw the man of earth,
The mortal man, and wretched was the sight.
To balance that, to comfort and exalt,
Now see the man immortal: him, I mean,

Titles and honours (if they prove his fate)
He lays aside to find his dignity;
No dignity they find in aught besides.
They triumph in externals, (which conceal
Man's real glory) proud of an eclipse:
Himself too much he prizes to be proud,
And nothing thinks so great in man, as man.
Too dear he holds his interest to neglect
Another's welfare, or his right invade:
Their interest, like a lion, lives on prey.
They kindle at the shadow of a wrong;
Wrong he sustains with temper, looks on Heaven,

Who lives as such; whose heart, full-bent on Nor stoops to think his injurer his foe:
Heaven,

Leans all that way, his bias to the stars.

Nought but what wounds his virtue wounds his peace.

The world's dark shades, in contrast set, shall A covered heart their character defends;
raise

His lustre more; though bright, without a foil:
Observe his awful portrait, and admire ;
Nor stop at wonder; imitate, and live.

Some angel guide my pencil, while I draw,
What nothing less than angel can exceed,
A man on earth devoted to the skies;
Like ships in seas, while in, above the world.
With aspect mild, and elevated eye,
Behold him seated on a mount serene,
Above the fogs of sense, and passion's storm;
All the black cares and tumults of this life,
Like harmless thunders, breaking at his feet,
Excite his pity, not impair his peace.
Earth's genuine sons, the sceptered and the slave,
A mingled mob! a wandering herd! he sees,
Bewildered in the vale; in all unlike!
His full reverse in all! what higher praise?
What stronger demonstration of the right?
The present all their care, the future his.

• In a former Night.

A covered heart denies him half his praise.
With nakedness his innocence agrees,
While their broad foliage testifies their fall.
Their no joys end where his full feast begins;
His joys create, theirs murder, future bliss.
To triumph in existence his alone;
And his alone triumphantly to think
His true existence is not yet begun.
His glorious course was, yesterday, complete;
Death then was welcome; yet life still is sweet.
But nothing charms Lorenzo like the firm,
Undaunted breast.-And whose is that high
praise ?

They yield to pleasure, though they danger brave,
And show no fortitude but in the field;
If there they show it, 'tis for glory shown;
Nor will that cordial always man their hearts.
A cordial his sustains, that can not fail:
By pleasure unsubdued, unbroke by pain,
He shares in that Omnipotence he trusts;
All-bearing, all-attempting, till he falls;
And when he falls, writes Vici on his shield,

From magnanimity all fear above;
From nobler recompense above applause,
Which owes to man's short outlook all its charms.
Backward to credit what he never felt,
Lorenzo cries,-'Where shines this miracle?
From what root rises this immortal man ?—
A root that grows not in Lorenzo's ground:
The root dissect, nor wonder at the flower.

He follows Nature (not like thee*) and shows us
An uninverted system of a man.

His appetite wears Reason's golden chain,
And finds, in due restraint, its luxury.
His passion, like an eagle well reclaimed,
Is taught to fly at nought but infinite.
Patient his hope, unanxious is his care,
His caution fearless, and his grief (if grief
The gods ordain) a stranger to despair.
And why?-because affection, more than meet,
His wisdom leaves not disengaged from Heaven.
Those secondary goods that smile on earth
He, loving in proportion, loves in peace.
They most the world enjoy who least admire.
His understanding 'scapes the common cloud
Of fumes arising from a boiling breast.
His head is clear, because his heart is cool,
By worldly competitions uninflamed.
The moderate movements of his soul admit
Distinct ideas, and matured debate,
An eye impartial, and an even scale;
Whence judgment sound, and unrepenting choice,
Thus in a double sense the good are wise;
On its own dunghill wiser than the world.
What, then, the world? it must be doubly weak.
Strange truth! as soon would they believe their
creed.

Yet thus it is, nor otherwise can be,

So far from aught romantic what I sing;

Bliss has no being, Virtue has no strength,

But from the prospect of immortal life.

His virtue, constitutionally deep,

Has Habit's firmness, and Affection's flame:
Angels, allied, descend to feed the fire,
And death, which others slay, makes him a god.

And now, Lorenzo! bigot of this world!
Wont to disdain poor bigots caught by Heaven?
Stand by thy scorn, and be reduced to nought!
For what art thou?-Thou boaster! while thy
glare,

Thy gaudy grandeur, and mere worldly worth,
Like a broad mist, at distance, strikes us most,
And, like a mist, is nothing when at hand;
His merit, like a mountain, on approach,
Swells more, and rises nearer to the skies;
By promise now, and by possession, soon
(Too soon, too much, it can not be) his own.
From this thy just annihilation rise,
Lorenzo! rise to something, by reply.
The world, thy client, listens and expects,
And longs to crown thee with immortal praise.-
Can'st thou be silent? no; for wit is thine,
And Wit talks most when least she has to say,
And Reason interrupts not her career.
She'll say-that mists above the mountains rise,
And with a thousand pleasantries amuse ;
She'll sparkle, puzzle, flutter, raise a dust,
And fly conviction in the dust she raised.
Wit, how delicious to man's dainty taste!
'Tis precious as the vehicle of sense,
But, as its substitute, a dire disease.
Pernicious talent! flatter'd by the world,
By the blind world, which thinks the talent rare.
Wisdom is rare, Lorenzo! wit abounds;
Passion can give it; sometimes wine inspires
The lucky flash; and madness rarely fails.
Whatever cause the spirit strongly stirs,
Confers the bays, and rivals thy renown.
For thy renown 'twere well this was the worst;
Chance often hits it; and, to pique thee more,

Who think Earth all, or (what weighs just the See Dulness, blundering on vivacities,
same)

Shakes her sage head at the calamity
Which has exposed, and let her down to thee.
But Wisdom, awful Wisdom! which inspects,
Discerns, compares, weighs, separates, infers,
Seizes the right, and holds it to the last,
How rare! in senates, synods, sought in vain:
Or if there found, 'tis sacred to the few;
While a lewd prostitute to multitudes,
Frequent, as fatal, Wit. In civil life
Wit makes an enterpriser, sense a man.
Wit hates authority, commotion loves,

Who care no farther, must prize what it yields,
Fond of its fancies, proud of its parades.
Who thinks earth nothing can't its charms admire;
He can't a foe, though most malignant, hate,
Because that hate would prove his greater foe.
'Tis hard for them (yet who so loudly boast
Good-will to men?) to love their dearest friends?
For may not he invade their good supreme,
Where the least jealousy turns love to gall?
All shines to them, that for a season shines:
Each act, each thought, he questions; 'What its And thinks herself the lightning of the storm.

In states 'tis dangerous; in religion death.
Shall Wit turn Christian when the dull believe?
Sense is our helmet, Wit is but the plume;
The plume exposes, 'tis our helmet saves.
Sense is the diamond, weighty, solid, sound;
When cut by Wit it casts a brighter beam;
Yet Wit apart, it is a diamond still.

Wit, widowed of good sense, is worse than (And Providence denies it long repose,) nought;

It hoists more sail to run against a rock.
Thus a half Chesterfield is quite a fool,

O how laborious is their gaiety!

They scarce can swallow their ebullient spleen,
Scarce muster patience to support the force,

Whom dull fools scorn, and bless their want of wit. And pump sad laughter till the curtain falls.

How ruinous the rock I warn thee shun,

Where Sirens sit to sing thee to thy fate!
A joy in which our reason bears no part,
Is but a sorrow tickling ere it stings.

Let not the cooings of the world allure thee;
Which of her lovers ever found her true?
Happy, of this bad world who little know:-
And yet we much must know her, to be safe.
To know the world, not love her, is thy point;
She gives but little, nor that little long.
There is, I grant, a triumph of the pulse,
A dance of spirits, a mere froth of joy,
Our thoughtless agitation's idle child,
That mantles high, that sparkles and expires,
Leaving the soul more vapid than before;
An animal ovation! such as holds

No commerce with our reason, but subsists
On juices, through the well-toned tubes well
strained;

A nice machine! scarce ever tuned aright;
And when it jars-thy sirens sing no more;
Thy dance is done; the demi-god is thrown
(Short apotheosis!) beneath the man,

In coward gloom immersed, or fell despair.

Art thou yet dull enough despair to dread,
And startle at destruction? if thou art,
Accept a buckler; take it to the field;
(A field of battle is this mortal life!)
When danger threatens, lay it on thy heart,
A single sentence proof against the world.
'Soul, body, fortune; every good pertains
To one of these; but prize not all alike:
The goods of fortune to thy body's health,
Body to soul, and soul submit to God.'
Wouldst thou build lasting happiness? do this:
The inverted pyramid can never stand.

Is this truth doubtful? it outshines the sun;
Nay, the sun shines not but to show us this,
The single lesson of mankind on earth:
And yet-yet what? No news! mankind is mad;
Such mighty numbers list against the right,
(And what can't numbers, when bewitched,
achieve?

They talk themselves to something like belief
That all earth's joys are theirs; as Athens' fool
Grinn'd from the port on every sail his own.
They grin, but wherefore? and how long the
laugh?

Half ignorance their mirth, and half a lie.

Scarce did I say? some can not sit it out;
Oft their own daring hands the curtain draw,
And show us what their joy by their despair.
The clotted hair! gored breast! blaspheming
eye!

Its impious fury still alive in death!

Shut, shut the shocking scene. But Heaven denies
A cover to such guilt, and so should man.
Look round, Lorenzo! see the reeking blade,
The envenomed phial, and the fatal ball;
The strangling cord, and suffocating stream;
The loathsome rottenness, and foul decays,
From raging riot, (slower suicides!)
And pride in these, more execrable still;
How horrid all to thought!--but horrors these,
That vouch the truth, and aid my feeble song.

From vice, sense, fancy, no man can be bless'd
Bliss is too great to lodge within an hour:
When an immortal being aims at bliss,
Duration is essential to the name.

O for a joy from reason; joy from that
Which makes man man, and, exercised aright,
Will make him more: a bounteous joy, that gives
And promises-that weaves, with art divine,
The richest prospect into present peace:
A joy ambitious! joy in common held
With thrones ethereal, and their greater far:
A joy high-privileged from chance, time, death!
A joy which death shall double, judgment crown!
Crowned higher, and still higher, at each stage,
Through blessed eternity's long day, yet still
Not more remote from sorrow than from him,
Whose lavish hand, whose love stupendous pours
So much of Deity on guilty dust.

There, O my Lucia! may I meet thee there,
Where not thy presence can improve my bliss.

Affects not this the sages of the world?
Can nought affect them but what fools them too?
Eternity, depending on an hour,

Makes serious thought, man's wisdom, joy, and
praise.

Nor need you blush (though sometimes your de
signs

May shun the light) at your designs on Heaven;
Sole point! where overbashful is your blame.
Are you not wise?-you know you are: yet hear
One truth, amid your numerous schemes mislaid,
Or overlooked, or thrown aside, if seen;
'Our schemes to plan by this world or the next,

To cheat the world, and cheat themselves, they Is the sole difference between wise, and fool.'

smile:

Hard either task! the most abandoned own

That others, if abandoned, are undone:

All worthy men will weigh you in this scale:
What wonder, then, if they pronounce you light?
Is their esteem alone not worth your care?

Then for themselves, the moment Reason wakes, Accept my simple scheme of common sense.

Y

Thus save your fame, and make two worlds your Must die, and die unwept; O thou minute,

The Consolation.

-Fatis contraria fata rependens. Virg.

Has into manners naturalized our crimes,
The curse of curses is, our curse to love;
To triumph in the blackness of our guilt,
(As Indians glory in the deepest jet)
And throw aside our senses with our peace.
But, grant no guilt, no shame, no least alloy;
Grant joy and glory quite unsullied shone;
Yet, still, it ill deserves Lorenzo's heart.
No joy, no glory, glitters in thy sight,
But, through the thin partition of an hour,
I see its sables wove by Destiny;

And that in sorrow buried, this in shame,
While howling furies wring the doleful knell,
And Conscience, now so soft thou scarce canst hear
Her whisper, echoes her eternal peal.

Where the prime actors of the last year's scene:
Their port so proud, their buskin, and their plume?
How many sleep, who kept the world awake
With lustre and with noise! Has Death proclaimed
A truce, and hung his sated lance on high?
'Tis brandished still, nor shall the present year
Be more tenacious of her human leaf,
Or spread, of feeble life, a thinner fall.

But needless monuments to wake the thought:
Life's gayest scenes speak man's mortality,
Though in a style more florid, full as plain
As mausoleums, pyramids, and tombs.
What are our noblest ornaments, but Deaths
Turned flatterers of Life, in paint or marble,
The well-stained canvass, or the featured stone?
Our fathers grace, or rather haunt, the scene:
Joy peoples her pavilion from the dead.

'Professed diversions! can not these escape?
Far from it: these present us with a shroud,
And talk of death, like garlands o'er a grave.
As some bold plunderers for buried wealth,
We ransack tombs for pastime; from the dust
Call up the sleeping hero; bid him tread
The scene for our amusement. How like gods
We sit, and, wrapt in immortality,
Shed generous tears on wretches born to die;
Their fate deploring, to forget our own!

Winds scatter, through the mighty void, the dry:
Earth repossesses part of what she gave,
And the freed spirit mounts on wings of fire:
Each element partakes our scattered spoils,
As Nature wide our ruins spread. Man's death
Inhabits all things, but the thought of man.
Nor man alone; his breathing bust expires;
His tomb is mortal; empires die: where, now,
The Roman? Greek? they stalk, an empty name!
Yet few regard them in this useful light,
Though half our learning is their epitaph.
When down thy vale, unlocked by midnight
thought,

That loves to wander in thy sunless realms,
O Death! I stretch my view, what visions rise
What triumphs! toils imperial! arts divine!
In withered laurels glide before my sight!
What lengths of far-famed ages, billowed high
With human agitation, roll along
In unsubstantial images of air!

The melancholy ghosts of dead Renown,
Whispering faint echoes of the world's applause,
With penitential aspect, as they pass,
All point at earth, and hiss at human pride;
The wisdom of the wise, and prancings of the great.
But, O Lorenzo! far the rest above,
Of ghastly nature, and enormous size,
One form assaults my sight, and chills my blood,
And shakes my frame. Of one departed World
I see the mighty shadow: oozy wreath

And dismal sea-weed crown her: o'er her urn
Reclined, she weeps her desolated realms,
And bloated sons; and, weeping, prophesies
Another's dissolution, soon, in flames:
But, like Cassandra, prophesies in vain:
In vain to many; not, I trust, to thee.

For, know'st thou not, or art thou loth to know,
The great decree, the counsel of the Skies?
Deluge and Conflagration, dreadful powers!
Prime ministers of vengeance! chained in caves
Distinct, apart, the giant furies roar;
Apart, or such their horrid rage for ruin,

What all the pomps and triumphs of our lives In mutual conflict would they rise, and wage

But legacies in blossom? Our lean soil,
Luxuriant grown, and rank in vanities,
From friends interred beneath, a rich manure!
Like other worms, we banquet on the dead;
Like other worms, shall we crawl on, nor know
Our present frailties, or approaching fate?

Lorenzo! such the glories of the world!
What is the world itself? thy world—a grave.
Where is the dust that has not been alive?
The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors.
From human mould we reap our daily bread.
The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,
And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons.
O'er devastation we blind revels keep:
Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel.
The moist of human frame the sun exhales;

Eternal war, till one was quite devoured.
But not for this ordained their boundless rage.
When Heaven's inferior instruments of wrath,
War, famine, pestilence, are found too weak
To scourge a world for her enormous crimes,
These are let loose alternate: down they rush,
Swift and tempestuous, from the eternal throne,
With irresistible commission armed,
The world, in vain corrected, to destroy;
And ease Creation of the shocking scene.

Seest thou, Lorenzo! what depends on man?
The fate of Nature, as for man her birth.
Earth's actors change earth's transitory scenes,
And make Creation groan with human guilt.
How must it groan, in a new deluge whelmed,
But not of waters! At the destined hour,