O Britain! infamous for suicide!
An island, in thy manners: far disjoined
From the whole world of rationals besides!
In ambient waves plunge thy polluted head,
Wash the dire stain, nor shock the continent.
But thou be shocked, while I detect the cause
Of self-assault, expose the monster's birth,
And bid abhorrence hiss it round the world.
Blame not thy clime, nor chide the distant sun;
The sun is innocent, thy clime absolved.
In moral climes kind Nature never made.
The cause I sing, in Eden might prevail,
And proves it is thy folly, not thy fate.
The soul of man, (let man in homage bow,
Who names his soul) a native of the skies!
High-born and free, her freedom should maintain,
Unsold, unmortgaged for earth's little bribes.
The illustrious stranger, in this foreign land,
Like strangers, jealous of her dignity,
Studious of home, and ardent to return.
Of earth suspicious, earth's enchanted cup
With cool reserve light touching, should indulge
On immortality, her godlike taste;
There take large draughts; make her chief ban-|
quet there.
But some reject this sustenance divine,
To beggarly vile appetites descend,
Wipe the cold dew, or stay the sinking head;
Number their moments, and in every clock
Start at the voice of an eternity;
See the dim lamp of life just feebly lift
An agonizing beam, at us to gaze,
Then sink again, and quiver into death,
That most pathetic herald of our own;
How read we such sad scenes? As sent to mar
In perfect vengeance? no; in pity sent,
To melt him down, like wax, and then impress,
Indelible, Death's image on his heart,
Bleeding for others, trembling for himself.
We bleed, we tremble, we forget, we smile,
The mind turns fool before the cheek is dry.
Our quick-returning folly cancels all,
As the tide rushing razes what is writ
In yielding sands, and smoothes the lettered shore
Lorenzo! hast thou ever weighed a sigh?
Or studied the philosophy of tears?
(A science yet unlectured in our schools!)
Hast thou descended deep into the breast,
And seen their source? if not, descend with me
And trace these briny rivulets to their springs.
Our funeral tears from different causes rise:
As if from separate cisterns in the soul,
Of various kinds they flow. From tender, hear* .
By soft contagion called, some burst at once,
Ask alms of earth, for guests that came from And stream obsequious to the leading eye :
Sink into slaves, and sell, for present hirc,
Their rich reversion, and (what shares its fate)
Their native freedom, to the prince who sways
This nether world: and when his payments fail,
When his foul basket gorges them no more,
Or their palled palates loath the basket full,
Are instantly, with wild demoniac rage,
For breaking all the chains of Providence,.
And bursting their confinement, though fast barred
By laws divine and human, guarded strong
With horrors doubled to defend the pass,
The blackest Nature or dire guilt can raise,
And moated round with fathomless destruction,
Sure to receive and whelm them in their fall.
Such, Britons! is the cause, to you unknown,
Or, worse, o'erlooked; o'erlooked by magistrates,
Thus criminals themselves! I grant the deed
Is madness; but the madness of the heart.
And what is that? our utmost bound of guilt.
A sensual unreflecting life is big
With monstrous births, and Suicide, to crown.
The black infernal brood. The bold to break
Heaven's law supreme, and desperately rush
Through sacred Nature's murder, on their own,
Because they never think of death, they die.
"Tis equally man's duty, glory, gain,
At once to shun, and meditate his end.
When by the bed of languishment we sit,
The seat of Wisdom! if our choice, not fate)
O o'er our dying friends in anguish hang
Some ask more time, by curious art distilled.
Some hearts, in secret hard, unapt to melt,
Struck by the magic of the public eye,
Like Moses' smitten rock, gush out amain:
Some weep to share the fame of the deceased,
So high in merit, and to them so dear:
They dwell on praises which they think they share,
And thus, without a blush, commend themselves,
Some mourn, in proof that something they could
love;
They weep not to relieve their grief, but show.
Some weep in perfect justice to the dead,
As conscious all their love is in arrear.
Some mischievously weep, not unapprised
Tears sometimes aid the conquest of an eye.
With what address the soft Ephesians draw
Their sable network o'er entangled hearts?
As seen through crystal, how their roses glow,
While liquid pearl runs trickling down their
cheek?
Of her's not prouder Egypt's wanton quen,
Carousing gems, herself dissolved in love.
Some weep at death, abstracted from the dead,
And celebrate, like Charles, their own deccase,
By kind construction some are deemed to weep.
Because a decent veil conceals their joy.
Some weep in earnest, and yet weep in vain,
As deep in indiscretion as in wo.
Passion, blind passion! impotently pours
Tears that deserve more tears; while Reason
Or gazes, like an idiot, unconcerned,
Nor comprehends the meaning of the storm;
Knows not it speaks to her, and her alone.
Irrationals all sorrows are beneath,
That noble gift! that privilege of man!
From sorrow's pang, the birth of endless joy:
But these are barren of that birth divine;
They weep impetuous as the summer-storm,
And full as short! the cruel grief soon tam'd,
They make a pastime of the stingless tale;
Far as the deep-resounding knell they spread
The dreadful news, and hardly feel it more:
No grain of wisdom pays them for their wo.
Half-round the globe the tears pumped up by
death
Are spent in watering vanities of life;
In making folly flourish still more fair.
When the sick soul, her wonted stay withdrawn,
Reclines on earth and sorrows in the dust;
Instead of learning there her true support,
Or that life's loan Time ripened into right,
Ard men might plead prescription from the grave;
Deathless, from repetition of reprieve.
Deathless? far from it! such are dead already;
Their hearts are buried, and the world their grave.
Tell me, some god! my guardian angel! tell
What thus infatuates? what enchantment plants
The phantom of an age 'twixt us and Death,
Already at the door? He knocks; we hear him,
And yet we will not hear. What mail defends,
Our untouched hearts? what miracle turns off
The pointed thought, which from a thousand
quivers
Is daily darted, and is daily shunned?
We stand, as in a battle, throngs on throngs
| Around us falling, wounded oft ourselves,
Though bleeding with our wounds, immortal still:
We see Time's furrows on another's brow,
And Death intrenched, preparing his assault;
How few themselves in that just mirror see!
(Though there thrown down her true support to Or, seeing, draw their inference as strong!
Without Heaven's aid, impatient to be blest,
She crawls to the next shrub or bramble vile,
Though from the stately cedar's arms she fell;
With stale foresworn embraces clings anew,
The stranger weds, and blossoms as before,
In all the fruitless fopperies of life,
Presents her weed, well-fancied at the ball,
And raffles for the death's-head on the ring.
So wept Aurelia, till the destined youth
Stept in with his receipt for making smiles,
And blanching sables into bridal bloom.
So wept Lorenzo fair Clarissa's fate,
Who gave that angel-boy on whom he dotes,
And died to give him, orphaned in his birth!
Not such. Narcissa! my distress for thee.
I'll make an altar of thy sacred tomb,
To sacrifice to Wisdom.-What wast thou?
'Young, gay, and fortunate! Each yields a theme:
I'll dwell on each, to shun thought more severe;
(Heaven knows I labour with severer still!)
I'll dwell on each, and quite exhaust thy death.
A soul without reflection, like a pile
Without inhabitant, to ruin runs.
There death is certain; doubtful here: he must,
And soon: we may, within an age, expire,
Though gray our heads, our thoughts and aims are
Like damaged clocks, whose hand and bell dissent,
Folly sings six, while Nature points at twelve.
Absurd longevity! more, more, it cries:
More life, more wealth, more trash of every kind.
And wherefore mad for more, when relish fails?
Object and appetite must club for joy:
Shall Folly labour hard to mend the bow,
Bawbles, I mean, that strike us from without,
While Nature is relaxing every string!
Ask Thought for joy; grow rich, and hoard within,
Think you the soul, when this life's rattles cease,
Has nothing of more manly to succeed?
Contract the taste immortal; learn even now
To relish what alone subsists hereafter.
Divine, or none, henceforth, your joys for ever;
Of age, the glory is to wish to die:
That wish is praise and promise; it applauds
Past life, and promises our future bliss.
What weakness see not children in their sires.
Grand climacterical absurdities!
And, first, thy youth: what says it to gray Gray-hair'd authority, to faults of youth
hairs?
Narcissa! I'm become thy pupil now.
Early, bright, transient, chaste, as morning dew,
She sparkled, was exhaled, and went to Heaven!
Time on this head has snowed, yet still 'tis borne
Aloft, nor thinks but on another's grave.
Covered with shame I speak it, age severe
Old worn-out vice sets down for virtue fair;
With graceless gravity chastising youth,
That youth chastised surpassing in a fault,
Father of all, forgetfulness of death!
As if, like objects pressing on the sight,
Death had advanced too near us to be seen;
How shocking! it makes folly thrice a fool;
And our first childhood might our last despise
Peace and esteem is ail that age can hope:
Nothing but wisdom gives the first; the last
Nothing but the repute of being wise.
Folly bars both: our age is quite undone.
What folly can be ranker? like our shadows,
Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.
No wish should loiter, then, this side the grave.
Our hearts should leave the world before the knel
Calls for our carcasses to mend the soil.
Enough to live in tempest-die in port:
Age should fly concourse, cover in retreas
Defects of judgment, and the will subdue:
Walk thoughtful on the silent solemn shore
Of that vast occan it must sail so soon,
And put good works on board, and wait the wind
That shortly blows us into worlds unknown:
If unconsidered, too, a dreadful scene!
All should be prophets to themselves-foresce
Their future fate-their future fate foretaste:
This art would waste the bitterness of death.
The thought of death alone the fear destroys:
A disaffection to that precious thought
Is more than midnight darkness on the soul,
Which sleeps beneath it on a precipice,
Puffed off by the first blast, and lost for ever.
Dost ask, Lorenzo, why so warmly prest,
By repetition hammered on thine car,
The thought of Death? that thought is the ma.
chine,
The grand machine, that heaves us from the dust,
And rears us into men. The thought, ply'd home,
Will soon reduce the ghastly precipice
O'erhanging hell, will soften the descent,
And gently slope our passage to the grave.
How warmly to be wish'd; what heart of flesh
Would trifle with tremendous? dare extremes?
Yawn over the fate of infinite? what hand,
Beyond the blackest brand of censure bold,
(To speak a language too well known to thee)
Would at a moment give its all to Chance,
And stamp the dye for an Eternity.
Aid me, Narcissa; aid me to keep pace
With Destiny, and, ere her scissars cut
My thread of life, to break this tougher thread
Of moral death that ties me to the world.
Should rather call on Death than dread his call.
Ye partners of my fault, and my decline,
Thoughtless of death but when your neighbour's
knell,
(Rude visitant) knocks hard at your dull sense,
And with its thunder scarce obtains your ear.
Be death your theme, in every place and hour;
Nor longer want, ye monumental sires,
A brother-tomb to tell you-you shall die.
That death you dread, (so great is Nature's skill;)
Know you shall court, before you shall enjoy.
But you are learned: in volumes deep you sit,
In wisdom shallow. Pompous ignorance!
Would you be still more learned than the learned?
Learn well to know how much need not be known,
And what that knowledge which impairs your
Our needful knowledge, like our needful food,
Unhedg'd, lies open in Life's common field,
And bids all welcome to the vital feast.
You scorn what lies before you in the page
Of Nature and Experience, moral truth;
Of indispensable eternal fruit;
Fruit on which mortals feeding, turn to gods,
And dive in science for distinguish'd names,
Dishonest fomentation of your pride,
Sinking in virtue as you rise in fame.
Your learning, like the lunar beam, affords
Light, but not heat; it leaves you undevout,
Frozen at heart while speculation shines.
Awake, ye curious Indagators! fond
Of knowing all but what avails you, known.
If you would learn Death's character, attend.
All casts of conduct, all degrees of health.
Sting thou my slumbering Reason, to send forth All dyes of fortune, and all dates of age,
A thought of observation on the foe;
To sally and survey the rapid march
Of his ten thousand messengers to man,
Who, Jehu-like, behind him turns them all.
All accident apart, by Nature sign'd,
My warrant is gone out, though dormant yet;
Perhaps behind one moment lurks my fate.
Must I the forward only look for Death ?-
Backward I turn mine eye, and find him there.
Man is a self-survivor every year.
Man, like a stream, is in perpetual flow.
Death's a destroyer of quotidian prey:
My youth, my noon-tide his-mny yesterday:
The bold invader shares the present hour:
Each moment on the former shuts the grave.
While man is growing, life is in decrease,
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb.
Our birth is nothing but our death begun,
As tapers waste that instant they take fire.
Shall we then fear lest that should come to pass,
Which comes to pass each moment of our lives?
If fear we must, let that Death turn us pale
Which murders strength and ardour; what re-
mains
Together shook in his impartial urn,
Come forth at random: or, if choice is made,
The choice is quite sarcastic, and insults
All bold conjecture and fond hopes of man.
What countless multitudes not only leave,
But deeply disappoint us, by their deaths!
Though great our sorrow, greater our surprise.
Like other tyrants, Death delights to smite
What, smitten, most proclaims the pride of powe
And arbitrary nod. His joy supreme,
To bid the wretch survive the fortunate;
The feeble wrap the athletic in his shroud;
And weeping fathers build their children's tomb:
Me thine, Narcissa!-What, though short thy
date?
Virtue, not rolling suns, the mind matures.
That life is long which answers life's great end.
The time that bears no fruit deserves no name.
The man of wisdom is the man of years.
In hoary youth Methusalems may die;
O how misdated on their flattering tombs;
Narcissa's youth has lectured me thus far.
And can her gaiety give counsel too?
That like the Jews' famed oracle of gems
Sparkles instruction; such as throws new light,
And opens more the character of Death,
Ill known to thee, Lorenzo! this thy vaunt!-
'Give death his due, the wretched and the old;
Ev'n let him sweep his rubbish to the grave;
Let him not violate kind nature's laws,
But own man born to live as well as die,'—
Wretched and old thou giv'st him; young and gay
He takes; and plunder is a tyrant's joy.
What if I prove, 'the farthest from the fear
Are often nearest to the stroke of fate?'
All, more than common, menaces an end.
A blaze betokens brevity of life:
As if bright embers should emit a flame,
Glad spirits sparkled from Narcissa's eye,
One eye on death, and one full fixed on heaven,
Becomes a mortal and immortal man.
Long on his wiles a piqued and jealous spy,
I've seen, or dreamed I saw, the tyrant dress,
Lay by his horrors, and put on his smiles.
Say, Muse! for thou remember'st, call it back
And show Lorenzo the surprising scene;
If 'twas a dream, his genius can explain
'Twas in a circle of the gay I stood:
Death would have entered; Nature pushed him
back:
Supported by a doctor of renown,
His point he gained; then artfully dismissea
The sage; for Death designed to be concealed:
He gave an old vivacious usurer
And made Youth younger, and taught life to live. His meagre aspect, and his naked bones,
As natures opposites wage endless war,
For this offence, as treason to the deep
Inviolable stupor of his reign,
Where lust and turbulent ambition sleep,
Death took swift vengeance. As he life detests,
More life is still more odious; and, reduced
By conquest, aggrandizes more his power.
But wherefore aggrandized?-By Heaven's decree
To plant the soul on her eternal guard,
In awful expectation of our end.
Thus runs Death's dread commission; 'Strike,
but so
As most alarms the living by the dead.'
Hence stratagem delights him, and surprise,
And cruel sport with man's securities.
Not simple conquest, triumph is his aim;
And where least feared, there conquest triumphs
This proves my bold assertion not too bold.
What are his arts to lay our fears asleep?
Tiberian arts his purposes wrap up
In deep Dissimulation's darkest night.
Like princes unconfess'd in foreign courts,
Who travel under cover, Death assumes
The name and look of Life, and dwells among us:
He takes all shapes that serve his black designs:
Though master of a wider empire far
Than that o'er which the Roman eagle flew.
Like Nero, he's a fiddler, charioteer:
Or drives his phaëton in female guise;
Quite unsuspected, till, the wheel beneath,
His disarray'd oblation he devours.
He most affects the forms least like himself,
His slender self: hence burly corpulence
Is his familiar wear, and sleek disguise.
Behind the rosy bloom he loves to lurk,
Or ambush in a smile; or, wanton, dive
In dimples deep; Love's eddies, which draw in
Unwary hearts, and sink them in despair.
Such on Narcissa's couch he loitered long
Unknown, and when detected, still was seen
To smile: such peace has Innocence in death!
Most happy they, whom least his arts deceive!
In gratitude for plumping up his prey,
A pampered spendthrift, whose fantastic air,
Well-fashioned figure, and cockaded brow,
He took in change, and underneath the pride
Of costly linen tucked his filthy shroud.
His crooked bow he straightened to a cane,
And hid his deadly shafts in Myra's eye.
The dreadful masquerader, thus equipped,
Out-sallies on adventures. Ask you where?
Where is he not? For his peculiar haunts
Let this suffice; sure as night follows day,
Death treads in Pleasure's footsteps round the
world
When Pleasure treads the paths which Reason
shuns.
When against Reason, Riot shuts the door,
And gaiety supplies the place of sense,
Then foremost at the banquet and the ball,
Death leads the dance, or stamps the deadly dye,
Nor ever fails the midnight bowl to crown.
Gaily carousing to his gay compeers
Inly he laughs to see them laugh at him,
As absent far; and when the revel burns,
When Fear is banished, and triumphant Thought
Calling for all the joys beneath the moon,
Against him turns the key, and bids him sup
With their progenitors-he drops his mask,
Frowns out at full: they start, despair, expire.
Scarce with more sudden terror and surprise,
From his black mask of nitre, touched by fire,
He bursts, expands, roars, blazes, and devours.
And is not this triumphant treachery,
And more than simple conquest in the fiend?
And now, Lorenzo, dost thou wrap thy soul
In soft security, because unknown
Which moment is commissioned to destroy?
In death's uncertainty thy danger lies.
Is death uncertain? therefore thou be fixed,
Fixed as a sentinel, all eye, all ear,
All expectation of the coming foe.
Rouse, stand in arms, nor lean against thy spear
Lest slumber steal one moment o'er thy soul,
And Fate surprise thee nodding. Watch, be Life's modest joys we ruin while we raise,
Thus give each day the merit and renown
Of dying well, though doomed but once to die;
Nor let life's period, hidden, (as from most)
Hide, too, from thee the precious use of life.
Early, not sudden, was Narcissa's fate;
Soon, not surprising, Death his visit paid:
Her thought went forth to meet him on his way,
Nor Gaiety forgot it was to die.
Though. Fortune, too, (our third and final theme,)
As an accomplice, played her gaudy plumes,
And every glittering gewgaw, on her sight,
To dazzle and debauch it from its mark.
Death's dreadful advent is the mark of man,
And every thought that misses it is blind.
Fortune with Youth and Gaiety conspired
To weave a triple wreath of happiness,
(If happiness on earth) to crown her brow:
And could Death charge through such a shining
shield?
And all our ecstasies are wounds to peace;
Peace, the full portion of mankind below.
And since thy peace is dear, ambitious youth!
Of fortune fond! as thoughtless of thy fate!
As late I drew Death's picture, to stir up
Thy wholesome fears; now, drawn in contrast, see
Gay Fortune's, thy vain hopes to reprimand.
See, high in air the sportive goddess hangs,
Unlocks her casket, spreads her glittering ware,
And calls the giddy winds to puff abroad
Her random bounties o'er the gaping throng.
All rush rapacious; friends o'er trodden friends,
Sons o'er their fathers, subjects o'er their kings,
Pries's o'er their gods, and lovers o'er the fair
(Still more adored) to snatch the golden shower.
Gold glitters most where virtue shines no more,
As stars from absent suns have leave to shine.
O what a precious pack of votaries,
Unkennelled from the prisons and the stews,
Pour in, all opening in their idol's praise!
That shining shield invites the tyrant's spear. All, ardent, eye cach wafture of her hand,
As if to damp our elevated aims,
And strongly preach humility to man.
O how portentous is prosperity!
How, comet-like, it threatens while it shines!
Few years but yield us proof of Death's ambition,
To cull his victims from the fairest fold,
And sheathe his shafts in all the pride of life.
When flooded with abundance, purpled o'er
With recent honours, bloomed with every bliss,
Set up in ostentation, made the gaze,
The gaudy centre of the public eye;
When Fortune, thus, has tossed her child in air
Snatched from the covert of an humble state,
How often have I seen him dropt at once,
Our morning's envy! and our evening's sigh!
As if her bounties were the signal given,
The flowery wreath, to mark the sacrifice,
And call Death's arrows on the destined prey.
High Fortune seems in cruel league with Fate.
Ask you for what? to give his war on man
The deeper dread, and more illustrious spoil;
Thus to keep daring mortals more in awe.
And burns Lorenzo still for the sublime
Of life to hang his airy nest on high,
On the slight timber of the topmost bough,
Rocked at each brecze, and menacing a fall?
Granting grim Death at equal distance there,
Yet peace begins just where ambition ends.
What makes man wretched? happiness denied?
Lorenzo! no; 'tis happiness disdained!
She comes too meanly dressed to win our smile,
And calls herself Content, a homely name!
Our flame is transport, and Content our scorn!
Ambition turns, and shuts the door against her,
And weds a toil. a tempest, in her stead;
A tempest to warm transport near of kin.
Unknowing what our mortal state admits,
And, wide-expanding their voracious jaws,
Morsel on morsel swallow down unchewed,
Untasted, through mad appetite for more
Gorged to the throat, yet lean and ravenous still:
Sagacious all to trace the smallest game,
And bold to seize the greatest. If (blest chance!)
Court-zephyrs sweetly breathe; they launch, they
fly,
O'er just, o'er sacred, all-forbidden ground,
Drunk with the burning scent of place or power,
Staunch to the foot of Lucre-till they die.
Or, if for men you take them, as I mark
Their manners, thou their various fates survey.
With aim mismeasured and impetuous speed,
Some, darting, strike their ardent wish far off,
Through fury to possess it: some succeed,
But stumble, and let fall the taken prize.
From some, by sudden blasts, 'tis whirled away,
And lodged in bosoms that ne'er dreamed of gain
To some it sticks so close, that, when torn off,
Torn is the man, and mortal is the wound,
Some, o'er-enamoured of their bags, run mad;
Groan under gold, yet weep for want of bread.
Together some (unhappy rivals!) seize,
And rend abundance into poverty;
Loud croaks the raven of the law, and smiles:
Smiles, too, the goddess; but smiles most at those
(Just victims of exorbitant desire!)
Who perish at their own request, and, wheln.ed
Beneath her load of lavish grants, expire.
Fortune is famous for her numbers slain;
The number small which happiness can bear.
Though various for awhile their fates, at last
One curse involves them all: at Death's approach
All read their riches backward into loss
And mourn in just proportion to their store,
And Death's approach (if orthodox my song!
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