Ravenous calamities our vitals seize,
And threatening Fame wide opens to devour.
What then am I, who sorrow for myself?
In age, in infancy, from others' aid
Is all our hope; to teach us to be kind:
That Nature's first, last lesson to mankind.
The selfish heart deserves the pain it feels:
More generous sorrow, while it sinks exalts,
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang.
Nor virtue more than prudence bids me give
Swoln thought a second channel: who divide,
They weaken, too, the torrent of their grief.
Take, then, O World! thy much indebted tear.
How sad a sight is human happiness

Of outcast earth, in darkness: what a change
From yesterday! Thy darling hope so near,
(Long-laboured prize!) O how ambition flushed
Thy glowing cheek; ambition truly great,
Of virtuous praise. Death's subtle seed within,
(Sly, treacherous miner!) working in the dark,
Smiled at thy well concerted scheme, and beckone
The worm to riot on that rose so red,
Unfaded ere it fell, one moment's prey!

Man's foresight is conditionally wise.
Lorenzo! wisdom into folly turns,

Oft the first instant its idea fair

To labouring thought is born. How dim our eye! The present moment terminates our sight;

O thou! whate'er thou art, whose heart exults,
Wouldst thou I should congratulate thy fate!

I know thou wouldst; thy pride demands it from

me:

Let thy pride pardon what thy nature needs, The salutary censure of a friend;

next:

We penetrate, we prophesy in vain
Time is dealt out by particles, and each
Are mingled with the streaming sands of life.
By Fate's inviolable oath is sworn
Deep silence,-where Eternity begins.

By Nature's law, what may be may be now:

By dotage dandled to perpetual smiles.

Know, smiler! at thy peril art thou pleas'd;
Thy pleasure is the promise of thy pain.
Misfortune, like a creditor severe,
But rises in demand for her delay;
She makes a scourge of past prosperity,
To sting thee more, and double thy distress.
Lorenzo! Fortune makes her court to thee;
Thy fond heart dances while the syren sings.
Dear is thy welfare; think me not unkind;
I would not damp, but to secure thy joys.
Think not that fear is sacred to the storm;
Stand on thy guard against the smiles of Fate.
Is Heaven tremendous in its frowns? most sure:
And in its favours formidable too:

Its favours here are trials, not rewards;
A call to duty, not discharge from care,
And should alarm us full as much as woes,
Awake us to their cause and consequence,
And make us tremble, weighed with our desert;
Awe Nature's tumult, and chastise her joys,
Lest while we clasp we kill them; nay, invert
To worse than simple misery their charms.
Revolted joys, like foes in civil war,
Like bosom friendships to resentments soured,
With rage envenomed rise against our peace.
Beware what earth calls happiness; beware
All joys but joys that never can expire.
Who builds on less than an immortal base,
Fond as he seems, condemns his joys to death.
Mine area with thee, Philander; thy last sigh
Dissolved the charm; the disenchanted earth
Lost all her lustre. Where her glittering towers?
Her golden mountains where? all darkened down
To naked waste; a dreary vale of tears.

In human hearts what bolder thoughts can rise
Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn?
Where is to-morrow? In another world.
For numbers this is certain; the reverse
Is sure to none; and yet on this perhaps,
This peradventure, infamous for lies,
As on a rock of adamant we build
Our mountain-hopes, spin out eternal schemes,
As we the fatal sisters could outspin,
And, big with life's futurities expire.

Not even Philander had bespoke his shroud;
Nor had he cause; a warning was denied.
How many fall as sudden, not as safe!
As sudden, though for years admonished home;
Of human ills the last extreme beware;
Beware, Lorenzo! a slow sudden death;
How dreadful that deliberate surprise!
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer:
Next day the fatal precedent will plead,
Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.

Of man's miraculous mistakes this bears The palm, That all men are about to live,' For ever on the brink of being born: All pay themselves the compliment to think They one day shall not driver, and their pride On this reversion takes up ready praise; At least their own; their future selves applauds, How excellent that life they ne'er will lead ! Time lodged in their own hands is Folly's vails

The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone. 'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool,

And scarce in human wisdom to do more.
All promise is poor dilatory man,

And that through every stage. When young, indeed,

In full content we sometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves, and only wish,
As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
At thirty man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.
And why? because he thinks himself immor-
tal,

All men think all men mortal but themselves;
Themselves, when some alarming shock of Fate
Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden

dread:

But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,
Soon close; where past the shaft no trace is found.
As from the wing no scar the sky retains,
The parted wave no furrow from the keel,
So dies in human hearts the thought of death:
Even with the tender tear which Nature sheds
O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave.
Can I forget Philander? that were strange!
O my full heart!--But should I give it vent,
The longest night, though longer far, would fail,
And the lark listen to my midnight song.
The sprightly lark's shrill matin wakes the morn.
Grief's sharpest thorn hard pressing on my breast,
I strive, with wakeful melody, to cheer
The sullen gloom, sweet Philomel! like thee,
And call the stars to listen: every star
Is deaf to mine, enamoured of thy lay.
Yet be not vain; there are who thine excel,
And charm through distant ages. Wrapt
shade,

in

Prisoner of darkness! to the silent hours
How often I repeat their rage divine,
To lull my griefs, and steal my heart from wo!
In roll their raptures, but not catch their fire.
Dark, though not blind, like thee Mæonidas!
Or, Milton! thee; ah, could I reach your strain!
Or his who made Mæonidas our own.
Man, too, he sung: immortal man I sing:
Oft bursts my song beyond the bounds of life:
What, now, but immortality can please?
O had he pressed his theme, pursued the track
Which opens out of darkness into day!
O had he mounted on his wing of fire,
Soared where I sink, and sung immortal man,
How had it blessed mankind, and rescued me!

• Pope

NIGHT II.

ON TIME, DEATH, AND FRIENDSHIP.

To the Right Honcurable, the Earl of Wilmington.

'WHEN the cock crew he wept,'-smote by that eye
Which looks on me, on all; that Power who bids
This midnight sentinel, with clarion shrill,
Emblem of that which shall awake the dead,
Rouse souls from slumber, into thoughts of Heaven.
Shall I too weep? where then is fortitude?
And fortitude abandoned, where is man?
I know the terms on which he sees the light:
He that is born is listed: life is war;
Eternal war with wo: who bears it best
Deserves it least.-On other themes I'll dwell.
Lorenzo! let me turn my thoughts on thee
And thine; on themes may profit; profit there
Where most thy need. Themes, too, the genuine
growth

Of dear Philander's dust. He thus, though dead, May still befriend.-What themes? Time's wondrous price?

Death, friendship, and Philander's final scene.

So could I touch these themes as might obtain Thine ear, nor leave thy heart quite disengaged, The good deed would delight me; half-impress On my dark cloud an iris, and from grief Call glory.-Dost thou mourn Philander's fate? I know thou say'st it: says thy life the same? He mourns the dead who lives as they desire. Where is that thirst, that avarice of time, (O glorious avarice!) thought of death inspires, As rumoured robberies endear our gold? O Time! than gold more sacred; more a load Than lead to fools, and tools reputed wise. What moment granted man without account? What years are squandered, wisdom's debt un

paid!

Our wealth in days all due to that discharge.
Haste, haste, he lies in wait, he's at the door;
Insidious Death! should his strong hand arrest,
No composition sets the prisoner free.
Eternity's inexorable chain

Fast binds, and vengeance claims the full arreal
How late I shuddered on the brink! how late
Life called for her last refuge in despair!
That time is mine, O Mead! to thee I owe;
Fain would I pay thee with eternity,
But ill my genius answers my desire:
My sickly song is mortal, past thy cure.
Accept the will:-that dies not with my strain.
For what calls thy disease, Lozenzo? not
For Esculapian, but for moral aid.
Thou think'st it folly to be wise too soon.
Youth is not rich in time; it may be poor:
Part with it as with money, sparing; pay

No moment, but in purchase of its worth;

For rescue from the blessings we possess?

Part with it as with life, reluctant; big
With holy hope of nobler time to come;

Time higher aimed, still nearer the great mark
Of men and angels, virtue more divine.

Is this our duty, wisdom, glory, gain? (These Heaven benign in vital union binds) And sport we like the natives of the bough, When vernal suns inspire? Amusement reigns, Man's great demand: to trifle is to live: And is it then a trifle, too, to die?

Thou say'st I preach, Lorenzo? 'tis confest.
What if, for once, I preach thee quite awake?
Who wants amusement in the flame of battle?
Is it not treason to the soul immortal,
Her foes in arms, eternity the prize?
Will toys amuse, when med'cines can not cure?
When spirits ebb, when life's enchanting scenes
Their lustre lose, and lessen in our sight,
As lands and cities with their glittering spires,
To the poor shattered bark, by sudden storm
Thrown off to sea, and soon to perish there;
Will toys amuse? No; thrones will then be toys,
And earth and skies seem dust upon the scale.
Redeem we time ?-Its loss we dearly buy.
What pleads Lorenzo for his high-priz'd sports?
He pleads time's numerous blanks; he loudly
pleads

The straw-like trifles on life's common stream.
From whom those blanks and trifles but from thee?
No blank, no trifle, Nature made, or meant.
Virtue, or purposed virtue, still be thine;
This cancels thy complaint at once; this leaves
In act no trifle, and no blank in time.
This greatens, fills, immortalizes all;
This the blest art of turning all to gold;
This the good heart's prerogative to raise
A royal tribute from the poorest hours:
Immense revenue! every moment pays.
If nothing more than purpose in thy power,
Thy purpose firm is equal to the deed.
Who does the best his circumstance allows,
Does well, acts nobly; angels could no more.
Our outward act, indeed, admits restraint:
'Tis not in things o'er thought to domineer.
Guard well thy thought: our thoughts are heard
in Heaven!

On all-important time, through every age, Though much and warm the wise have urged, the

man

Is yet unborn who duly weighs an hour.
'I've lost a day,'—the prince who nobly cried,
Had been an emperor, without his crown.
Of Rome? say, rather, lord of human race:
He spoke as if deputed by mankind.

So should all speak: so reason speaks in all:
From the soft whispers of that God in man,
Why ay to folly, why to frenzy fly,

Pregnant with all eternity can give;

Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile.
Who murders Time, he crushes in the birth
A power ethereal, only not adored.

Ah! how unjust to Nature and himself
Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!
Like children babbling nonsense in their sports,
We censure Nature for a span too short;
That span too short we tax as tedious too;
Torture invention, all expedients tire,
To lash the lingering moments into speed,
And whirl us (happy riddance!) from ourselves
Art, brainless Art! our furious charioteer,
(For Nature's voice unstifled would recall)
Drives headlong towards the precipice of death,
Death most our dread; death thus more dreadful
made.

O what a riddle of absurdity!

Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot-wheels:
How heavily we drag the load of life!
Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain,
It makes us wander, wander earth around,
To fly that tyrant Thought. As Atlas groaned
The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.
We cry for mercy to the next amusement;
The next amusement mortgages our fields;
Slight inconvenience! prisons hardly frown,
From hateful Time if prisons set us free.
Yet when Death kindly tenders us relief,
We call him cruel; years to moments shrink,
Ages to years. The telescope is turned:
To man's false optics (from his folly false)
Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings,
And seems to creep, decrepit with his age.
Behold him when past by; what then is seen
But his broad pinions swifter than the winds?
And all mankind, in contradiction strong,
Rueful, aghast, cry out on his career.

Leave to thy foes these errors and these ills;
To Nature just, their cause and cure explore.
Not short Heaven's bounty, boundless our expense;
No niggard Nature, men are prodigals.
We waste, not use our time; we breathe, not live.
Time wasted is existence; used, is life:
And bare existence man, to live ordained,
Wrings and oppresses with enormous weight.
And why? since time was given for use, not waste.
Enjoined to fly, with tempest, tide, and stars,
To keep his speed, nor ever wait for man.
Time's use was doomed a pleasure, waste a pain,
That man might feel his error if unseen,
And, feeling, fly to labour for his cure;
Not blundering, split on idleness for ease.
Life's cares are comforts; such by Heaven de
signed;

He that has none must make them, or be wretched Cares are employments, and without employ