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sition of our immortality. The natural, most melancholy, and pathetic complaint of a worthy "man, under the persuasion of no futurity. The gross absurdities and horrours of annihilation urged home on Lorenzo. The soul's vast importance; from whence it arises. The difficulty of being an infidel. The infamy, the cause, and the chaPracter of an infidel state. What true free-thinking is. The necessary punishment of the false. Man's ruin is from himself. An infidel accuses Phimself of guilt, and hypocrisy; and that of the worst sort. His obligation to Christians. What danger he incurs by virtue. Vice recommended to him. His high pretences to virtue and benevodence exploded. The conclusion, on the nature of faith, reason, and hope, with an apology for this attempt.

EAVEN gives the needful, but neglected, call. hat day, what hour, but knocks at human hearts, wake the soul to sense of future scenes? aths stand, like Mercuries, in every way, ad kindly point us to our journey's end.

pe, who couldst made immortals! art thou dead? give thee joy: nor will I take my leave; soon to follow. Man but dives in death; ves from the Sun, in fairer day to rise; e grave, his subterranean road to bliss. s, infinite indulgence plann'd it so; rough various parts our glorious story runs ; me gives the preface, endless age unrolls

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e volume (ne'er unroll'd!) of human fate. This, Earth and skies already have proclaim'd. he world's a prophecy of worlds to come; ad who, what God fortels (who speaks in things, ill louder than in words) shall dare deny? Nature's arguments appear too weak, irn a new leaf, and stronger read in man. man sleeps on, untaught by what he sees, in he prove infidel to what he feels? e, whose blind thought futurity denies, nconscious bears, Bellerophon! like thee, is own indictment; he condemns himself; ho reads his bosom, reads immortal life; r, Nature, there, imposing on her sons, as written fables; man was made a lie. Why discontent for ever harbour'd there? curable consumption of our peace! esolve me, why the cottager and king, le whom sea-sever'd realms obey, and he Who steals his whole dominion from the waste, Repelling winter blasts with mud and straw, Disquieted alike, draw sigh for sigh,

n fate so distant, in complaint so near? Is it, that things terrestrial can't content? Deep in rich pasture, will thy flocks complain? ct so; but to their master is denied To share their sweet serene. Man, ill at ease, n this, not his own place, this foreign field, Where Nature fodders him with other food Than was ordain'd his cravings to suffice, Poor in abundance, famish'd at a feast, Sighs on for something more, when most enjoy'd. Is Heaven then kinder to thy flocks than thee? Not so; thy pasture richer, but remote ; n part, remote; for that remoter part Ian bleats from instinct, tho' perhaps, debauch'd By sense, his reason sleeps, nor dreams the cause.

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The cause how obvious, when his reason wakes!
His grief is but his grandeur in disguise;
And discontent is immortality.

Shall sons of ether, shall the blood of Heaven,
Set up their hopes on Earth, and stable here
With brutal acquiescence in the mire?
Lorenzo! no! they shall be nobly pain'd ;
The glorious foreigners, distress'd, shall sigh
On thrones; and thou congratulate the sigh:
Man's misery declares him born for bliss;
His anxious heart asserts the truth I sing,
And gives the sceptic in his head the lie.
Our heads, our hearts, our passions, and our powers,
Speak the same language; call us to the skies;
Unripen'd these in this inclement clime,
Scarce rise above conjecture and mistake;
And for this land of trifles those too strong
Tumultuous rise, and tempest human life:
What prize on Earth can pay us for the storm?
Meet objects for our passims, Heaven ordain'd,
Objects that challenge all their fire, and leave
No fault, but in defect. Blest Heaven! avert
A bounded ardour for unbounded bliss!
O for a bliss unbounded! far beneath
A soul immortal, is a mortal joy.
Nor are our powers to perish immature;
But, after feeble effort here, beneath
A brighter sun, and in a nobler soil,
Transplanted from this sublunary bed,
Shall flourish fair, and put forth all their bloom.
Reason progressive, instinct is complete ;
Swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs.
Brutes soon their zenith reach; their little all
Flows in at once; in ages they no more
Could know, or do, or covet, or enjoy.
Were man to live coëval with the Sun,
The patriarch-pupil would be learning still;
Yet, dying, leave his lesson half unlearnt.
Men perish in advance, as if the Sun
Should set ere noon, in eastern oceans drown'd;
If fit, with dim, illustrious to compare,
The Sun's meridian with the soul of man.
To man, why, step-dame Nature! so severe?
Why thrown aside thy master-piece half-wrought,
While meaner efforts thy last hand enjoy?
Or, if abortively poor man must die,

Nor reach, what reach he might, why die in dread?
Why curst with foresight? Wise to misery?
Why of his proud prerogative the prey?
Why less pre-eminent in rank, than pain?
His immortality alone can tell;

Full ample fund to balance all amiss,
And turn the scale in favour of the just!
His immortality alone can solve
The darkest of enigmas, human hope;
Of all the darkest, if at death we die.
Hope, eager hope, th' assassin of our joy,
All present blessings treading under foot,
Is scarce a milder tyrant than despair.
With no past toils content, still planning new,
Hope turns us o'er to death alone for ease.
Possession, why more tasteless than pursuit?
Why is a wish far dearer than a crown?
That wish accomplish'd, why, the grave of bliss?
Because, in the great future buried deep,
Beyond our plans of empire, and renown,
Lies all that man with ardour should pursue;
And he who made him, bent him to the right.
Man's heart th' Almighty to the future sets,
By secret and inviolable springs;

And makes his hope his sublunary joy. Man's heart eats all things, and is hungry still; "More, more!" the glutton cries, for something

new;

So rages appetite, if man can't mount,
He will descend. He starves on the possest.
Hence, the world's master, from ambition's spire,
In Caprea plung'd; and div'd beneath the brute.
In that rank sty why wallow'd empire's son
Supreme? Because he could no higher fly;
His riot was ambition in despair.

Old Rome consulted birds; Lorenzo! thou,
With more success, the flight of hope survey;
Of restless hope, for ever on the wing.
High-perch'd o'er every thought that falcon sits,
To fly at all that rises in her sight;
And, never stooping, but to mount again
Next moment, she betrays her aim's mistake,
And owns her quarry lodg'd beyond the grave.
There should it fail us, (it must fail us there,
If being fails,) more mournful riddles rise,
And virtue vies with hope in mystery.
Why virtue? Where its praise, its being, fled?
Virtue is true self-interest pursued :
What true self-interest of quite-mortal man?
To close with all that makes him happy here.
If vice (as sometimes) is our friend on Earth,
Then vice is virtue; 't is our sovereign good.
In self-applause is virtue's golden prize;
No self-applause attends it on thy scheme:
Whence self-applause? From conscience of the right.
And what is right, but means of happiness?
No means of happiness when virtue yields;
That basis failing, falls the building too,
And lays in ruin every virtuous joy.

The rigid guardian of a blameless heart,
So long rever'd, so long reputed wise,
Is weak; with rank knight-errantries o'er-run.
Why beats thy bosom with illustrious dreams
Of self-exposure, laudable, and great?
Of gallant enterprise, and glorious death?
Die for thy country! - Thou romantic fool!
Seize, seize the plank thyself, and let her sink:
Thy country! what to thee? - The Godhead, what?
(I speak with awe!) though he should bid thee
bleed!

If, with thy blood, thy final hope is spilt?
Nor can Omnipotence reward the blow,
Be deaf; preserve thy being; disobey.

Nor is it disobedience: know, Lorenzo!
Whate'er th' Almighty's subsequent command,
His first command is this" Man, love thyself."
In this alone, free agents are not free.
Existence is the basis, bliss the prize;
If virtue costs existence, 't is a crime;
Bold violation of our law supreme,
Black suicide; though nations, which consult
Their gain, at thy expense, resound applause.
Since virtue's recompense is doubtful, here,
If man dies wholly, well may we demand,
Why is man suffer'd to be good in vain ?
Why to be good in vain, is man enjoin'd?
Why to be good in vain, is man betray'd?
Betray'd by traitors lodg'd in his own breast,
By sweet complacencies from virtue felt?
Why whispers Nature lies on virtue's part?
Or if blind instinct (which assumes the name
Of sacred conscience) plays the fool in man,
Why reason made accomplice in the cheat?
Why are the wisest loudest in her praise?

Can man by reason's beam be led astray?
Or, at his peril, imitate his God?
Since virtue sometimes ruins us on Earth,
Or both are true; or man survives the grave.
Or man survives the grave; or own, Lorenzo,
Thy boast supreme, a wild absurdity.
Dauntless thy spirit; cowards are thy scorn.
Grant man immortal, and thy scorn is just.
The man immortal, rationally brave,
Dares rush on death-because he cannot die.
But if man loses all, when life is lost,
He lives a coward, or a fool expires.
A daring infidel, (and such there are,
From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge,
Or pure heroical defect of thought,)

Of all Earth's madmen, most deserves a chain.
When to the grave we follow the renown'd
For valour, virtue, science, all we love,
And all we praise; for worth, whose noon-tide bean.
Enabling us to think in higher style,
Mends our ideas of ethereal powers;

Wisdom's eye

Dream we, that lustre of the moral world
Goes out in stench, and rottenness the close?
Why was he wise to know, and warm to praise,
And strenuous to transcribe, in human life,
The Mind Almighty? Could it be, that Fate,
Just when the lineaments began to shine,
And dawn the Deity, should snatch the draught,
With night eternal blot it out, and give
The skies alarm, lest angels too might die?
If human souls, why not angelic too
Extinguish'd? and a solitary God,
O'er ghastly ruin, frowning from his throne?
Shall we this moment gaze on God in man:
The next, lose man for ever in the dust?
From dust we disengage, or man mistakes;
And there, where least his judgment fears a flaw.
Wisdom and worth how boldly he commends!
Wisdom and worth are sacred names; rever'd,
Where not embrac'd; applauded! deified!
Why not compassion'd too? If spirits die,
Both are calamities, inflicted both,
To make us but more wretched.
Acute, for what? To spy more miseries;
And worth, so recompens'd, new-points their stings
Or man surmounts the grave, or gain is loss,
And worth exalted humbles us the more.
Thou wilt not patronise a scheme that makes
Weakness and vice, the refuge of mankind.
"Has virtue, then, no joys?"-Yes, joys dear-bought
Talk ne'er so long, in this imperfect state,
Virtue and vice are at eternal war.
Virtue's a combat; and who fights for nought?
Or for precarious, or for small reward?
Who virtue's self-reward so loud resound,
Would take degrees angelic here below,
And virtue, while they compliment, betray,
By feeble motives, and unfaithful guards
The crown, th' unfading crown, her soul inspires:
'T is that, and that alone, can countervail
The body's treacheries, and the world's assaults:
On Earth's poor pay our famish'd virtue dies.
Truth incontestable ! in spite of all
A Bayle has preach'd, or a Voltaire believ'd.

In man the more we dive, the more we see
Heaven's signet stamping an immortal make.
Dive to the bottom of his soul, the base
Sustaining all; what find we? Knowledge, love.
As light and heat, essential to the Sun,
These to the soul. And why, if souls expire?

How little lovely here? How little known?
Small knowledge we dig up with endless toil;
And love unfeign'd may purchase perfect hate.
Why starv'd, on Earth, our angel appetites;
While brutal are indulg'd their fulsome fill?
Were then capacities divine conferr'd,
As a mock-diadem, in savage sport,
Rank insult of our pompous poverty,
Which reaps but pain, from seeming claims so fair?
In future age lies no redress? And shuts
Eternity the door on our complaint?

If so, for what strange ends were mortals made!
The worst to wallow, and the best to weep;
The man who merits most, must most complain :
Can we conceive a disregard in Heaven,
What the worst perpetrate, or best endure?

This cannot be. To love, and know, in man
Is boundless appetite, and boundless power;
And these demonstrate boundless objects too.
Objects, powers, appetites, Heaven suits in all;
Nor, Nature through, e'er violates this sweet,
Eternal concord, on her tuneful string.
Is man the sole exception from her laws?
Eternity struck off from human hope,
I speak with truth but veneration too,)
Man is a monster, the reproach of Heaven,
A stain, a dark impenetrable cloud
On Nature's beauteous aspect; and deforms,
(Amazing blot!) deforms her with her lord.
If such is man's allotment, what is Heaven?
Or own the soul immortal, or blaspheme.

Or own the soul immortal, or invert
All order. Go, mock-majesty! go, man!
And bow to thy superiors of the stall;
Through every scene of sense superior far:
They graze the turf untill'd; they drink the stream
Unbrew'd, and ever full, and un-embitter'd
With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despairs;
Mankind's peculiar! reason's precious dower!
No foreign clime they ransack for their robes;
Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar;
Their good is good entire, unmix'd, unmarr'd;
They find a Paradise in every field,
On boughs forbidden where no curses hang:
Their ill no more than strikes the sense; unstretch'd
By previous dread, or murmur in the rear:
When the worst comes, it comes unfear'd; one stroke
Begins, and ends, their woe: they die but once ;
Blest, incommunicable privilege! for which
Proud man, who rules the globe, and reads the stars,
Philosopher, or hero, sighs in vain.

Account for this prerogative in brutes.
No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot,
But what beams on it from eternity.
O sole, and sweet solution! that unties
The difficult, and softens the severe;

The cloud on Nature's beauteous face dispels;
Restores bright order; casts the brute beneath;
And re-enthrones us in supremacy
Of joy, e'en here: admit immortal life,
And virtue is knight-errantry no more;
Each virtue brings in hand a golden dower,
Far richer in reversion: Hope exults;
And though much bitter in our cup is thrown,
Predominates, and gives the taste of Heaven.
O wherefore is the Deity so kind!
Astonishing beyond astonishment!
Heaven our reward for Heaven enjoy'd below.
Still unsubdued thy stubborn heart? - For there
The traitor lurks who doubts the truth I sing.

Reason is guiltless; will alone rebels.
What, in that stubborn heart, if I should find
New, unexpected witnesses against thee?
Ambition, pleasure, and the love of gain!

Canst thou suspect, that these, which make the soul
The slave of Earth, should own her heir of Heaven?
Canst thou suspect what makes us disbelieve
Our immortality, should prove it sure?

First, then, ambition summon to the bar.
Ambition's shame, extravagance, disgust,
And inextinguishable nature, speak.
Each much deposes; hear them in their turn.
Thy soul, how passionately fond of fame!
How anxious, that fond passion to conceal ;
We blush, detected in designs on praise,
Though for best deeds, and from the best of men ;
And why? Because immortal. Art divine
Has made the body tutor to the soul;
Heaven kindly gives our blood a moral flow;
Bids it ascend the glowing cheek, and there
Upbraid that little heart's inglorious aim,
Which stoops to court a character from man;
While o'er us, in tremendous judgment, sit
Far more than man, with endless praise, and blame.
Ambition's boundless appetite out-speaks

The verdict of its shame. When souls take fire
At high presumptions of their own desert,
One age is poor applause; the mighty shout,
The thunder by the living few begun,
Late time must echo; worlds unborn, resound.
We wish our names eternally to live: [thought,
Wild dream! which ne'er had haunted human
Had not our natures been eternal too.
Instinct points out an interest in hereafter;
But our blind reason sees not where it lies;
Or, seeing, gives the substance for the shade.

Fame is the shade of immortality,
And in itself a shadow. Soon as caught,
Contemn'd; it shrinks to nothing in the grasp.
Consult th' ambitious, 't is ambition's cure.
"And is this all?" cried Cæsar at his height,
Disgusted. This third proof ambition brings
Of immortality. The first in fame,
Observe him near, your envy will abate :
Sham'd at the disproportion vast, between
The passion and the purchase, he will sigh
At such success, and blush at his renown.
And why? Because far richer prize invites
His heart; far more illustrious glory calls;
It calls in whispers, yet the deafest hear.

And can ambition a fourth proof supply?
It can, and stronger than the former three;
Yet quite o'erlook'd by some reputed wise.
Though disappointments in ambition pain,
And though success disgusts; yet still, Lorenzo!
In vain we strive to pluck it from our hearts;
By Nature planted for the noblest ends.
Absurd the fam'd advice to Pyrrhus given,
More prais'd, than ponder'd; specious, but unsound;
Sooner that hero's sword the world had quell'd,
Than reason, his ambition. Man must soar.

An obstinate activity within,

An insuppressive spring, will toss him up,
In spite of fortune's load. Not kings alone,
Each villager has his ambition too;
No Sultan prouder than his fetter'd slave:
Slaves build their little Babylons of straw,
Echo the proud Assyrian in their hearts,
And cry,

"Behold the wonders of my might!" And why? Because immortal as their lord;

And souls immortal must for ever heave
At something great; the glitter, or the gold;
The praise of mortals, or the praise of Heaven.
Nor absolutely vain is human praise,
When human is supported by divine.
I'll introduce Lorenzo to himself;
Pleasure and pride (bad masters!) share our hearts.
As love of pleasure is ordain'd to guard
And feed our bodies, and extend our race;
The love of praise is planted to protect,
And propagate the glories of the mind.

What is it, but the love of praise, inspires,
Matures, refines, embellishes, exalts,
Earth's happiness? From that, the delicate,
The grand, the marvellous, of civil life,
Want and convenience, under-workers, lay
The basis, on which love of glory builds.
Nor is thy life, O virtue! less in debt
To praise, thy secret stimulating friend.
Were men not proud, what merit should we miss!
Pride made the virtues of the pagan world.
Praise is the salt that seasons right to man,
And whets his appetite for moral good.
Thirst of applause is virtue's second guard;
Reason, her first; but reason wants an aid;
Our private reason is a flatterer;
Thirst of applause calls public judgment in,
To poise our own, to keep an even scale,
And give endanger'd virtue fairer play.

Here a fifth proof arises, stronger still:
Why this so nice construction of our hearts?
These delicate moralities of sense;
This constitutional reserve of aid

To succour virtue, when our reason fails;
If virtue, kept alive by care and toil,
And, oft, the mark of injuries on Earth,
When labour'd to maturity (its bill
Of disciplines, and pains, unpaid) must die?
Why freighted-rich, to dash against a rock?
Were man to perish when most fit to live,
O how mis-spent were all these stratagems,
By skill divine inwoven in our frame!
Where are Heaven's holiness and mercy fled?
Laughs Heaven, at once, at virtue, and at man?
If not, why that discourag'd, this destroy'd?

Thus far ambition. What says avarice?
This her chief maxim, which has long been thine:
"The wise and wealthy are the same.' - I grant it.
To store up treasure, with incessant toil,
This is man's province, this his highest praise.
To this great end keen instinct stings him on.
To guide that instinct, reason! is thy charge;
"T is thine to tell us where true treasure lies:
But, reason failing to discharge her trust,
Or to the deaf discharging it in vain,
A blunder follows; and blind industry,
Gall'd by the spur, but stranger to the course,
(The course where stakes of more than gold are won,)
O'er-loading, with the cares of distant age,
The jaded spirits of the present hour,
Provides for an eternity below.

"Thou shalt not covet," is a wise command; But bounded to the wealth the Sun surveys: Look farther, the command stands quite revers'd, And avarice is a virtue most divine. Is faith a refuge for our happiness? Most sure and is it not for reason too? Nothing this world unriddles, but the next. Whence inextinguishable thirst of gain? From inextinguishable life in man:

Man, if not meant, by worth, to reach the skies,
Had wanted wing to fly so far in guilt.
Sour grapes, I grant, ambition, avarice,
Yet still their root is immortality:
These its wild growths so bitter, and so base,
(Pain and reproach!) religion can reclaim,
Refine, exalt, throw down their poisonous lee,
And make them sparkle in the bowl of bliss.

See, the third witness laughs at bliss remote, And falsely promises an Eden here: Truth she shall speak for once, though prone to lic, A common cheat, and Pleasure is her name. To pleasure never was Lorenzo deaf; Then hear her now, now first thy real friend. Since Nature made us not more fond than pred Of happiness (whence hypocrites in joy! Makers of mirth! artificers of smiles!) Why should the joy most poignant sense affords Burn us with blushes, and rebuke our pride? Those heaven-born blushes tell us man descends, E'en in the zenith of his earthly bliss: Should reason take her infidel repose, This honest instinct speaks our lineage high; This instinct calls on darkness to conceal Our rapturous relation to the stalls. Our glory covers us with noble shame, And he that's unconfounded, is unmann'd. The man that blushes is not quite à brute. Thus far with thee, Lorenzo! will I close. Pleasure is good, and man for pleasure made; But pleasure full of glory, as of joy; Pleasure, which neither blushes, nor expires.

The witnesses are heard; the cause is o'er; Let conscience file the sentence in her court, Dearer than deeds that half a realm convey: Thus seal'd by truth, th' authentic record runs. "Know, all; know, infidels,—unapt to know. 'Tis immortality your nature solves;

'T is immortality decyphers man,

And opens all the mysteries of his make.
Without it, half his instincts are a riddle :
Without it, all his virtues are a dream.
His very crimes attest his dignity;
His sateless thirst of pleasure, gold, and fame,
Declares him born for blessings infinite:
What less than infinite makes un-absurd
Passions, which all on Earth but more inflames?
Fierce passions, so mis-measur'd to this scene,
Stretch'd out, like eagles' wings, beyond our nest,
Far, far beyond the worth of all below,
For Earth too large, presage a nobler flight,
And evidence our title to the skies."

Ye gentle theologues, of calmer kind!
Whose constitution dictates to your pen,
Who, cold yourselves, think ardour comes from

Hell!

Think not our passions from corruption sprung,
Though to corruption now they lend their wings;
That is their mistress, not their mother. All
(And justly) reason deem divine: I see,
I feel a grandeur, in the passions too,
Which speaks their high descent, and glorious end!
Which speaks them rays of an eternal fire.
In Paradise itself they burnt as strong,
Ere Adam fell, though wiser in their aim.
Like the proud Eastern, struck by Providence,
What though our passions are run mad, and stoop
With low, terrestrial appetite, to graze

On trash, on toys, dethron'd from high desire?
Yet still through their disgrace, no feeble ray

.

Of greatness shines, and tells us whence they fell:
But these (like that fall'n monarch when reclaim'd),
When reason moderates the rein aright,
Shall re-ascend, remount their former sphere,
Where once they soar'd illustrious; ere seduc'd
By wanton Eve's debauch, to stroll on Earth,
And set the sublunary world on fire.

But grant their phrenzy lasts; their phrenzy fails To disappoint one providential end,

For which Heaven blew up ardour in our hearts:
Were reason silent, boundless passion speaks
A future scene of boundless objects too,
And brings glad tidings of eternal day.
Eternal day! 'T is that enlightens all;
And all, by that enlighten'd, proves it sure.
Consider man as an immortal being,
Intelligible all; and all is great;
A crystalline transparency prevails,

And strikes full lustre through the human sphere:
Consider man as mortal, all is dark,

And wretched; reason weeps at the survey.

The learn'd Lorenzo cries, " And let her weep, Weak modern reason: ancient times were wise. Authority, that venerable guide,

Stands on my part; the fam'd Athenian porch
And who for wisdom so renown'd as they?)
Denied this immortality to man."

grant it; but affirm, they prov'd it too. riddle this! Have patience; I'll explain. What noble vanities, what moral flights, Glittering through their romantic wisdom's page, Make us, at once, despise them, and admire? Fable is flat to these high-season'd sires;

They leave th' extravagance of song below. Flesh shall not feel; or, feeling, shall enjoy The dagger or the rack; to them, alike A bed of roses, or the burning bull." - In men exploding all beyond the grave, Strange doctrine, this! As doctrine, it was strange; But not as prophecy; for such it prov'd, And, to their own amazement, was fulfill'd: They feign'd a firmness Christians need not feign. The Christian truly triumph'd in the flame: The Stoic saw, in double wonder lost, Wonder at them, and wonder at himself, To find the bold adventures of his thought, Not bold, and that he strove to lie in vain. Whence, then, those thoughts? those towering thoughts, that flew [pride. Such monstrous heights? - From instinct, and from The glorious instinct of a deathless soul, Confus'dly conscious of her dignity, Suggested truths they could not understand. In lust's dominion, and in passion's storm, Truth's system broken, scatter'd fragments lay, As light in chaos, glimmering through the gloom: Smit with the pomp of lofty sentiments, Pleas'd pride proclaim'd, what reason disbeliev'd. Pride, like the Delphic priestess, with a swell, Rav'd nonsense, destin'd to be future sense, When life immortal, in full day, should shine; And Death's dark shadows fly the gospel sun. They spoke, what nothing but immortal souls Could speak; and thus the truth they question'd, prov'd.

Can then absurdities, as well as crimes, Speak man immortal? All things speak him so. Much has been urg'd: and dost thou call for more? and with endless questions be distress'd, All unresolvable, if Earth is all.

Call;

"Why life, a moment; infinite, desire? Our wish, eternity? Our home, the grave? Heaven's promise dormant lies in human hope; Who wishes life immortal, proves it too. Why happiness pursued, though never found? Man's thirst of happiness declares it is (For Nature never gravitates to nought); That thirst unquench'd declares it is not here. My Lucia, thy Clarissa, call to thought; Why cordial friendship riveted so deep, As hearts to pierce at first, at parting, rend, If friend, and friendship, vanish in an hour? Is not this torment in the mask of joy? Why by reflection marr'd the joys of sense? Why past, and future, preying on our hearts, And putting all our present joys to death? Why labours reason? instinct were as well; Instinct far better; what can choose, can err : O how infallible the thoughtless brute! 'T were well his Holiness were half as sure. Reason with inclination, why at war? Why sense of guilt? why conscience up in arms?" Conscience of guilt, is prophecy of pain, And bosom-counsel to decline the blow. Reason with inclination ne'er had jarr'd, If nothing future paid forbearance here:

Thus on

These, and a thousand pleas uncall'd, All promise, some ensure, a second scene; Which, were it doubtful, would be dearer far Than all things else most certain; were it false, What truth on Earth so precious as the lie? This world it gives us, let what will ensue; This world it gives, in that high cordial, hope : The future of the present is the soul: How this life groans, when sever'd from the next! Poor mutilated wretch, that disbelieves! By dark distrust his being cut in two, In both parts perishes; life void of joy, Sad prelude of eternity in pain!

Couldst thou persuade me, the next life could fail
Our ardent wishes; how should I pour out
My bleeding heart in anguish, new, as deep!
Oh! with what thoughts, thy hope, and my despair,
Abhorr'd annihilation! blasts the soul,
And wide extends the bounds of human woe!
Could I believe Lorenzo's system true,
In this black channel would my ravings run.
"Grief from the future borrow'd peace, crewhile.
he future vanish'd! and the present pain'd!
Strange import of unprecedented ill!
Fall, how profound! Like Lucifer's, the fall!
Unequal fate! His fall, without his guilt!
From where fond hope built her pavilion high,
The gods among, hurl'd headlong, hurl'd at once
To night! To nothing, darker still than night!
If 't was a dream, why wake me, my worst foe,
Lorenzo boastful of the name of friend!

O for delusion! O for errour still!
Could vengeance strike much stronger than to plant
A thinking being in a world like this,
Not over-rich before, now beggar'd quite;
More curst than at the fall?- The Sun goes out!
The thorns shoot up! What thorns in every thought!
Why sense of better? It imbitters worse.
Why sense? why life? If but to sigh, then sink
To what I was! twice nothing! and much woe!
Woe, from Heaven's bounties! woe from what was
wont

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