Than Genius or proud Learning e'er could boast.

Voracious Learning, often overfed,

255

Digests not into sense her motley meal.

This bookcase, with dark booty almost burst,
This forager on others' wisdom, leaves
Her native farm, her reason, quite untill'd;

With mix'd manure she surfeits the rank soil, Dung'd, but not dress'd, and rich to beggary: pomp untamable of weeds prevails;

260

Her servant's wealth encumber'd Wisdom mourns.
And what says Genius? Let the dull be wise !'
Genius, too hard for right, can prove it wrong,
And loves to boast, where blush men less inspired.
It pleads exemption from the laws of Sense,
Considers Reason as a leveller,

265

And scorns to share a blessing with the crowd.
That wise it could be, thinks an ample claim;
To glory and to pleasure gives the rest.
Crassus but sleeps, Ardelio is undone.

270

Wisdom less shudders at a fool than wit.

But Wisdom smiles, when humbled mortals weep.

When Sorrow wounds the breast, as ploughs the glebe. And hearts obdurate feel her softening shower;

276

And gather every thought of sovereign power
To chase the moral maladies of man;

Thoughts which may bear transplanting to the skies,
Though natives of this coarse penurious soil;
Nor wholly wither there, where seraphs sing,

286

Refined, exalted, not annull'd, in Heaven ·

Reason, the sun that gives them birth, the same
In either clime, though more illustrious there.

290

These choicely cull'd, and elegantly ranged,
Shall form a garland for Narcissa's tomb,

And, peradventure, of no fading flowers.

Say, on what themes shall puzzled choice descend :

'The' importance of contemplating the tomb;

295

Why men decline it; suicide's foul birth:
The various kinds of grief; the faults of age;
And Death's dread character-invite my song.'

And, first, the' importance of our end survey'd. Friends counsel quick dismission of our grief. Mistaken kindness! our hearts heal too soon. Are they more kind than He who struck the blow? Who bid it do his errand in our hearts, And banish peace till nobler guests arrive,

300

And bring it back a true and endless peace?
Calamities are friends: as glaring day
Of these unnumber'd lustres robs our sight,
Prosperity puts out unnumber'd thoughts
Of import high, and light divine, to man.

305

The man how bless'd, who, sick of gaudy scenes, (Scenes apt to thrust between us and ourselves!) 311 Is led by choice to take his favourite walk

Beneath Death's gloomy, silent, cypress shades,

Unpierced by Vanity's fantastic ray;

To read his monuments, to weigh his dust,

315

Visit his vaults, and dwell among the tombs!
Lorenzo! read with me Narcissa's stone;
(Narcissa was thy favourite) let us read

Her moral stone; few doctors preach so well;
Few orators so tenderly can touch

320

The feeling heart. What pathos in the date!

Apt words cau strike; and yet in them we see
Faint images of what we here enjoy.

What cause have we to build on length of life?
Temptations seize when fear is laid asleep,
And ill foreboded is our strongest guard.

See from her tomb, as from an hunble shrine,
Truth, radiant goddess! sallies on my soul,

325

And puts Delusion's dusky train to flight,
Dispels the mist our sultry passions raise
From objects low, terrestrial, and obscene,
And shows the real estimate of things,
Which no man, unafflicted, ever saw :

330

Pulls off the veil from Virtue's rising charms;
Detects Temptation in a thousand lies.

335

Truth bids me look on nen as autumn leaves,

And all they bleed for as the summer's dust

Driven by the whirlwind: lighted by her beams,

I widen my horizon, gain new powers,

See things invisible, feel things remote,

340

Am present with futurities; think nought

To man so foreign as the joys possess'd,

Nought so much his as those beyond the grave.
No folly keeps its colour in her sight;

Pale worldly Wisdom loses all her charms.

345

In pompous promise from her schemes profound,
If future fate she plans, 'tis all in leaves,

Like sibyl, unsubstantial, fleeting bliss!

At the first blast it vanishes in air.

Not so celestial. Wouldst thou know, Lorenzo! 350
How differ worldly Wisdom and divine?
Just as the waning and the waxing moon.
More empty worldly Wisdom every day,
And every day inore fair her rival shines.

When later, there's less time to play the fool.
Soon our whole term for Wisdom is expired
(Thou know'st she calls no council in the grave,)
And everlasting fool is writ in fire,

Or real wisdom wafts us to the skies.

As worldly schemes resembles sibyls' leaves, The good man's days to sibyls' books compare (In ancient story read, thou know'st the tale) In price still rising as in number less, Inestimable quite his final hour.

355

360

For that who thrones can offer, offer thrones;
Insolvent worlds the purchase cannot pay.

365

'Oh let me die his death.' all Nature cries.

'Then live his life.'-All Nature falters there Our great physicia. daily to consult,

To commune with the grave, our only cure.

370

What grave prescribes the best?-A friend's; and yet From a friend's grave how soon we disengage' E'en to the dearest, as his marble, cold.

Why are friends ravish'd from us? 'tis to bind,
By soft Affection's ties, on human hearts

375

The thought of Death, which Reason, too supine,
Or misemploy'd, so rarely fastens there.
Nor Reason nor Affection, no, nor both

Combined, can break the witchcrafts of the world.
Behold the' inexorable hour at hand;

380

Behold the' inexorable hour forgot!

And to forget it the chief aim of life,

Though well to por ler it is life's chief end.

Is Death, that ever threatening, ne'er remote,

That all important, and that only sure,

385

(Come when he will) an unexpected guest?

Nay, though invited by the loudest calls

Of blind Imprudence, unexpected still?

Though numerous messengers are sent before,

To warn his great arrival? What the cause,

390

The wondrous cause, of this mysterious ill?
All Heaven looks down, astonish'd at the sight!
Is it that Life has sown her joys so thick,
We can't thrust in a single care between?
Is it that Life has such a swarm of cares,
The thought of Death can't enter for the throng?
Is it that Time steals on with downy feet,

395

Nor wakes Indulgence from her golden dream?
To-day is so like yesterday, it cheats;

We take the lying sister for the same.

400

Life glides away, Lorenzo! like a brook,

For ever changing, unperceived the change.

In the same brook none ever bathed him twice;

To the same life none ever twice awoke.

We call the brook the same: the same we think 405

Our life, though still more rapid in its flow,
Nor mark the much irrevocably lased,
And mingled with the sea.
Or shall we say
(Retaining still the brook to bear us on)
That life is like a vessel on the stream?
In life embark'd, we smoothly down the tide
Of time descend, but not on time intent;
Amused, unconscious of the gliding wave,
Till on a sudden we perceive a shock;

410

We start, awake, look out: what see we there !
Our brittle bark is burst on Charon's shore.

415

Is this the cause Death flies all human thought?
Or is it Judgment, by the Will struck blind,
That domineering mistress of the soul!
Like him so strong, by Dalilah the fair?—
Or is it fear turns startled Reason back,
From looking down a precipice so steep?—
'Tis dreadful; and the dread is wisely placed

420

By Nature, conscious of the make of man,
A dreadful friend it is, a terror kind,

425

A flaming sword to guard the tree of Life.
By that unawed, in Life's most smiling hour
The good man would repine; would suffer joys,
And burn impatient for his promised skies.
The bad, on each punctilious pique of pride,
Or gloom of humour, would give Rage the rein,
Bound o'er the barrier, rush into the dark,
And mar the scenes of Providence below.

430

What groan was that, Lorenzo ?-Furies! rise,
And drown in your less execrable yell,
Britannia's shame. There took her gloomy flight,
On wing impetuous, a black sullen soul,
Blasted from hell with horrid lust of death.
Thy friend, the brave, the gallánt Altamont,

435

So call'd, so thought—and then he fled the field; 440
Less base the fear of death than fear of life.
O Britain infamous for suicide!