You know him: he is near you; point him out.
Shall I see glories beaming from his brow,
Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?
Your golden wings, now hovering o'er him, shed
Protection; now are waving in applause
To that bless'd son of foresight! lord of Fate!
That awful independent on to-morrow!
Whose work is done; who triumphs in the past;
Whose yesterdays look backwards with a smile
Nor, like the Parthian, wound him as they fly;
That common but opprobrious lot! Past hours,
If not by guilt, yet wound us by their flight,
If folly bounds our prospect by the grave;
All feeling of futurity benumb'd;
All godlike passion for eternals quench'd;
All relish of realities expired;
Renounced all correspondence with the skies;
Our freedom chain'd; quite wingless our desire;
In sense dark-prison'd all that ought to soar;
Prone to the centre; crawling in the dust;
Dismounted every great and glorious aim;
Imbruted every faculty divine;
Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world,
The world, that gulf of souls, immortal souls,
Souls elevate, angelic, wing'd with fire
To reach the distant skies, and triumph there
On thrones, which shall not mourn their masters
Though we from earth, ethereal they that fell
Such veneration due, O man to man !
Who venerate themselves the world despise.
For what, gay friend! is this escutcheon'd world,
Which hangs out death in one eternal night?
A night that glooms us in the noontide ray,
And wraps our thoughts at banquets in the shroud.
Life's little stage is a small eminence,
Inch high the grave above, that home of man,
Where dwells the multitude we gaze around;
We read their monuments; we sigh; and while
We sigh we sink; and are what we deplored:
Lamenting or lamented all our lot!
Is Death at distance? No; he has been on thee,
And given sure earnest of his final blow.
Those hours that lately smiled, where are they now?
Pallid to thought, and ghastly! drown'd, all drown'd
In that great deep which nothing disembogues !
And, dying, they bequeath'd thee small renown
The rest are on the wing: how fleet their flight.
Already has the fatal train took fire;
A moment, and the world's blown up to thee;
The Sun is darkness, and the stars are dust.
"Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours, And ask them what report they bore to Heaven, And how they might have borne more welcome news Their answers form what men Experience call; If Wisdom's friend, her best; if not, worst foe. 380 O reconcile them! kind Experience cries, 'There's nothing here but what as nothing weighs; The more our joy, the more we know it vain, And by success are tutor'd to despair.' Nor is it only thus, but must be so.
Who knows not this, though gray, is still a child.
Loose then from earth the grasp of fond desire;
Weigh anchor, and some happier clime explore.
Art thou so moor'd thou canst not disengage,
Nor give thy thoughts a ply to future scenes?
Since by life's passing breath, blown up from earth,
Light as the summer's dust, we take in air
A moment's giddy flight, and fall again,
Join the dull mass, increase the trodden soil,
And sleep, till Earth herself shall be no more;
Since then (as emmets, their small world o'erthrown)
We, sore amazed, from out earth's ruins crawl,
And rise to fate extreme of foul or fair,
As man's own choice, (controller of the skies)
As man's despotic will, perhaps one hour,
(O how omnipotent is Time!) decrees;
Should not each warning give a strong alarm?
Warning, far less than that of bosom torn
From bosom, bleeding o'er the sacred dead!
Should not each dial strike us as we pass,
Portentous, as the written wall which struck,
O'er midnight bowls, the proud Assyrian pale,
Erewhile high flush'd with insolence and wine?
Like that, the dial speaks, and points to thee,
Lorenzo! loath to break thy banquet up :-
'O Man! thy kingdom is departing from thee,
And, while it lasts, is emptier than my shade.'
Its silent language such; nor need'st thou call
Thy Magi to decipher what it means.
Know, like the Median, Fate is in thy walls:
Dost ask how? whence? Belshazzar-like, amazed.
Man's make encloses the sure seeds of death;
Life feeds the murderer: ingrate! he thrives
On her own meal, and then his nurse devours.
But here, Lorenzo, the delusion lies;
That solar shadow, as it measures life,
It life resembles too. Life speeds away
From point to point, though seeming to stand still.
The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth:
Too subtle is the movement to be seen;
Yet soon man's hour is up, and we are gone.
Warnings point out our danger; gnomons, time:
As these are useless when the Sun is set,
So those, but when more glorious Reason shines.
Reason should judge in all; in Reason's eye
That sedentary shadow travels hard;
But such our gravitation to the wrong,
So prone our hearts to whisper what we wish,
"Tis later with the wise than he's aware.
A Wilmington goes slower than the Sun;
And all mankind mistake their time of day;
E'en Age itself. Fresh hopes are hourly sown
In furrow'd brows. So gentle life's descent.
We shut our eyes, and think it is a plain.
We take fair days in winter for the spring,
And turn our blessings into bane. Since oft
Man must compute that age he cannot feel,
He scarce believes he's older for his years.
Thus at life's latest eve we keep in store
One disappointment sure, to crown the rest,
The disappointment of a promised hour.
On this, or similar, Philander! thou
Whose mind was moral as the preacher's tongue,
And strong to wield all science worth the name,
How often we taik'd down the summer's sun,
And cool'd our passions by the breezy stream!
How often thaw'd and shorten'd winter's eve
By conflict kind, that struck out latent truth,
Best found so sought, to the recluse more coy!
Thoughts disentangle passing o'er the lip;
Clean runs the thread; if not, 'tis thrown away,
Or kept to tie up nonsense for a song;
Song, fashionably fruitless, such as stains
The fancy, and unhallow'd passion fires,
Chiming her saints to Cytherea's fane.
Know'st thou, Lorenzo! what a friend contains? As bees mix'd nectar draw from fragrant flowers, So men from Friendship, wisdom and delight; Twins, tied by Nature; if they part, they die. Hast thou no friend to set thy mind abroach? Good sense will stagnate. Thoughts shut up want air, And spoil, like bales unopen'd to the sun. Had thought been all, sweet speech had been denied ; Speech! thought's canal; speech! thought's criterion 469
Thought in the mine may come forth gold or dross;
When coin'd in word, we know its real worth:
If sterling, store it for thy future use;
"Twill buy thee benefit, perhaps renown.
Thought, too, deliver'd, is the more possess'd;
Teaching we learn; and giving we retain
The births of intellect; when duinb, forgot.
Speech ventilates our intellectual fire;
Speech burnishes our mental magazine;
Brightens for ornament, and whets for use
What numbers, sheath'd in erudition, lie
Plunged to the hilts in venerable tomes,
And rusted in, who might have borne an edge,
And play'd a sprightly beam, if born to speech,
If born bless'd heirs of half their mother's tongue! 484
'Tis thought's exhcange, which, like the' alternate push
Of waves conflicting, breaks the learned scum,
And defecates the student's starding pool.
In contemplation is his proud resource?
'Tis poor as proud, by converse unsustain'd.
Rude thought runs wild in Contemplation's field; 490
Converse, the menage, breaks it to the bit
Of due restraint; and Emulation's spur
Gives graceful energy, by rivals awed.
Tis converse qualifies for solitude,
As exercise for salutary rest:
By that untutor'd, Contemplation raves;
And Nature's fool by Wisdom's is outdone
Wisdom, though richer than Peruvian mines, And sweeter than the sweet ambrosial hive,
What is she but the means of happiness?
That unobtain❜d, than Folly more a fool;
A melancholy fool, without her bells.
Friendship, the means of wisdom, richly gives
The precious end, which makes our wisdom wise.
Nature, in zeal for human amity,
Denies or damps an undivided joy.
Joy is an import: joy is an exchange;
Joy flies monopolists; it calls for two.
Rich fruit! Heaven-planted! never pluck'd by one. Needful auxiliars are our friends, to give
To social man true relish of himself.
Full on ourselves descending in a line,
Pleasure's bright beam is feeble in delight:
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