Containing the Nature, Proof, and Importance of Immortality.
Where, among other Things, Glory and Riches are particularly considered.
Inscribed to the Rt. Hon. Henry Pelham.
HE* (for I know not yet her name in heav'n) Not early, like Narcissa, left the scene, Nor sudden, like Philander. What avail? This seeming mitigation but inflames: This fancied med'cine heightens the disease. The longer known, the closer still she grew, And gradual parting is a gradual death. 'Tis the grim tyrant's engine which extorts, By tardy pressure's still-increasing weight, From hardest hearts confession of distress.
O the long dark approach, through years of pain, Death's gall'ry! (might I dare to call it so) With dismal doubt and sable terror hung,
* Referring to Night the Fifth.
Sick Hope's pale lamp its only glimm'ring ray:
There, Fate my melancholy walk ordain'd,
Forbid Self-love itself to flatter, there.
How oft I gazed prophetically sad!
How oft I saw her dead, while yet in smiles!
In smiles she sunk her grief to lessen mine:
She spoke me comfort, and increased my pain.
Like powerful armies, trenching at a town,
By slow and silent, but resistless, sap,
In his pale progress gently gaining ground,
Death urged his deadly siege; in spite of art,
Of all the balmy blessings Nature lends
To succour frail humanity. Ye Stars!
(Not now first made familiar to my sight)
And thou, O Moon! bear witness; many a night
He tore the pillow from beneath my head,
Tied down my sore attention to the shock
By ceaseless depredations on a life
Dearer than that he left me. Dreadful post
Of observation! darker ev'ry hour!
Less dread the day that drove me to the brink,
And pointed at eternity below,
When my soul shudder'd at futurity;
When, on a moment's point th' important dye
Of life and death spun doubtful, ere it fell,
And turn'd up life, my title to more woe.
But why more woe? More comfort let it be.
Nothing is dead but that which wish'd to die;
Nothing is dead but wretchedness and pain;
Nothing is dead but what encumber'd, gall'd,
Block'd up the pass, and barr'd from real life.
Where dwells that wish most ardent of the wise?
Too dark the sun to see it; highest stars
Too low to reach it; Death, great Death alone,
O'er stars and sun triumphant, lands us there.
Nor dreadful our transition, though the mind,
An artist at creating self-alarms,
Rich in expedients for inquietude,
Is prone to paint it dreadful. Who can take
Death's portrait true? the tyrant never sat.
Our sketch all random strokes, conjecture all;
Close shuts the grave, nor tells one single tale.
Death and his image rising in the brain
Bear faint resemblance; never are alike;
Fear shakes the pencil; Fancy loves excess;
Dark Ignorance is lavish of her shades;
And these the formidable picture draw.
But grant the worst, 'tis past; new prospects rise, And drop a veil eternal o'er her tomb. Far other views our contemplation claim, Views that o'erpay the rigours of our life; Views that suspend our agonies in death. Wrapt in the thought of immortality, Wrapt in the single, the triumphant thought! Long life might lapse, age unperceived come on, And find the soul unsated with her theme. Its nature, proof, importance, fire my song. O that my song could emulate my soul! Like her, immortal. No!-the soul disdains A mark so mean; far nobler hope inflames; If endless ages can outweigh an hour, Let not the laurel, but the palm, inspire.
Thy nature, Immortality! who knows?
And yet who knows it not? It is but life.
In stronger thread of brighter colour spun,
And spun for ever; dipt by cruel Fate
In Stygian dye, how black, how brittle here!
How short our correspondence with the sun!
And while it lasts inglorious! Our best deeds,
How wanting in their weight! Our highest joys,
Small cordials to support us in our pain,
And give us strength to suffer. But how great
To mingle int'rests, converse, amities,
With all the sons of reason, scatter'd wide
Through habitable space, wherever born,
Howe'er endow'd! To live free citizens
Of universal nature! to lay hold,
By more than feeble faith, on the Supreme!
To call heav'n's rich unfathomable mines
(Mines which support archangels in their state)
Our own! to rise in science as in bliss,
Initiate in the secrets of the skies!
To read creation; read its mighty plan
In the bare bosom of the Deity!
The plan and execution to collate!
To see, before each glance of piercing thought,
All cloud, all shadow, blown remote, and leave
No mystery-but that of love divine,
Which lifts us on the seraph's flaming wing,
From earth's Aceldama, this field of blood,
Of inward anguish, and of outward ill,
From darkness and from dust, to such a scene!
Love's element! true joy's illustrious home!
From earth's sad contrast (now deplored) more fair!
What exquisite vicissitude of fate!
Bless'd absolution of our blackest hour!
Lorenzo, these are thoughts that make man Man, The wise illumine, aggrandize the great. How great, (while yet we tread the kindred clod, And ev'ry moment fear to sink beneath The clod we tread, soon trodden by our sons) How great, in the wild whirl of time's pursuits, To stop, and pause; involved in high presage Through the long visto of a thousand years, To stand contemplating our distant selves, As in a magnifying mirror seen,
Enlarged, ennobled, elevate, divine!
To prophesy our own futurities!
To gaze in thought on what all thought transcends! To talk, with fellow candidates, of joys
As far beyond conception as desert,
Ourselves th' astonish'd talkers and the tale!
Lorenzo, swells thy bosom at the thought?
The swell becomes thee: 'tis an honest pride.
Revere thyself,-and yet thyself despise.
His nature no man can o'er-rate, and none
Can under-rate his merit. Take good heed,
Nor there be modest where thou should'st be proud:
That almost universal error shun.
How just our pride, when we behold those heights!
Not those ambition paints in air, but those
Reason points out, and ardent virtue gains,
And angels emulate. Our pride how just!
When mount we? when these shackles cast? when
This cell of the creation? this small nest,
Stuck in a corner of the universe,
Wrapt up in fleecy cloud and fine-spun air?
Fine-spun to sense, but gross and feculent
To souls celestial! souls ordain'd to breathe
Ambrosial gales, and drink a purer sky:
Greatly triumphant on Time's farther shore,
Where virtue reigns, enrich'd with full arrears,
While Pomp imperial begs an alms of Peace.
In empire high, or in proud science deep,
Ye born of Earth, on what can you confer,
With half the dignity, with half the gain,
The gust, the glow of rational delight,
As on this theme, which angels praise and share?
Man's fate and favours are a theme in heav'n.
What wretched repetition cloys us here?
What periodic potions for the sick!
Distemper'd bodies! and distemper'd minds!
In an eternity what scenes shall strike!
Adventures thicken! novelties surprise!
What webs of wonder shall unravel there!
What full day pour on all the paths of heav'n,
And light th' Almighty's footsteps in the deep!
How shall the blessed day of our discharge
Unwind, at once, the labyrinths of Fate,
And straighten its inextricable maze!
If inextinguishable thirst in man
To know; how rich, how full, our banquet there!
There, not the moral world alone unfolds;
The world material, lately seen in shades,
And in those shades by fragments only seen,
And seen those fragments by the lab'ring eye,
Unbroken, then, illustrious and entire,
Its ample sphere, its universal frame,
In full dimensions, swells to the survey,
And enters, at one glance, the ravish'd sight.
From some superior point (where who can tell?
Suffice it, 'tis a point where gods reside)
How shall the stranger, man's illumined eye,
In the vast ocean of unbounded: space,
Behold an infinite of floating worlds
Divide the crystal waves of ether pure,
In endless voyage, without port! The least
Of these disseminated orbs how great!
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