'Tis thus my heart shall learn to know How fleeting is this world below, Where all that meets the morning light, Is chang'd before the fall of night!!
I'll tell thee, as I trim thy fire,
"Swift, swift the tide of being runs, "And Time, who bids thy flame expire, "Will also quench yon heaven of suns."
Oh, then if earth's united power Can never chain one feathery hour; If every print we leave to-day To-morrow's wave will sweep away; Who pauses to inquire of heaven Why were the fleeting treasures given, The sunny days, the shady nights, And all their brief but dear delights, Which heaven has made for man to use, And man should think it crime to lose? Who that has cull'd a fresh-blown rose Will ask it why it breathes and glows, Unmindful of the blushing ray, In which it shines its soul away; Unmindful of the scented sigh, With which it dies and loves to die.
1 'Pun tu dàm foræum dizzy, as expressed among the dogmas of Heraclitus the Ephesian, and with the same image by Seneca, in whom we find a beautiful diffusion of the thought. "Nemo est mane, qui fuit pridie. Corpora nostra rapiuntur fuminum more; quidquid vides currit cum tempore. Nihil ex his quæ videmus manet. Ego ipse, dum loquor mutari tpsa, mutatus sum," &c.
Aristippus considered motion as the principle of happiess, in which idea he differed from the Epicureans, whe I looked to a state of repose as the only true voluptuousness, and avoided even the too lively agitations of pleasure, as a violent and ungraceful derangement of the senses.
Maupertuis has been still more explicit than this philosopher, in ranking the pleasures of sense above the sublimest pursuits of wisdom. Speaking of the infant man, in his pro
duction, he calls him, "une nouvelle créature, qui pourra comprendre les choses les plus sublimes, et ce qui est bien au-dessus, qui pourra goûter les mêmes plaisirs." See his Vénus Physique. This appears to be one of the efforts at Fontenelle's gallantry of manner, for which the learned President is so well and justly ridiculed in the Akakia of Voltaire.
Maupertuis may be thought to have borrowed from the ancient Aristippus that indiscriminate theory of pleasures which he has set forth in his Essai de Philosophie Morale, and for which he was so very justly condemned. Aristippus, accord. ing to Laertius, held μη διαφέρειν τε ήδονην ήδονης, which irrational sentiment has been adopted by Maupertuis: "Tant qu'on ne considère que l'état présent, tous les plaisirs sont du méme genre," &c. &c.
WRITTEN IN A COMMONPLACE BOOK,
IN WHICH EVERY ONE THAT OPENED IT WAS TO CONTRIBUTE SOMETHING.
THIS tribute's from a wretched elf, Who hails thee, emblem of himself. The book of life, which I have trac'd, Has been, like thee, a motley waste Of follies scribbled o'er and o'er, One folly bringing hundreds more. Some have indeed been writ so neat, In characters so fair, so sweet, That those who judge not too severely, Have said they lov'd such follies dearly: Yet still, O book! the allusion stands ; For these were penn'd by female hands: The rest alas! I own the truth Have all been scribbled so uncouth That Prudence, with a with'ring look, Disdainful, flings away the book. Like thine, its pages here and there Have oft been stain'd with blots of care; And sometimes hours of peace, I own, Upon some fairer leaves have shown, White as the snowings of that heav'n By which those hours of peace were given. But now no longer such, oh, such The blast of Disappointment's touch! No longer now those hours appear; Each leaf is sullied by a tear : Blank, blank is ev'ry page with care, Not ev'n a folly brightens there. Will they yet brighten? never, never! Then shut the book, O God, for ever!
Oh! sweet is the tear on that languishing smile, That smile, which is loveliest then ;
And if such are the drops that delight can beguile, Thou shalt weep them again and again.
LIGHT Sounds the harp when the combat is over, When heroes are resting, and joy is in bloom; When laurels hang loose from the brow of the lover,
And Cupid makes wings of the warrior's plume. But, when the foe returns, Again the hero burns;
High flames the sword in his hand once more : The clang of mingling arms
Is then the sound that charms, And brazen notes of war, that stirring trumpets pour ;-
Then, again comes the Harp, when the combat is
When heroes are resting, and Joy is in bloomWhen laurels hang loose from the brow of the lover,
And Cupid makes wings of the warrior's plume.
Light went the harp when the War-God, reclining, Lay lull'd on the white arm of Beauty to rest, When round his rich armour the myrtle hung twining,
And flights of young doves made his helmet their nest.
But, when the battle came, The hero's eye breath'd flame :
Soon from his neck the white arm was flung;
While, to his wak'ning ear,
No other sounds were dear
When your lip has met mine, in communion so sweet,
Have we felt as if virtue forbid it? Have we felt as if heav'n denied them to meet ?- No, rather 'twas heav'n that did it.
But brazen notes of war, by thousand trumpets So innocent, love, is the joy we then sip,
Still flying from Nature to study her laws, And dulling delight by exploring its cause, You forget how superior, for mortals below, Is the fiction they dream to the truth that they know.
Oh! who, that has e'er enjoyed rapture complete, Would ask how we feel it, or why it is sweet; How rays are confus'd, or how particles fly Through the medium refin'd of a glance or a sigh; Is there one, who but once would not rather have known it,
Than written, with Harvey, whole volumes upon it?
As for you, my sweet-voiced and invisible love, You must surely be one of those spirits, that rove By the bank where, at twilight, the poet reclines, When the star of the west on his solitude shines, And the magical fingers of fancy have hung Every breeze with a sigh, every leaf with a tongue. Oh! hint to him then, 'tis retirement alone Can hallow his harp or ennoble its tone; Like you, with a veil of seclusion between, His song to the world let him utter unseen, And like you, a legitimate child of the spheres, Escape from the eye to enrapture the ears.
Sweet spirit of mystery! how I should love, In the wearisome ways I am fated to rove, To have you thus ever invisibly nigh,
Inhaling for ever your song and your sigh! Mid the crowds of the world and the murmurs of care,
I might sometimes converse with my nymph of the air,
And turn with distaste from the clamorous crew, To steal in the pauses one whisper from you.
Then, come and be near me, for ever be mine, We shall hold in the air a communion divine, As sweet as, of old, was imagin'd to dwell In the grotto of Numa, or Socrates' cell. And oft, at those lingering moments of night, When the heart's busy thoughts have put slumber
You shall come to my pillow and tell me of love, Such as angel to angel might whisper above. Sweet spirit!-and then, could you borrow the
That you're not a true daughter of ether and light, Of that voice, to my ear like some fairy-song Nor have any concern with those fanciful forms That dance upon rainbows and ride upon storms; That, in short, you're a woman; your lip and
As mortal as ever drew gods from the sky. But I will not believe them-no, Science, to you I have long bid a last and a careless adieu :
The voice of the one upon earth, who has twin'd With her being for ever my heart and my mind, Though lonely and far from the light of her smile, An exile, and weary and hopeless the while, Could you shed for a moment her voice on my ear, I will think, for that moment, that Cara is near;
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