While Nature melted, Superstition ravo;
That mourndl the dead, and this deny'd a grave.
London Published Feb'1-1798 by T.Heptinstall 304 Holborn.
With pious sacrilege a grave I stole;
With impious piety that grave I wrong'd;
Short in my duty, coward in my grief!
More like her murderer than friend, I crept
With soft suspended step, and, muffl'd deep
In midnight darkness, whisper'd my last sigh.
I whisper'd what should echo thro' their realms:
Nor writ her name, whose tomb should pierce the skies,
Presumptuous fear! how durst I dread her foes, 180
While Nature's loudest dictates I obey'd?
Pardon necessity, blest shade! of grief
And indignation rival bursts I pour'd;
Half-execration mingl'd with my pray'r;
Kindl'd at man, while I his God ador'd;
Sore grudg'd the savage land her sacred dust;
Stamp'd the curs'd soil; and with humanity
(Deny'd Narcissa) wish'd them all a grave.
Glows my resentment into guilt? what guilt
Can equal violations of the dead!
The dead how sacred! sacred is the dust
Of this heav'n-labour'd form, erect, divine!
This heav'n-assum'd, majestic robe of earth,
He deign'd to wear, who hung the vast expanse
With azure bright, and cloth'd the sun in gold. 195
When ev'ry passion sleeps that can offend;
When strikes us ev'ry motive that can melt;
When man can wreak his rancour uncontroul'd,
That strongest curb on insult and ill-will;
Then, spleen to dust-the dust of innocence-
An angel's dust! This Lucifer transcends;
When he contended for the Patriarch's bones,
'Twas not the strife of malice, but of pride;
The strife of pontiff pride, not pontiff gall.
Far less than this, is shocking in a race
Most wretched, but from streams of mutual love,
And uncreated, but for love divine;
And, but for love divine, this moment lost,
By Fate resorb'd, and sunk in endless night.
Man, hard of heart to man! of horrid things
Most horrid! 'mid stupendous, highly strange!
Yet oft his courtesies are smoother wrongs;
Pride brandishes the favours he confers,
And contumelious his humanity:
What then his vengeance? Hear it not, ye stars,
And thou, pale Moon! turn paler at the sound.
Man is to man, the sorest surest ill.
A previous blast foretels the rising storm:
O'erwhelming turrets threaten ere they fall;
Volcanos bellow ere they disembogue;
Earth trembles ere her yawning jaws devour;
And smoke betrays the wide-consuming fire:
Ruin from man is most conceal'd when near,
And sends the dreadful tidings in the blow.
Is this the flight of fancy? Would it were!
Heav'n's sov'reign saves all beings, but himself,
That hideous sight, a naked human heart.
Fir'd is the Muse? And let the Muse be fir'd: Who, not inflam'd when what he speaks he feels, 225 And in the nerve most tender, in his friends? Shame to mankind! PHILANDER had his foes;
He felt the truths I sing, and I in him:
But he nor I feel more. Past ills, NARCISSA!
Are sunk in thee, thou recent wound of heart!
Which bleeds with other cares, with other pangs; 235
Pangs num'rous, as the num'rous ills that swarm'd
O'er thy distinguish'd fate, and, clust'ring there
Thick as the locust on the land of Nile,
Make death more deadly, and more dark the grave. Reflect (if not forgot my touching tale)
How was each circumstance with aspics arm'd!
An aspic-each and all-an Hydra woe.
What strong Herculean virtue could suffice?
Or is it virtue to be conquer'd here?
This hoary cheek a train of tears bedews;
And each tear mourns its own distinct distress;
And each distress, distinctly mourn'd, demands
Of grief still more, as heighten'd by the whole.
A grief like this proprietors excludes:
Not friends alone such obsequies deplore;
They make mankind the mourner; carry sighs
Far as the fatal Fame can wing her way;
And turn the gayest thought of gayest age,
Down the right channel, through the vale of death.
The vale of Death! that hush'd cimmerian vale, 255
Where Darkness, brooding o'er unfinish'd fates,
With raven wing incumbent, waits the day
(Dread day!) that interdicts all future change!
That subterranean world, that land of ruin!
Fit walk, LORENZO, for proud human thought! 260
There let my thought expatiate; and explore
Balsamic truths, and healing sentiments,
Of all most wanted, and most welcome, here.
For gay LORENZO's sake, and for thy own,
My soul! "The fruits of dying friends survey; 265
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