More than creation labours!-labours more?
And is there in creation, what, amidst
This tumult universal, wing'd despatch,
And ardent energy, supinely yawns ?—
Man sleeps, and man alone; and man whose fate,
Fate irreversible, entire, extreme,
Endless, hair-hung, breeze-shaken, o'er the gulf 300
A moment trembles; drops! and man, for whom
All else is in alarm; man, the sole cause
Of this surrounding storm! and yet he sleeps,
As the storm rock'd to rest.-Throw years away?
Throw empires, and be blameless. Moments seize,
Heav'n's on their wing: a moment we may wish,
When worlds want wealth to buy. Bid Day stand
Bid him drive back his car, and re-import
The period past, re-give the given hour.
Lorenzo, more than miracles we want,
Lorenzo-O for yesterdays to come!
Such is the language of the man awake;
His ardour such for what oppresses thee.
And is his ardour vain, Lorenzo? No;
That more than miracle the gods indulge.
To-day is yesterday return'd; return
Full-power'd to cancel, expiate, raise, adorn,
And reinstate us on the rock of peace.
Let it not share its predecessor's fate,
Nor, like its eldest sisters, die a fool.
Shall it evaporate in fume, fly off
Fuliginous, and stain us deeper still?
Shall we be poorer for the plenty pour'd?
More wretched for the clemencies of Heav'n?'
Where shall I find him? Angels, tell me where: 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 hov'ring o'er him, shed
Protection; now are waving in applause
To that blest son of foresight; lord of fate!
That awful independent on to-morrow!
Whose work is done; who triumphs in the past,
Whose yesterdays look backward with a smile;
Nor, like the Parthian, wound him as they fly: 335
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 god-like 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 ev'ry great and glorious aim;
Embruted ev'ry faculty divine:
Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world,
The world, that gulf of souis, 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. 355
For what, gay friend, is this escutcheon'd world,
Which hangs out death in one eternal night?
A night, that glooms us in the noon-tide ray,
And wraps our thought, 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 giv'n sure earnest of his final blow.
Those hours which lately smiled, where are they now ?
Pallid to thought, and ghastly! drown'd, all drown'd
In that great deep, which nothing disembogues! 370
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 heav'n; 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; 395
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! loth 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 shirtes.
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's 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 talk'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 our 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 flow'rs, 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?
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