THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL. AN ODE. ...... VITAL spark of heav'nly flame, Quit, O quit this mortal frame: O the pain, the bliss of dying! Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife, Hark! they whisper; angels say, Sister spirit, come away. What is this absorbs me quite ? Steals my senses, shuts my sight, Drowns my spirit, draws my breath? Tell me, my Soul, can this be death ? The world recedes; it disappears! Heav'n opens on my eyes! my ears O grave! where is thy victory? O death! where is thy sting? NOTES. 1 ESSAY ON MAN, EP. Ι. P. 10. A wild---or garden.] The wild relates to the human passions, productive (as he explains in the second epistle) both of good and evil. The garden, to human reason, so often tempting us to transgress the bounds God has set to it, and wander in fruitless enquiries. P. 10. Of all who blindly creep, &c.] i. e. Those who only follow the blind guidance of their passions; or those who leave behind them common sense and sober reason, in their high flights through the regions of metaphysics. P. 10. Laugh where we must, &c.] Intimating that human follies are so strangly absurd, that it is not in the power of the most compassion ite, on some occasions, to restrain their mirth: and that human crimes are so flagitious, that the most candid have seldom an opportunity, on this subject, to exercise their virtue. P. 11. The strong connexions, nice dependencies.] The thought is very noble, and expressed with great philosophic beauty and exactness. The system of the universe is a combination of natural and moral fitnesses, as the human system is, of body and spirit. By the strong connexions, therefore, the poet alludes to the natural part, and by the nice dependencies to the moral. For the Essay on Man is not a system of naturalism, but of natural religion. Hence it is, that, where he supposes disorders may tend to some greater good in the natural world, N he supposes they may tend likewise to some greater good in the moral, as appears from the sublime images in the following lines: If plagues or earthquakes break not heaven's design, Who knows but he, whose hand the lightning forms, Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind? P. 14. Egypt's god:] Called so, because the god Apis was worshipped, in the form of an ox, universally over the whole land. P. 15. Who sees with equal eye, &c. Matth. x. 29. P. 16. Hope humbly then:] The hope of a happy futurity was implanted in the human breast by God himself for this very purpose, as an earnest of that bliss which always flying from us here, is reserved for the good man hereafter-- Hope travels thro', nor quits us when we die. P. 16.---from home.] The construction is, " the soul being " from home (confined and uneasy) expatiates," &c. by which words it was the poet's purpose to teach, that the present life is only a state of probation for another, more suitable to the essence of the soul, and to the free exercise of its qualities. P. 16. Lo, the poor Indian! &c.] The poet having bid man comfort himself with expectation of future happiness, having shewn him that this HOPE is an earnest of it, and put in one very necessary caution, Hope humbly then, with trembling pinions soar; provoked at those whom he afterwards (p. 68.) describes as building hell on spite, and beaven on pride, he upbraids them with the example of the poor Indian, to whom also God hath given this common HOPE of mankind: but though his untutored mind had betrayed him into many childish fancies concerning the nature of that future state, yet he is so far from excluding any part of his own species (a vice which could proceed only from the pride of science) that he humanely admits even his faithful dog to bear bim company. P. 21. Better for us, &c.] It might, says he, perhaps appear better to us, that there were nothing in this world but peace and virtue; That never air or ocean felt the wind; That never passion discompos'd the mind : But then consider, that as our natural system is supported by the strife of its elementary particles; so is our intellectual system by the conflict of our passions, which are the elements of human action. In a word, as without the benefit of tempestuous winds, both air and ocean would stagnate, corrupt, and spread universal contagion throughout all the ranks of animals that inhabit, or are supported by them; so, without the benefit of the passions, such virtue as was merely the effect of the absence of those passions, would be a lifeless calm, a stoical apathy, Contracted all, retiring to the breast : But strength of mind is exercise, not rest. Ep. ii. p. 38. Therefore, instead of regarding the conflict of the elements, and the passions of the mind, as disorders, you ought to consider them as part of the general order of Providence: and that |