Starts timid Nature at the gloomy pass?
The soft transition call it, and be cheer'd⚫
Such it is often, and why not to thee?
To hope the best is pious, brave, and wise,
And may itself procure what it presumes.
Life is much flatter'd, Death is much traduced;
Compare the rivals and the kinder crown.

Strange competition !'-True, Lorenzo! strange ! So little life can cast into the scale.

Life makes the soul dependent on the dust,

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445

Death gives her wings to mount above the spheres.
Through chinks, styled organs, dim life, peeps at light;
Death bursts the involving cloud, and all is day
All eye, all ear, the disembodied power.
Death has feign'd evils Nature shall not feel;
Life, ills substantial wisdom cannot shun.
Is not the mighty mind, that sun of Heaven!
By tyrant Life dethroned, imprison'd, pain'd'
By Death enlarged, ennobled, deified?
Death but entombs the body, Life the soul.

451

455

'Is Death then guiltless How he marks his way

With dreadful waste of what deserves to shine!

460

Art, Genius, Fortune, elevated power!

With various lustres these light up the world,

Which Death puts out, and darkens human race.'

I grant, Lorenzo! this indictment just :
The sage, peer, potentate, king, conqueror!
Death humbles these; more barbarous Life, the man
Life is the triumph of our mouldering clay;

465

Death of the spirit infinite! divine !

Death has no dread but what frail Life imparts,

Nor Life true joy but what kind Death improves. 470

No bliss has Life to boast, till Death can give
Far greater. Life's a debtor to the grave;
Dark lattice! letting in eternal day.

Lorenzo blush at fondness for a life
Which sends celestial souls on errands vile,
To cater for the sense, and serve at boards

475

Where every ranger of the wilds, perhaps
Each reptile, justly claims our upper hand.
Luxurious feast! a soul, a soul immortal,
In all the dainties of a brute bemired'
Lorenzo. blush at terror for a death

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485

490

Which gives thee to repose in festive bowers.
Where nectars sparkle, angels minister,
And more than angels share, and raise, and crown,
And eternize, the birth, bloom, bursts of bliss.
What need I more?-O Death! the palin is thine.
Then welcome, Death! thy dreaded harbingers,
Age and disease; Disease, though long my guest,
That plucks my nerves, those tender strings of life:
Which pluck'd a little more, will toll the bell
That calls my few friends to my funeral;
Where feeble nature drops, perhaps, a tear,
While Reason and Religion, better taught,
Congratulate the dead, and crown his tonb
With wreath triumphant. Death is victory!
It binds in chains the raging ills of life :
Lust and Ambition, Wrath and Avarice,
Dragg'd at his chariot-wheel, applaud his power.
That ills corrosive, cares importunate,

495

Are not immortal too, O Death! is thine.

500

Our day of dissolution ?--name it right,

'Tis our great pay-day; 'tis our harvest rich

And ripe. What though the sickle, sometimes keen, Just scars us as we reap the golden grain?

509

More than thy balm, O Gilead! heals the wound. 505
Birth's feeble cry, and Death's deep dismal groan,
Are slender tributes low-tax'd Nature pays
For mighty gain: the gain of each a life!
But, O the last the former so transcends,
Life dies, compared, Life lives beyond the grave.
And feel I, Death! no joy from thought of thee?
Death! the great counsellor, who man inspires
With every nobler thought and fairer deed'
Death! the deliverer, who rescues man!

Death the rewarder, who the rescued crowns.

Death! that absolves my birth, a curse without it!
Rich Death! that realizes all my cares,

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520

Toils, virtues, hopes; without it a chimera;
Death! of all pain the period, not of joy;
Joy's source and subject still subsist unhurt;
One in my soul, and one in her great sire,
Though the four winds were warring for my dust
Yes, and from winds and v. aves, and central night,
Though prison'd there, my dust, too, I reclaim,
(To dust when drop proud Nature's proudest spheres)
526
And live entire. Death is the crown of life!
Were death denied, poor man would live in vain :
Were death denied, to live would not be life:
Were death denied, e'en fools would wish to die.

Death wounds to cure; we fall, we rise, we reign! 530-
Spring from our fetters, fasten in the skies,
Where blooming Eden withers in our sight.
Death gives us more than was in Eden lost :
This king of terrors is the prince of peace.
When shall I die to vanity, pain, death?
When shai! I die?-when shall I live for ever?

535

NIGHT IV.

The Christian Triumph.

CONTAINING

DUR ONLY CURE FOR THE FEAR OF DEATH, AND PROPER SENTIMENTS OF HEART ON THAT INESTIMABLE

BLESSING.

TO THE HON. MR. YORKE.

A MUCH indebted Muse, O Yorke ! intrudes.
Amid the smiles of fortune and of youth,

Thine ear is patient of a serious song.

5

How deep implanted in the breast of man
The dread of death! I sing its sovereign cure.
Why start at Death? where is he Death arrived,
Is past; not come, or gone; he's never here.
Ere hope, sensation fails. Black-boding man,
Receives, not suffers, Death's tremendous blow
The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave; 10
The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm;
These are the bugbears of a winter's eve,

The terrors of the living, not the dead.
Imagination's fool, and Error's wretch,

Man makes a death which Nature never made : 15
Then on the point of his own fancy falls,

And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one.

But were Death frightful, what has age to fear?

If prudent, age should meet the friendly foe,

And shelter in ais hospitable gloom.

I scarce can meet a monument, but holds

20

My younger; every date cries- Come away.'
And what recals me? look the world around,
And tell me what the wisest cannot tell.
Should any born of woman give his thought
Full range, on just Dislike's unbounded field;
Of things the vanity, of men the flaws:
Flaws in the best; the many, flaw all o'er,
As leopards spotted, or as Ethiops dark;
Vivacious ill; good dying immature;
(How immature, Narcissa's marble tells!)
And at his death bequeathing endless pain;

His neart, though bold, would sicken at the sight,

And spend itself in sighs for future scenes.

But grant to life (and just it is to grant

35

To lucky life) some perquisites of joy ;
A time there is when, like a thrice-told tale,
Long-rifled life of sweet can yield no more,
But, from our comment on the comedy,
Pleasing reflections on parts well sustain'd
Or purposed emendations where we fail'd,
Or hopes of plaudits from our candid Judge,
When, on their exit, souls are hid unrobe,
Toss Fortune back her tinsel and her plume,
And drop this mask of flesh behind the scene.
With me that time is come; my world is dead;

A new world rises, and new manners reign:
Foreign comedians, a spruce band! arrive,
To push me from the scene, or hiss me there.
What a pert race starts up! the strangers gaze,
And I at them; my neighbour is unknown;
Nor that the worst. Ah me! the dire effect
Of loitering here, of death defrauded long.
Of old so gracious (and let that suffice)
My very master knows me not.-

Shall I dare say peculiar is my fate?
I've been so long remember'd I'm forgot.
An object ever pressing dims the sight,
And hides behind its ardour to be seen.