When every passion sleeps that can offend;
When strikes us every motive that can melt;
When man can wreak his rancour uncontroll'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.
For 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 e'er 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 Sovereign 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,
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;
Pangs numerous, as the numerous ills that swarm'd
O'er thy distinguish'd fate, and, clust'ring there,
Thick as the locusts on the land of Nile,

Made 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 their right channel through the vale of death.
The vale of death! that hush'd Cimmerian vale,
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!
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 ;
"Expose the vain of life; weigh life and death;
"Give death his eulogy; thy fear subdue;
"And labour that first palm of noble minds,
"A manly scorn of terror from the tomb."
This harvest reap from thy Narcissa's grave.
As poets feign'd from Ajax streaming blood
Arose, with grief inscrib'd, a mournful flow'r,
Let wisdom blossom from my mortal wound.

And first, of dying friends; what fruit from these?
It brings us more than triple aid; an aid

To chase our thoughtlessness, fear, pride, and guilt.
Our dying friends come o'er us like a cloud,
To damp our brainless ardours, and abate
That glare of life which often blinds the wise.
Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth
Our rugged pass to death; to break those bars
Of terror and abhorrence Nature throws
Cross our obstructed way, and thus to make
Welcome, as safe, our port from ev'ry storm.
Each friend by fate snatch'd from us, is a plume
Pluck'd from the wing of human vanity,
Which makes us stoop from our aërial heights,
And damp'd with omen of our own decease,
On drooping pinions of ambition lower'd,
Just skim earth's surface ere we break it up,
O'er putrid earth to scratch a little dust,
And save the world a nuisance. Smitten friends
Are angels sent on errands full of love;
For us they languish, and for us they die:

And shall they languish, shall they die, in vain?
Ungrateful, shall we grieve their hov'ring shades,
Which wait the revolution in our hearts!
Shall we disdain their silent, soft, address,
Their posthumous advice, and pious pray'r?

Senseless as herds that graze their hallow'd graves,
Tread under foot their agonies and groans,
Frustrate their anguish, and destroy their deaths?
Lorenzo! no; the thought of death indulge;
Give it its wholesome empire! let it reign,
That kind chastiser of thy soul in joy!

Its reign will spread thy glorious conquests far,
And still the tumults of thy ruffled breast:
Auspicious era! golden days, begin!

The thought of death shall, like a god, inspire.
And why not think on death? Is life the theme
Of every thought? and wish of every hour?
And song of every joy? Surprising truth!
The beaten spaniel's fondness not so strange.
To wave the numerous ills that seize on life
As their own property, their lawful prey;
Ere man has measur'd half his weary stage,
His luxuries have left him no reserve,
No maiden relishes, unbroach'd delights;
On cold serv'd repetitions he subsists,
And in the tasteless present chews the past;
Disgusted chews, and scarce can swallow down.
Like lavish ancestors, his carlier years

Have disinherited his future hours,

Which starve on orts, and glean their former field.