Yet man, fool man! here buries all his thoughts; Inters celestial hopes without one sigh.

Prisoner of earth, and pent beneath the moon,
Here pinions all his wishes; wing'd by heav'n
To fly at infinite; and reach it there,
Where seraphs gather immortality,

On life's fair tree, fast by the throne of God.
What golden joys ambrosial clust'ring glow,
In HIS full beam, and ripen'd for the just,
Where momentary ages are no more!

Where time, and pain, and chance, and death expire!
And is it in the flight of threescore years,
To push eternity from human thought,
And smother souls immortal in the dust?
A soul immortal, spending all her fires,
Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness,
Thrown into tumult, raptur'd, or alarm'd,
At aught this scene can threaten or indulge,
Resembles ocean into tempest wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.

Where falls this censure? It o'erwhelms myself;
How was my heart incrusted by the world!
O how self-fetter'd was my grov'ling soul!
How, like a worm, was I wrapt round and round
In silken thought, which reptile Fancy spun,
Till darken'd Reason lay quite clouded o'er
With soft conceit of endless comfort here,
Nor yet put forth her wings to reach the skies!

Night-visions may befriend (as sung above):
Our waking dreams are fatal. How I dreamt
Of things impossible! (Could sleep do more ?)

London: Pub Jan 11802. by Vernor & Hood, and the other Proprietors.

(F

Of joys perpetual in perpetual change!
Of stable pleasures on the tossing wave!
Eternal sunshine in the storms of life!
How richly were my noon-tide trances hung
With gorgeous tapestries of pictur'd joys!
Joy behind joy, in endless perspective !
Till at death's toll, whose restless iron tongue
Calls daily for his millions at a meal,
Starting I woke, and found myself undone,
Where now my phrenzy's pompous furniture?
The cobweb'd cottage, with its ragged wall
Of mould'ring mud, is royalty to me!
The spider's most attenuated thread
Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie

On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze.
O ye
blest scenes of permanent delight!
Full above measure! lasting, beyond bound!
A perpetuity of bliss is bliss.

Could you, so rich in rapture, fear an end,
That ghastly thought would drink up all
your joy,
And quite unparadise the realms of light.
Safe are you lodg'd above these rolling spheres ;
The baleful influence of whose giddy dance
Sheds sad vicissitude on all beneath.
Here teems with revolutions every hour;

And rarely for the better; or the best,
More mortal than the common births of fate.
Each Moment has its sickle, emulous,

Of Time's enormous scythe, whose ample sweep
Strikes empires from the root; each moment plays

His little weapon in the narrower sphere
Of sweet domestic comfort, and cuts down
The fairest bloom of sublunary bliss.

Bliss! sublunary bliss!-proud words, and vain! Implicit treason to divine decree !

A bold invasion of the rights of heav'n!

I clasp'd the phantoms, and I found them air.
O had I weigh'd it ere my fond embrace!

What darts of

agony had miss'd my heart!

Death! great proprietor of all! 'tis thine

To tread out empire, and to quench the stars.

The sun himself by thy permission shines

And, one day, thou shalt pluck him from his sphere. Amid such mighty plunder, why exhaust

Thy partial quiver on a mark so mean?

Why thy peculiar rancour wreak'd on me?
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?

Thy shaft flew thrice; and thrice my peace was slain;
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn.
O Cynthia! why so pale? Dost thou lament
Thy wretched neighbour? Grieve to see thy wheel
Of ceaseless change outwhirl'd in human life?
How wane's my borrow'd bliss! from fortune's smile,
Precarious courtesy! not virtue's sure,
Self-given, solar ray of sound delight.

In ev'ry vary'd posture, place, and hour,
How widow'd ev'ry thought of ev'ry joy!
Thought, busy thought! too busy for my peace!
Thro' the dark postern of time long laps'd,
Led softly, by the stillness of the night,