His riot was ambition in despair.

Old Rome consulted birds: Lorenzo! thou,
With more success, the flight of hope survey:
Of restless hope, for ever on the wing.

High perch'd o'er ev'ry thought that falcon sits,
To fly at all that rises in her sight;

And, never stooping, but to mount again
Next moment, she betrays her aim's mistake,
And owns her quarry lodged beyond the grave.
There should it fail us, (it must fail us there,
If being fails) more mournful riddles rise,
And virtue vies with hope in mystery.

Why virtue? Where its praise, its being, fied?
Virtue is true self-interest pursued:

What true self-interest of quite mortal man ?
To close with all that makes him happy here.
If vice (as sometimes) is our friend on earth,
Then vice is virtue; 'tis our sov'reign good.
In self-applause is virtue's golden prize;
No self-applause attends it on thy scheme :
Whence self-applause! From conscience of the right.
And what is right, but means of happiness?

No means of happiness when virtue yields;
That basis failing, falls the building too,
Aud lays in ruin ev'ry virtuous joy.

The rigid guardian of a blameless heart,

So long revered, so long reputed wise,

Is weak; with rank knight-errantries o'er run.
Why beats thy bosom with illustrious dreams
Of self-exposure, laudable and great?

Of gallant enterprize, and glorious death?
Die for thy country !---thou romantic fool!
Seize, seize the plank thyself, and let her sink:

Thy country! what to thee ---The Godhead; what?
(I speak with awe !) tho' he should hid thee bleed
If, with thy blood, thy final hope is spilt,
Nor can Omnipotence reward the blow;
Be deaf; preserve thy being; disobey.

Nor is it disobedience: know, Lorenzo!
Whate'er th' Almighty's subsequent command,
His first command is this: Man, love thyself.
In this s alone, free agents are not free.
Existence is the basis, bliss the prize;
If virtue costs existence, 'tis a crime;
Bold violation of our law supreme,

Black suicide; though nations, which consult
Their gain, at thy expense, resound applause.
Since virtue's recompense is doubtful, here,
If man
dies wholly, well may we demand,
Why is man suffered to be good in vain ?
Why to be good in vain, is man enjoin'd?
Why to be goud in vain, is man betray'd

Betray'd by traitors lodged in his own breast,
By sweet complacencies from virtue felt?
Why whispers nature lies on virtue's part?
Or if blind instinct (which assumes the name
Of sacred conscience) plays the fool in man,
Why reason made accomplice in the cheat?
Why are the wisest loudest in her praise?
Can man by reason's beam he led astray?
Or, at his peril, imitate his God?

Since virtue sometimes ruins us on earth,
Or both are true, or man survives the grave.
Or man survives the grave, or own, Lorenzo,
Thy boast supreme, a wild absurdity.

Dauntless thy spirit; cowards are thy scorn.
Grant man immortal, and thy scorn is just.
The man immortal, rationally brave,
Dares rush on death---because he cannot die.
But if man loses all, when life is lost,
He lives a coward, or a fool expires.
4 daring infidel (and such there are,
From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge,
Or pure heroical defect of thought,)

Of all earth's madmen, most deserves a chain.
When to the grave we follow the renown'd
For valour, virtue, science, all we love,

And all we praise; for worth, whose noon-tide beam, Enabling us to think in higher style,

Mends our ideas of ethereal pow'rs;

Dream we, that lustre of the moral world

Goes out in stench, and rottenness the close?

Why was he wise to know, and warm to praise,
And strenuous to transcribe, in human life,
The mind Almighty! could it he, that fate,
Just when the lineaments began to shine,
And dawn, the Deity should snatch the draught,
With night eternal blot it out, and give
The skies alarm, lest angels too might die ?
If human souls, why not angelic too
Extinguish'd and a solitary God,

O'er ghastly ruin, frowning from his throne ?
Shall we this moment gaze on God in man?
The next, lose man for ever in the dust?
From dust we disengage, or man mistakes;
And there, where least his judgment fears a flaw.
Wisdom and worth how boldly he commends!
Wisdom and worth are sacred names; revered,
Where not embraced; applauded! deified!
Why not compassion'd too? If spirits die,
Both are calamities; inflicted both

To make us but more wretched: wisdom's eye
Acute, for what? To spy more miseries;

And worth, so recompensed, new-poiuts their stings.

Or man surmounts the grave, or gain is loss,
And worth exalted, humbles us the more.
Thou wilt not patronize a scheme that makes
Weakness and vice the refuge of mankind!

Has virtue, then, no joys?'--Yes, joys dear bought.
Talk ne'er so long, in this imperfect state
Virtue and vice are at eternal war.

Virtue's a combat; and who fights for nought?
Or for precarious, or for small reward?
Who virtue's self-reward so loud resound,
Would take degrees angelic here below,
And virtue, while they compliment, betray,
By feeble motives, and unfaithful guards.
The crown, th' unfading crown, her soul inspires:
'Tis that, and that alone, can countervail
The body's treach'ries, and the world's assaults:
On earth's poor pay our famish'd virtue dies.
Truth incontestible! In spite of all

A Bayle has preach'd, or a Voltaire believed.
In man, the more we dive, the more we see
Heav'n's signet stamping an immortal make.
Dive to the bottom of his soul, the base
Sustaining all, what find we? Knowledge, love.
As light and beat essential to the sun,

These to the soul. And why, if souls expire?
How little lovely here? How little known?
Small knowledge we dig up with endless toil!
And love unfeign'd may purchase perfect hate.
Why starved, on earth, our angel-appetites,
While brutal are indulged their fulsome fill?
Were, then, capacities divine conferr'd,
As a mock diadem, in savage sport,

Rank insult of our pompous poverty,

Which reaps but pain from seeming claims so fair! In future age lies no redress? And shuts

Eternity the door on our complaint?

If so, for what strange ends were mortals made!
The worst to wallow, and the best to weep:
The man who merits most, must most complain.
Can we conceive a disregard in Heav'n,
What the worst perpetrate, or best endure?

This cannot be. To love, and know, in man
Is boundless appetite, and boundless pow'r ;
And these demonstrate boundless objects too.
Objects, pow'rs, appetites, Heav'n suits in all:
Nor, nature through, e'er violates this sweet
Eternal concord on her tuneful string.
Is man the sole exception from her laws?
Eternity struck off from human hope,
(I speak with truth, but veneration too)
Man is a monster, the reproach of Heav'n,
tain, a dark impenetrable cloud,

On nature's beauteous aspect and deforms,
(Amazing blot!) deforms her with her lord.
If such is man's allotment, what is heav'n?
Or own the soul immortal, or blaspheme.
Or own the soul immortal, or invert
All order. Go, mock-majesty ! go, man!
And bow to thy superiors of the stall
Through ev'ry scene of sense superior far:
They graze the turf untill'd: they drink the stream
Unbrew'd, and ever full, and un-embitter'd
With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despairs;
Mankind's peculiar Reason's precious dow'r!
No foreign clime they ransack for their robes;
Nor hrothers vite to the litigious bar;
Their good is good entire, unmix'd, unmarr'd;
They find a paradise in every field,

On boughs forbidden where no curses hang:
Their i no more than strikes the sense; unstretcht

By previous dread, or murmur in the rear:

When the worst comes, it comes unfear'd; one stroke
Begins and ends their woe: they die but once;
Blest, incommunicable privilege 1 for which

Proud man, who rules the globe, and reads the stars,
Philosopher, or hero, sighs in vain,

Account for this prerogative in brutes.

No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot,
But what beams on it from eternity.

O sole, and sweet solution! That unties

The difficult, and softens the severe ;

The cloud on nature's beauteous face dispels;

Restores bright order; casts the brute beneath;
And re-enthrones us in supremacy

Of joy, e'en here: admit immortal life,
And virtue is knight-errantry no more;
Each virtue brings in hand a golden dow'r,
Far richer in reversion; hope exults;
And though much bitter in our cup is thrown,
Predominates, and gives the taste of heav'n.
O wherefore is the Deity so kind!
Astonishing beyond astonishment!

Heav'n our reward---for heav'n enjoy'd below.
Still unsubdued thy stubborn heart?---For there
The traitor lurks who doubts the truth I sing.
Reason is guiltless! will alone rebels.

What, in that stubborn heart, if I should find
New unexpected witnesses against thee?
Ambition, pleasure, and the love of gain!

Canst thou suspect that these, which make the soul

The slave of earth, should own her heir of heav'n? Canst thou suspect what makes us disbelieve

Our immortality shouid prove it sure?

First, then, ambition summon to the bar.

Ambition's shame, extravagance, disgust,
And inextinguishable nature, speak.

Each much deposes, hear them in their turn.
Thy soul, how passionately fond of fame!
How anxious that fond passion to conceal !
We blush, detected in designs on praise,
Though for best deeds, and from the best of men ;
And why? Because immortal. Art divine
Has made the body tutor to the soul;
Heav'n kindly gives our blood a moral flow;
Bids it ascend the glowing cheek, and there
Upbraid that little heart's inglorious aim,
Which stoops to court a character from man;
While o'er us, in tremendous judgments sit
Far more than man, with endless praise and blame.
Ambition's boundless appetite out-speaks

The verdict of its shame. When souls take fire
At bigh presumptions of their own desert,
One age is poor applause; the mighty shout,
The thunder by the living few begun,

Late time must echo; worlds unborn resound.
We wish our names eternally to live:

Wild dream! which ne'er had haunted human thought,
Had not our natures been eternal too.

Instinct points out an int'rest in hereafter;
But our blind reason sees not where it lies;
Or seeing, gives the substauce for the shade.
Fame is the shade of immortality.

And in itself a shadow. Soon as caught,
Contemn'd; it shrinks to nothing in the grasp.
Consult th' ambitious, 'tis ambition's cure.

And is this all cried Caesar, at his height,
Disgusted. This third proof ambition brings
Of immortality. The first in fame,

Observe him near, your envy will abate:
Shamed at the disproportion vast between
The passion and the purchase, he will sigh
At such success, and blush at his renown.
And why? Because far richer prize invites
His heart; far more illustrious glory calls;
It calls in whispers, yet the deafest hear.

And can ambition a fourth proof supply?
It can, and stronger than the former three ;
Yet quite o'erlook'd by some reputed wise.
Though disappointments in ambition pain,
And though success disgusts, yet still, Lorenzo !
In vain we strive to pluck it from our hearts;
By nature planted for the noblest ends.

Absurd the famed advice to Pyrrhus giv'n,

More praised than ponder'd; specious, but unsound: Sooner that hero's sword the world had quell'd,.

Then reason his ambition. Man must soar.