More like her murderer than friend, I orapt
With soft suspended step, and muffled deep
In midnight darkness, whisper'd my last sigh.

I whisper'd what should echo through their realms : Nor writ her name, whose tomb should pierce the skies.

Presumptuous fear! how durst I dread her foes,
While nature's loudest dictates I obey'd?
Pardon necessity, blest shade! of grief
And indignation rival bursts I pour'd;
Half execration mingled with my prayer;
Kindled at man, while I his God adored:
Sore grudg'd the savage land her sacred dust;
Stamp'd the cursed soil; and with humanity
(Denied Narcissa) wish'd them all a grave.
Glows my resentment into guilt? what guilt
Can equal violations of the dead?

The dead how sacred! sacred is the dust
Of this heav'n-labour'd forin, erect, divine:
This heav'n assumed, majestie, robe of earth
He deign'd to wear, who hung the vast expause
With azure bright, and clothed the sun in gold.
When ev'ry passion sleeps that can offend;
When strikes us ev'ry motive that can melt;
When man can wreak his rancour uncontrol'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,
'I'was not the strife of malice, but of pride;
The strife of pontiff pride, not pontiff gall.
Far less than this is shocking to a race.
Most wretched, but from streams of mutual love,
And uncreated, but for love divine;
Aud, 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 stupenduous, highly strange !
Yet oft bis 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 foretells the rising storm;
O'erwhelming turrets threaten ere they fall;
Volcanoes 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.
this the flight of fancy would it were !

Heav'n's Sov'reign saves all beings but himself,
That hideous sight, a naked human heart.

Fired is the muse? and let the muse be fired:
Who not inflamed, 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, thot recent wound of heart I
Which bleeds with other cares, with other pangs;
Pangs num'rous as the num'rous ills that swarm'd
O'er thy distinguish'd fate, and clust'ring there,
Thick as the locust on the land of Nile,

Made death more deadly, and more dark th
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 the right channel, through the vale of death
The vale of death! that hush'd Cimmerian vale,
Where darkness brooding o'er unfinish'd fales,
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 buman 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 vein of life; weigh life and death
Give death his eulogy: thy fear subdue;
And labour that first palm of noble minds,
A manly score of terror from the tomb.'

This harvest reap from thy Narcissa's grave.
As poets feign'd, from Ajax' streaming blood
Arose, with grief inscribed, 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 smoothe
Our rugged paths 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 aerial 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 greans;
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;

Is 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 ev'ry thought? and wish of ev'ry hour?
And song of ev'ry joy? Surprising truth!
The beaten spaniel's fondness not so strange.
To wave the num'rous ills that seize on life
As their own property, their lawful prey;
Ere nan has measured half his weary stage,
His luxuries have left him no reserve,
No maiden relishes, unbroach'd delights;
On cold served repetitions he subsists,
And in the tasteless present chews the past;
Disgusted chews, and scarce can swallow down.
Like lavish ancestors, his earlier years
Have disinherited bis future hours,

Which starve on orts, and glean their former field.
Live ever here, Lorenzo -- shocking thought!
So shocking, they who wish disown it too;
Disown from shame what they from folly crave..
ve ever in the womb, nor see the light!

For what live ever here ?---with lab'ring step
To tread our former footsteps? pace the round
Eternal? to climb life's worn heavy wheel
Which draws up nothing new! to beat, and beat
The beaten track? to bid each wretched day
The former mock? to surfeit on the same,
And yawn our joys? or thank a misery

For change, though sad to see what we have seen?
Hear, till unheard, the same old slabber'd tale ?

To taste the tasted, and at each return
Less tasteful? o'er our palates to decant
Another vintage? strain a flatter year,
Through loaded vessels, and a laxer tone?
Crazy machines to grind earth's wasted fruits!
Ill ground, and worse concocted load, not life!
The rational foul kennels of excess !

Still-streaming thoroughfares of dull debauch! Trembling each gulp lest death should snatch the bowl.

Such of our fine ones is the wish refined!
So would they have it: elegant desire!

Why not invite the bellowing stalls and wilds ?
But such examples might their riot awe.

Through want of virtue, that is, want of thought,
(Tho' on bright thought they father all their flights)
To what are they reduced to love and hate
The same vain world; to censure and espouse
This painted shrew of life, who calls them fool
Each moment of each day; to flatter bad
Through dread of worse; to cling to this rude rock,
Barren, to them, of good, and sharp with ills,
And hourly biacken'd with impending storms,
And infamous for wrecks of human hope.--
Scared at the gloomy gulf that yawns beneath.
Such are their triumphis! such their pangs of joy!
'Tis time, high time, to shift this dismal scene.
This hugg'd, this hideous state, what art can cure?
One only; but that one what all may reach;
Virtueshe, wonder-working goddess charms
That rock to bloom, and tames the painted shrew;
And, what will more surprise, Lorenzo! gives
To life's sick nauseous iteration, change;
And straitens nature's circle to a line."
Believ'st thou this, Lorenzo ? lend an ear,
A patient ear, thou'lt blush to disbelieve.
A languid leaden iteration reigns,

And ever must, o'er those whose joys are joys
Of sight, smell, taste. The cuckoo-seasons sing
The same dull note to such as nothing prize,
But what those seasons, from the teeming earth,
To doating sense indulge. But norbler minds,
Which relish fruits unripen'd by the sun,

Make their days various, various as the dyes
On the dove's neck, which wanton in his rays.
On minds of dove-like innocence possess'd,
On lighten'd minds that bask in virtue's beams,
Nothing hangs tedious, nothing old revolves
In that for which they long, for which they live.
Their glorious efforts, wing'd with heavenly hope,
Each rising morning sees still higher rise;
Each bounteous dawn its novelty presents
To worth maturing, new strength, lustre, fame;
While nature's circle, like a chariot-wheel
Rolling beneath their elevated aims,

Makes their fair prospect fairer ev'ry hour;
Advancing virtue in a line to bliss ;

Virtue which Christian motives best inspire!
And bliss, which Christian schemes alone ensure !
And shall we then, for virtue's sake, commence
Apostates and turn infidels for joy ?

A truth it is, few doubt, but fewer trust,

He sins against this life, who slights the next.'
What is this life? how few their fav'rite know!
Fond in the dark, and blind in our embrace,
By passionately loving life, we make

Loved life unlovely, hugging her to death.

We give to time eternity's regard,

And, dreaming, take our passage for our port.

Life has no value as an end, but means;

An end deplorable! a means divina!

When 'tis our all, 'tis nothing; worse thau nought; A nest of pains; when held as nothing, much.

Like some fair hum'rists, life is most enjoy'd

When courted least; most worth, when disesteem'd ;
Then 'tis the seat of comfort, rich in peace;

In prospect richer far; important! awful!
Not to be mention'd hut with shouts of praise !
Not to be thought on but with tides of joy!

The mighty basis of eternal bliss!

Where now the barren rock? the painted shrew ! Where now, Lorenzo, life's eternal round? Have I not made my triple promise good? Vain is the world; but only to the vain. To what compare we then this varying scene, Whose worth ambiguous rises and declines, Waxes and wanes? (In all, propitious Night Assists me here) compare it to the moon; Dark in herself, and indigent; but rich In borrow'd lustre from a higher sphere. When gross guilt interposes, lab'ring earth, O'ershadow'd, mourns a deep eclipse of joy; Her joys, at brightest, pallied to that font Of full effulgent glory whence they flow. Nor is that glory distant. O Lorenzo,