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 every 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 favourite 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, divine!

When 'tis our all, 'tis nothing; worse than nought;
A nest of pains; when held as nothing, much:
Like some fair humorists, 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, but 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, labouring earth, O'ershadow'd, mourns a deep eclipse of joy ; Her joys, at brightest, pallid, to that font Of full effulgent glory, whence they flow. Nor is that glory distant: O LORENZO! A good man, and an angel! these between, How thin the barrier! What divides their fate? Perhaps a moment, or perhaps a year, Or, if an age, it is a moment still;

A moment, or eternity's forgot.

Then be, what once they were, who now are gods;
Be what PHILANDER was, and claim the skies.
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;
Death gives her wings to mount above the spheres.
Through chinks, styled organs, dim life peeps at light;
Death bursts th' 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 son of heaven!
By tyrant life dethroned, imprison'd, pain❜d?
By death enlarged, ennobled, deified
Death but entombs the body; life the soul.

"Is death then guiltless? How he marks his
way
With dreadful waste of what deserves to shine!
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;
Death, of the spirit infinite! divine!

Death has no dread, but what frail life imparts;
Nor life true joy, but what kind death improves.
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,
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,

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 palm 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 tomb
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,
Are not immortal too, O death! is thine.
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?

More than thy balm, O Gilead! heals the wound.
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 oh 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 rescued crowns!
Death, that absolves my birth; à curse without it?
Rich death, that realizes all my cares,
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 waves, and central night,
Though prison'd there, my dust too I reclaim
(To dust when drop proud nature's proudest spheres,)
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, even fools would wish to die.
Death wounds to cure: we fall; we rise; we reign!
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 shall I die?-When shall I live for ever?

;

46

NIGHT THE FOURTH.

THE CHRISTIAN TRIUMPH.

CONTAINING OUR ONLY CURE FOR THE FEAR OF DEATH, AND PROPER SENTIMENTS OF HEART ON THAT INTERESTING BLESSING.

TO THE HONOURABLE 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.

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 arrive,
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 khell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave;
The deepdamp 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:
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 his hospitable gloom.

I scarce can meet a monument, but holds
My younger; every date cries" Come away."
And what recalls 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 heart, 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
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 bid 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 commedians, 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 the 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.
When in his courtier's ears I pour my plaint,
They drink it as the nectar of the great;

And squeeze my hand, and beg me come to-morrow.
Refusal canst thou wear a smoother form?
Indulge me nor conceive I drop my theme:
Who cheapens life, abates the fear of death.
Twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy,
Court favour, yet untaken, I besiege;
Ambition's ill-judged effort to be rich.
Alas! ambition makes my little, less ;*
Imbittering the possess'd; why wish for more?
Wishing, of all employments, is the worst;
Philosophy's reverse, and health's decay!
Were I as plump as stall'd theology,
Wishing would waste me to this shade again.
Were I as wealthy as a South Sea dream
Wishing is an expedient to be poor.
Wishing, that constant hectic of a fool;
Caught at a court: purged off by purer air,
And simpler diet; gifts of rural life!