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With every nobler thought, and fairer deed!
Death, the deliverer, who rescues man!
Death, the rewarder, who the rescued crowns!
Death, that absolves my birth; a 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, e'en 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?

THE GLORY OF GOD. (Night IV.)

The nameless He, whose nod is Nature's birth;
And Nature's shield, the shadow of his hand;
Her dissolution, his suspended smile!
The great First-Last! pavilion'd high he sits,
In darkness from excessive splendour born,
By gods unseen, unless through lustre lost.
His glory, to created glory, bright,

As that to central horrors; he looks down
On all that soars; and spans immensity.

Though night unnumber'd worlds unfolds to view,
Boundless creation! what art thou? A beam,
A mere effluvium of his majesty:

And shall an atom of this atom-world

Mutter, in dust and sin, the theme of Heaven?
Down to the centre should I send my thought,
Through beds of glittering ore, and glowing gems,
Their beggar'd blaze wants lustre for my lay;
Goes out in darkness: if, on towering wing,
I send it through the boundless vault of stars!
The stars, though rich, what dross their gold to thee,
Great! good! wise! wonderful! eternal King!
If to those conscious stars thy throne around,
Praise ever-pouring and imbibing bliss,—

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And ask their strain; they want it, more they want;

Poor their abundance, humble their sublime,

Languid their energy, their ardour cold;
Indebted still, their highest rapture burns,
Short of its mark, defective, though divine.

THE JUDGMENT DAY. (Night IX.)

Amazing period! when each mountain-height
Out-burns Vesuvius; rocks eternal pour
Their melted mass, as rivers once they pour'd;
Stars rush; and final ruin fiercely drives
Her ploughshare o'er creation!—while aloft,
More than astonishment! if more can be!
Far other firmament than e'er was seen,
Than e'er was thought by man! far other stars!
Stars animate, that govern these of fire:
Far other Sun !-A Sun, O how unlike

The Babe at Bethlehem! how unlike the Man
That groan'd on Calvary! yet He it is;

That Man of Sorrows! O how chang'd! what pomp!
In grandeur terrible, all Heaven descends!
And gods, ambitious, triumph in his train.

A swift archangel, with his golden wing,

As blots and clouds, that darken and disgrace
The scene divine, sweeps stars and suns aside.

And now, all dross remov'd, Heaven's own pure day,
Full on the confines of our ether, flames:

While (dreadful contrast!) far, how far beneath!
Hell, bursting, belches forth her blazing seas,
And storms sulphureous; her voracious jaws
Expanding wide, and roaring for her prey.
Lorenzo! welcome to this scene; the last
In Nature's course; the first in wisdom's thought.
This strikes, if aught can strike thee; this awakes
The most supine; this snatches man from death.

ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. (Night IX.)

Retire;-the world shut out;-thy thoughts call home ;— Imagination's airy wing repress;—

Lock up thy senses;-let no passion stir!—
Wake all to reason;-let her reign alone;

Then, in thy soul's deep silence, and the depth
Of Nature's silence, midnight, thus inquire,

As I have done; and shall inquire no more.

In Nature's channel, thus the questions run :—

"What am I? and from whence ?-I nothing know

But that I am; and, since I am, conclude

Something eternal: had there e'er been nought,

Nought still had been; eternal there must be.-
But what eternal?—Why not human race?
And Adam's ancestors without an end ?—
That's hard to be conceiv'd, since every link
Of that long-chain'd succession is so frail.
Can every part depend, and not the whole?
Yet grant it true; new difficulties rise;
I'm still quite out at sea, nor see the shore.
Whence Earth, and these bright orbs?—Eternal too?
Grant matter was eternal; still these orbs
Would want some other father;-much design
Is seen in all their motions, all their makes;
Design implies intelligence, and art;

That can't be from themselves—or man: that art
Man scarce can comprehend, could man bestow?
And nothing greater yet allow'd than man.—
Who, motion, foreign to the smallest grain,
Shot through vast masses of enormous weight?
Who bid brute matter's restive lump assume
Such various forms, and gave it wings to fly?
Has matter innate motion? then each atom,
Asserting its indisputable right

To dance, would form an universe of dust:

Has matter none? Then whence these glorious forms
And boundless flights, from shapeless, and repos'd?

Has matter more than motion? has it thought,
Judgment, and genius? is it deeply learn'd

In mathematics? Has it fram'd such laws,
Which but to guess, a Newton made immortal?—
If so, how each sage atom laughs at me,

Who think a clod inferior to a man!

If art, to form; and counsel, to conduct;

And that with greater far than human skill,
Resides not in each block;-a Godhead reigns."

JOHN GAY.
(1688-1732.)

GAY was born at Barnstaple, in Devonshire, of an ancient but reduced family. The narrowness of his family circumstances doomed the poet to the counter of a silk mercer in London. Happily in a few years emancipated from so uncongenial a sphere, he attracted the notice and friendship of Pope and the other leading literary men of the time. "Gay was the general favourite of the whole association of wits; but they regarded him as a playfellow rather than as a partner." His connections with the tory party excluded him from the patronage of the house of Brunswick; but after the

loss of an illusory wealth in the wreck of the South Sea Scheme in 1720, the compelled industry of the luxurious and indolent poet, realized for him a tolerable competency. Sheltered in the last years of his life under the hospitable roof of his noble patrons, the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, and in the enjoyment of an affectionate correspondence with his friends, Pope and Swift, he suddenly died of fever in 1732. The death of this single hearted man was deeply lamented by the saturnine nature of Swift.

Gay is best known by his Fables and his Beggars' Opera. The former bear the first rank in the language in their class of writing; the latter, though the applications of its political satire are obsolete, and its morality not especially commendable, still, by the vigour and liveliness of its portraitures, retains its place on the stage. It banished the affectations of the Italian opera, as his Pastorals, written in ridicule of those of Ambrose Philips, effectually suppressed the false taste in that species of composition. The style of Gay is fluent, lively, and natural. His genius is not of a high order, but is eminently adapted to the subjects it has selected. He may be termed the inventor of the English Ballad Opera. The most popular of his ballads is "Black-eyed Susan."

THE COURT OF DEATH.

Death on a solemn night of state,
In all his pomp of terror sat;
The attendants of his gloomy reign,
Diseases dire, a ghastly train,

Crowd the vast court.

With hollow tone

A voice thus thundered from the throne :

"This night our minister we name;

Let every servant speak his claim;
Merit shall bear this ebon wand."
All, at the word, stretch forth their hand.
Fever, with burning heat possessed,
Advanced, and for the wand addressed:

"I to the weekly bills appeal,

Let those express my fervent zeal :
On every slight occasion near

With violence I persevere."

Next Gout appears with limping pace;

Pleads how he shifts from place to place;
From head to foot how swift he flies,

And every joint and sinew plies;

Still working when he seems suppressed,
A most tenacious stubborn guest.

Stone urged his over-growing force;
And, next, Consumption's meagre corse,
With feeble voice that scarce was heard,
Broke with short coughs, his suit preferred,―
"Let none object my lingering way;

I gain, like Fabius, by delay;
Fatigue and weaken every foe,
By long attack, secure, tho' slow."

Plague represents his rapid power,
Who thinned a nation in an hour.

All spoke their claim, and hoped the wand; Now expectation hushed the band,

When thus the monarch from the throne:
"Merit was ever modest known.

What! no physician speak his right!—
None here?-but fees their toils requite.
Let then Intemperance take the wand,
Who fills with gold their zealous hand.
You Fever, Gout, and all the rest
(Whom wary men as foes detest),
Forego your claim; no more pretend:
Intemperance is esteemed a friend;
He shares their mirth, their social joys,
And, as a courted guest, destroys.
The charge on him must justly fall
Who finds employment for you all."

THE PERSIAN, THE SUN, AND THE CLOUD.

Is there a bard whom genius fires,
Whose every thought the god inspires?
When Envy reads the nervous lines,
She frets, she rails, she raves, she pines;
Her hissing snakes with venom swell,
She calls her venal train from hell;
The servile fiends her nod obey,
And all Curl's1 authors are in pay.
Fame calls up Calumny and Spite;
Thus Shadow owes its birth to light.

As prostrate to the god of day
With heart devout a Persian lay,
His invocation thus begun :
"Parent of light, all-seeing sun,
Prolific beam, whose rays dispense
The various gifts of Providence,
Accept our praise, our daily prayer,
Smile on our fields, and bless the year."

A Cloud, who mocked his grateful tongue,

The day with sudden darkness hung;

With pride and envy swelled, aloud
A voice thus thundered from the cloud:
"Weak is this gaudy god of thine,
Whom I at will forbid to shine.
Shall I nor vows nor incense know?

1 See note 2, p. 276.

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