To store up treasure with incessant toil,
This is man's province, this his highest praise:
To this great end keen Instinct stings him on:
To guide that instinct, Reason! is thy charge;
"Tis thine to tell us where true treasure lies
But Reason, failing to discharge her trust,
Or to the deaf discharging it in vain,
A blunder follows; and blind Industry,
Gall'd by the spur, but stranger to the course,
(The course where stakes of more than gold are won)
O'erloading with the cares of distant age
The jaded spirits of the present hour,
Provides for an eternity below.
'Thou shalt not covet,' is a wise command, But bounded to the wealth the Sun surveys.
Look farther, the command stands quite reversed,
And avarice is a virtue most divine.
Is Faith a refuge for our happiness?-
Most sure; and is it not for reason too?
Nothing this world unriddles but the next.
Whence inextinguishable thirst of gain?
From inextinguishable life in man :
Man, if not meant, by worth, to reach the skies,
Had wanted wing to fly so far in guilt.
Sour grapes, I grant, ambition, avarice;
Yet still their root is immortality:
These its wild growths, so bitter and so base, (Pain and reproach!) religion can reclaim.
Refine, exalt, throw down their poisonous lee,
And make them sparkle in the bowl of bliss,
See, the third witness laughs at bliss remote,
And falsely promises an Eden here :
Truth she shall speak for once, though prone to lie,
A common cheat, and Pleasure is her name.
To Pleasure never was Lorenzo deaf;
Then hear her now, now first thy real friend.
Since Nature made us not more fond than proud
Of happiness, (whence hypocrites in joy!
Makers of mirth! artificers of smiles!)
Why should the joy most poighant sense affords
Burn us with blushes, and rebuke our pride?—
Those heaven-born blushes tell us man descends,
E'en in the zenith of his earthly bliss:
Should Reason take her infidel repose,
This honest instinct speaks our lineage high;
This instinct calls on darkness to conceal
Our rapturous relation to the stalls.
Our glory covers us with noble shame,
And he that's unconfounded is unmann'd.
The man that blushes is not quite a brute.
Thus far with thee, Lorenzo! will I close,—
Pleasure is good, and man for pleasure made ;
But pleasure, full of glory as of joy;
Pleasure, which neither blushes nor expiros.
The witnesses are heard, the cause is o'er ;
Let Conscience file the sentence in her court:
Dearer than deeds that half a realm convey,
Thus, seal'd by Truth, the' authentic record runs.
'Know all; know, Infidels,-unapt to know!
Tis immortality your nature solves;
"Tis immortality deciphers man,
And opens all the mysteries of his make
Without it, half his instincts are a riddle,
Without it, all his virtues are a dream:
His very crimes attest his dignity;
His sateless thirst of pleasure, gold, and fame,
Declares him born for blessings infinite.
What less than infinite makes unabsurd
Passions, which all on earth but more inflames? 515 Fierce passions, so mismeasured to this scene, Stretch'd out, like eagles' wings, beyond our nest, Far, far beyond the worth of all below,
For earth too large, presage a nobler flight,
And evidence our title to the skies.'
Ye gentle theologues of calmer kind!
Whose constitution dictates to your pen,
Of endless arguments above, below,
Without us, and within, the short result-
If man's immortal, there's a God in heayen!'
But wherefore such redundancy? such waste
Of argument? one sets my soul at rest;
One obvious, and at hand, and, oh!—at heart.
So just the skies, Philander's life so pain'd,
His heart so pure, that or succeeding scenes
Have palms to give, or ne'er had he been born!
'What an old tale is this!' Lorenzo cries.-
I grant this argument is old; but truth
No years impair; and had not this been truc,
Thou never hadst despised it for its age
Truth is immortal as thy soul, and fable
As fleeting as thy joys. Be wise, nor make
Heaven's highest blessing vengeance. O be wise! 990
Nor make a curse of immortality!
Say, know'st thou what it is, or what thou art?
Know'st thou the' importance of a soul immortal?
Behold this midnight glory: worlds on worlds!
Amazing pomp; redouble this amaze !
Ten thousand add; add twice ten thousand more;
Then weigh the whole; one soul outweighs them all, And calls the' astonishing magnificence
Of unintelligent creation poor.
For this, believe not me: no man believe;
Trust not in words, but deeds; and deeds no less
Than those of the Supreme, nor his a few.
Consult them all; consulted, all proclaim
Thy soul's importance. Tremble at thyself,
For whom Omnipotence has waked so long ;
Has waked, and work'd for ages; from the birth
Of Nature to this unbelieving hour.
In this small province of his vast domain
(All Nature bow while I pronounce his name!)
What has God done, and not for this sole end,
To rescue souls from death? The soul's high price
Is writ in all the conduct of the skies
The soul's high price is the Creation's key,
Unlocks its mysteries, and naked lays
The genuine cause of every deed divine :
That is the chain of ages which maintains
Their obvious correspondents, and unites
Most distant periods in one bless'd design :
That is the mighty hinge on which have turn'd
All revolutions, whether we regard
The natural, civil, or religious world;
The former two, but servants to the third:
To that their duty done, they both expire,
Their mass new-cast, forgot their deeds renown'd,
And angels ask, 'Where once they shone so fair?'
To lift us from this abject, to sublime;
This flux, to permanent; this dark, to day;
This foul, to pure; this turbid, to serene ;
This mean, to mighty!-for this glorious end
The' Almighty, rising, his long sabbath broke! 1030
The world was made, was ruin'd, was restored;
Laws from the skies were publish'd, were repeal'd;
On earth kings, kingdoms, rose; kings, kingdoms, fell;
Famed sages lighted up the Pagan world;
Prophets from Sion darted a keen glance
Through distant age; saints travel'd, martyrs bled;
By wonders sacred Nature stood control'd;
The living were translated; dead were raised;
Angels, and more than angels, came from Heaven; And, oh! for this descended lower still:
Gilt was Hell's gloom; astonish'd at his guest,
For one short moment Lucifer adored.
Lorenzo and wilt thou do less?-For this
That hallow'd page, fools scoff at, was inspired,
Of all these truths, thrice-venerable code!
Deists! perform your quarantine; and then
Fall prostrate, ere you touch it, lest you die.
Nor less intensely bent infernal powers
To mar, than those of light, this end to gain.
what a scene is here!-Lorenzo! wake!
Rise to the thought; exert, expand thy soul
To take the vast idea; it denies
All else the name of great. Two warring worlds,
Not Europe against Afric! warring worlds,
Of more than mortal, mounted on the wing!
On ardent wings of energy and zeal,
High hovering o'er this little brand of strife,
This sublunary ball.-But strife, for what?
In their own cause conflicting! no; in thine,
In man's. His single interest blows the flame; 1060
His the sole stake; his fate the trumpet sounds
Which kindles war immortal. How it burns!
Tumultuous swarms of deities in arms;
Force, force opposing, till the waves run high,
And tempest Nature's universal sphere.
Such opposites eternal, steadfast, stern,
Such foes implacable are good and ill;
Yet man, vain man, would mediate peace between them. Think not this fiction: There was war in heaven.' From heaven's high crystal mountain, where it hung, The' Almighty's outstretch'd arm took down his bow, And shot his indignation at the deep:
Rethunder'd Hell, and darted all her fires.
And seems the stake of little moment still!
And slumbers man, who singly caused the storm? 1075
He sleeps. And art thou shock'd at mysteries?
The greatest, thou. How dreadful to reflect
What ardour, care, and counsel mortals cause
In breasts divine! how little in their own!
Where'er I turn, how new proofs pour upon me!
How happily this wondrous view supports
My former argument! how strongly strikes
Immortal life's full demonstration here!
Why this exertion? why this strange regard
From Heaven's Omnipotent indulged to man?- 1085
Because in man the glorious, dreadful power,
Extremely to be pain'd, or bless'd for ever.
Duration gives importance, swells the price,
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