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Here nectar flows; it sparkles in our sight:
Rich to the taste, and genuine from the heart.
High-flavour'd bliss for gods! on earth how rare!
On earth how lost!-Philander is no more.

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Think'st thou the theme intoxicates my song? Am I too warm?-Too warm I cannot be. I loved him much, but now I love him more. Like birds, whose beauties languish, half conceal'd, Till, mounted on the wing, their glossy plumes Expanded, shine with azure, green, and gold; How blessings brighten as they take their flight! 600 His flight Philander took, his upward flight, If ever soul ascended. Had he dropp'd, (That eagle genius!) O had he let fall

One feather as he flew, I then had wrote

What friends might flatter, prudent focs forbear, 605
Rivals scarce damn, and Zoilus reprieve.
Yet what I can I must: it were profane
To quench a glory lighted at the skies,

And cast in shadows his illustrious close.

Strange the theme most affecting, most sublime, 610
Momentous most to man, should sleep unsung!
And yet it sleeps, by genius unawaked,
Painim or Christian, to the blush of Wit.
Man's highest triumph, man's profoundest fall,
The deathbed of the just! is yet undrawn
By mortal hand; it merits a divine :
Angels should paint it, angels ever there,
There on a post of honour and of joy.

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Dare I presume, then? but Philander bids,

And glory tempts, and inclination calls.
Yet am I struck, as struck the soul beneath
Aerial groves' impenetrable gloom,

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Or in some mighty ruin's solemn shade,

Or gazing, by pale lamps, on highborn dust
In vaults, thin courts of poor unflatter'd kings,
Or at the midnight altar's hallow'd flame.

It is religion to proceed: I

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And enter, awed, the temple of my theme.

Is it his deathbed? No; it is his shrine:
Behold him there just rising to a god.

The chamber where the good man meets his fate Is privileged beyond the common walk

Of virtuous life, quite in the verge of Heaven.
Fly, ye profane! if not, draw near with awe,
Receive the blessing, and adore the chance
That threw in this Bethesda your disease:
If unrestored by this, despair your cure;
For here resistless Demonstration dwells.
A deathbed 's a detector of the heart!
Here tired Dissimulation drops her mask,

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Through Life's grimace that mistress of the scene!, Here real and apparent are the same.

You see the man, you see his hold on Heaven,

If sound his virtue, as Philander's sound.

Heaven waits not the last moment; owns her friends
On this side death, and points them out to men; 646
A lecture silent, but of sovereign power!

To Vice confusion, and to Virtue peace.
Whatever farce the boastful hero plays,
Virtue alone has majesty in death;
And greater still, the more the tyrant frowns.
Philander! he severely frown'd on thee.
'No warning given! unceremonious fate!
A sudden rush from life's meridian joys!
A wrench from all we love! from all we are!
A restless bed of pain! a plunge opaque
Beyond conjecture! feeble Nature's dread!
Strong Reason's shudder at the dark unknown!
A sun extinguish'd! à just opening grave!

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And, oh the last, the last; what? (can words express,
Thought reach it?) the last-silence of a friend!'
Where are those horrors, that amazement, where
This hideous group of ills which singly shock?
Demand from man-I thought him man, till now. 664
Through Nature's wreck, through vanquish'd agonies

(Like the stars struggling through this midnight gloom)
What gleams of joy! what more than human peace!
Where the frail mortal, the poor abject worm?
No, not in death the mortal to be found.
His conduct is a legacy for all,

Richer than Mammon's for his single heir.
His comforters he comforts; great in ruin,
With unreluctant grandeur gives, not yields
His soul sublime, and closes with his fate.

670

How our hearts burn'd within us at the scene! 675 Whence this brave bound o'er limits fix'd to man? His God sustains him in his final hour!

His final hour brings glory to his God!

Man's glory Heaven vouchsafes to call her own.
We gaze, we weep; mix'd tears of grief and joy! 680
Amazement strikes: devotion bursts to flame:

Christians adore! and infidels believe!

685

As some tall tower, or lofty mountain's brow,
Detains the Sun, illustrious, from its height,
While rising vapours and descending shades,
With damps and darkness, drown the spacious vale ·
Undamp'd by doubt, undarken'd by despair,
Philander thus augustly rears his head,

At that black hour which general horror sheds
On the low level of the' inglorious throng:

Sweet peace, and heavenly hope, and humble joy
Divinely beam on his exalted soul;

Destruction gild and crown him for the skies,
With incommunicable lustre bright.

690

NIGHT III.

Narcissa.

TO HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF PORTLAND.

Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere manes.

VIRG.

FROM dreams, where thought in Fancy's maze runs mad,
To Reason, that heaven-lighted lamp in man,

Once more I wake; and at the destined hour,
Punctual as lovers to the moment sworn,

I keep my assignation with my woe.
O! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought,
Lost to the noble sallies of the soul;
Who think it solitude to be alone.

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Communion sweet! communion large and high!
Our reason, guardian-angel, and our God!
Then nearest these, when others most remote;
And all, ere long, shall be remote but these :
How dreadful, then, to meet them all alone,
A stranger! unacknowledged! unapproved!
Now woo them, wed them, bind them to thy breast; 15
To win thy wish creation has no more:

Or if we wish a fourth, it is a friend.

But friends how mortal! dangerous the desire.
Take Phoebus to yourselves, ye basking bards!
Inebriate at fair Fortune's fountain head,
And reeling through the wilderness of joy,

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Where Sense runs savage, broke from Reason's chain
And sings false peace, till smother'd by the pall.
My fortune is unlike, unlike my song,
Unlike the Deity my song invokes.
I to day's soft-eyed sister pay my court
(Endymion's rival,) and her aid implore,
Now first implored in succour to the Muse.

Thou who didst lately borrow Cynthia's* form,
And modestly forego thine own: O thou
Who didst thyself, at midnight hours, inspire!
Say, why not Cynthia, patroness of song ?
As thou her crescent, she thy character
Assumes; still more a goddess by the change.
Are there demurring wits who dare dispute
This revolution in the world inspired?
Ye train Pierian! to the lunar sphere,
In silent hour, address your ardent call
For aid immortal, less her brother's right.

She with the spheres harmonious nightly leads

The mazy dance, and hears their matchless strain,
A strain for gods, denied to mortal ear.
Transmit it heard, thou silver queen of Heaven!
What title or what name endears thee most?
Cynthia Cyllene! Phœbe-or dost hear
With higher gust, fair Portland of the skies?
Is that the soft enchantment calls thee down,
More powerful than of old Circean charm?
Come, but from heavenly banquets with thee bring
The soul of song, and whisper in mine ear
The theft divine; or in propitious dreams

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(For dreams are thine) tranfuse it through the breast Of thy first votary-but not thy last,

If, like thy namesake, thou art ever kind.

And kind thou wilt be, kind on such a theme ;
A theme so like thee, a quite lunar theme,
Soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair!
A theme that rose all pale, and told my soul
* At he Duke of Norfolk's masquerade.

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