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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

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Down their right channel, through the vale of death.
The vale of death! that hush'd Cimmerian vale,
Where Darkness, brooding o'er unfinish'd fates, 256
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 human thought!
There let my thoughts 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 vain of life; weigh life and death:
Give Death his eulogy; thy fear subdued;
And labour that first palm of noble minds,
A manly scorn 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 flower,
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

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275 To chase our thoughtlessness, fear, pride, and guilt. Our dying friends come o'er us like a cloud,

To dainp our brainless ardours, and abate
That glare of life which often blinds the wise.
Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth
Our rugged pass to death; to break those bars
Of terror and abhorrence Nature throws
Cross our obstructed way, and thus to make
Welcome, as safe, our poit from every storm.

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Each friend by Fate snatch'd from us is a plume, 285 Pluck'd from the wing of human vanity,

Which makes us stoop from our aerial height,
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 :

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And shall they languish, shall they die, in vain? 295
Ungrateful, shall we grieve their hovering shades,
Which wait the revolution in our hearts?
Shall we disdain their silent, soft, address,
Their posthumous advice, and pious prayer?
Senseless as herds that graze their hallow'd graves,
Tread under foot their agonies and groans,
Frustrate their anguish, and destroy their deaths?
Lorenzo! no; the thought of death indulge;

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Give it its wholesome empire! let it reign,

That kind chastiser of thy soul, in joy!

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Its 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 every thought? and wish of every hour?
And
song of every joy? surprising truth!
The beaten spaniel's fondness not so strange.
To wave the numerous ills that seize on life
As their own property, their lawful prey;
Ere man 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;

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Disgusted chews, and scarce can swallow down.
Like lavish ancestors, his earlier years

Have disinherited his future hours,

Which starve on orts, and glean their former field.

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 cternity'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!

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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!

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Not to be mentioned but with shouts of praise !
Not to be thought on but with tides of joy!

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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. Oh, 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;

De what Philander was, and claim the skies.

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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.

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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 the 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 sun of Heaven! By tyrant Life dethroned, imprison'd, pain'd? By Death enlarged, ennobled, deified? Death but entombs the body, Life the soul.

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'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:

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Death humbles these; more barbarous Life, the man

The sage, peer, potentate, king, conqueror !

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. 470
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

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a

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

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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,

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Are not immortal too, O Death! is thine.
Our day of dissclution ?--name it right,

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'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?

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More than thy balm, O Gilead! heals the wound. 505
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, O! 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!

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