Ah! how unjust to nature, and himself, Is thoughtless, thanklefs, inconfiftent man! Like children babling nonfenfe in their sports, We cenfure nature for a fpan too short; That span too short, we tax as tedious too; Torture invention, all expedients tire, To lafh the ling'ring moments into speed, And whirl us (happy riddance!) from ourselves. Art, brainless art! our furious charioteer, (For nature's voice unftifled would recall) Drives headlong tow'rds the precipice of death; Death, most our dread! death thus more dreadful made:
O what a riddle of abfurdity!
Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot-wheels;
How heavily we drag the load of life!
Bleft leifure is our curfe; like that of Cain,
It makes us wander; wander earth around
To fly that tyrant, thought. As Atlas groan'd
The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.
We cry for mercy to the next amufement;
The next amusement mortgages our fields;
Slight inconvenience! prifons hardly frown,
From hateful time if prisons fet us free.
Yet when death kindly tenders us relief,
We call him cruel; years to moments shrink,
Ages to years. The telescope is turn'd:
To man's falfe optics (from his folly falfe)
Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings,
And feems to creep, decrepit with his age;
Behold him, when past by; what then is feen,
But his broad pinions fwifter than the winds?
And all mankind, in contradiction strong,
Rueful, aghaft! cry out on his career.
Leave to thy foes thefe errors, and these ills;
To nature juft, their cause and cure explore.
Not short heaven's bounty, boundless our expence;
No niggard, nature; men are prodigals.
We wafte, not use our time: we breathe, not live.
Time wafted is existence, us'd is life:
And bare existence, man, to live ordain'd,
Wrings, and oppreffes with enormous weight.
And why? fince time was given for use, not wafte,
Enjoin'd to fly; with tempeft, tide, and stars,
To keep his fpeed, nor ever wait for man;
Time's ufe was doom'd a pleafure; wafte, a pain;
That man might feel his error, if unfeen;
And, feeling, fly to labour for his cure;
Not, blundering, fplit on idleness for ease.
Life's cares are comforts; fuch by heaven defign'd;
He that has none, must make them, or be wretched..
Cares are employments; and without employ
The foul is on a rack; the rack of rest,
To fouls most adverfe; action all their joy.
Here, then, the riddle, mark'd above, unfolds; Then time turns torment, when man turns a fool. We rave, we wrestle with great nature's plan; We thwart the Deity! and 'tis decreed, Who thwart his will, fhall contradict their own. Hence our unnatural quarrel with ourselves; Our thoughts at enmity; our bofom-broil;
We push time from us, and we wish him back;
Lavish of luftrums, and yet fond of life;
Life we think long, and fhort; death feek, and fhun;
Body and foul, like peevish man and wife,
United jar, and yet are loth to part.
Oh the dark days of vanity! while here,
How tastelefs! and how terrible, when gone!
Gone? they ne'er go; when paft, they haunt us ftill;
The spirit walks of every day deceas'd;
And smiles an angel, or a fury frowns.
Nor death, nor life, delight us. If time past,
And time poffeft, both pain us, what can please?
That which the Deity to please ordain'd,
Time us'd. The man who confecrates his hours
By vigorous effort, and an honest aim,
At once he draws the fting of life and death;
He walks with nature; and her paths are peace.
Our error's cause and cure are feen: fee next
Time's nature, origin, importance, speed;
And thy great gain from urging his career.
All fenfual man, because untouch'd, unfeen,
He looks on time as nothing. Nothing elfe
Is truly man's; 'tis fortune's.-Time's a god.
Thou haft ne'er heard of Time's omnipotence;
For, or against, what wonders can he do!
And will: to ftand blank neuter he difdains.
Not on those terms was Time (heav'ns ftranger!) fent
On his important embaffy to man.
Lorenzo! no: on the long deftin'd hour,
From everlasting ages growing ripe,
That memorable hour of wond'rous birth,
When the DREAD SIRE, on emanation bent,
And big with nature, rifing in his might,
Call'd forth creation, (for then Time was born,)
By Godhead streaming through a thousand worlds;
Not on those terms, from the great days of heaven,
From old Eternity's myfterious orb,
Was Time cut off, and cast beneath the skies;
The fkies, which watch him in his new abode,
Measuring his motions by revolving spheres,
That horologe machinery divine.
Hours, days, and months, and years, his children, play,
Like numerous wings around him, as he flies;
Or, rather, as unequal plumes, they shape
His ample pinions, swift as darted flame,
To gain his goal, to reach his ancient rest,
And join anew Eternity, his fire;
In his immutability to neft,
When worlds, that count his circles now, unhing'd,
(Fate the loud fignal founding) headlong rush
To timeless night, and chaos, whence they rofe.
Why fpur the speedy? why with levities
New-wing thy short, fhort day's too rapid flight?
Know'ft thou, or what thou doft, or what is done?
Man flies from time, and time from man; too soon
In fad divorce, this double flight muft end:
And then, where are we? where, Lorenzo! then,
Thy fports? thy pomps?-I grant thee, in a state
Not unambitious; in the ruffled shroud,
Thy Parian tomb's triumphant arch beneath.
Has death his fopperies? then well may
Put on her plume, and in her rainbow shine.
Ye well array'd! ye lilies of our land!
Ye lilies male! who neither toil, nor spin,
(As fifter lilies might) if not fo wife
As Solomon, more fumptuous to the fight!
Ye delicate! who nothing can fupport,
Yourselves most infupportable! for whom
The winter rose must blow, the fun put on
A brighter beam in Leo; filky-soft
Favonius, breathe still softer, or be chid;
And other worlds fend odours, fauce, and fong, And robes, and notions, fram'd in foreign looms! Oye Lorenzos of our age! who deem
One moment unamus'd, a mifery
Not made for feeble man! who call aloud
For every bawble, drivell'd o'er by sense;
For rattles, and conceits of every cast,
For change of follies, and relays of joy,
To drag your patient through the tedious length
Of a short winter's day-fay, fages! fay,
Wit's oracles! fay, dreamers of gay dreams!
How will you weather an eternal night,
Where fuch expedients fail?
O treach❜rous conscience! while she seems to fleep
On rofe and myrtle, lull'd with fyren fong;
While she seems, nodding o'er her charge, to drop
On headlong appetite the flacken'd rein,
And give us up to licence, unrecall'd,
Unmark'd;-fee, from behind her fecret ftand,
|