The bell ftrikes one. We take no note of time,
But from its lofs. To give it then a tongue,
Is wife in man. As if an angel fpoke,
I feel the folemn found. If heard aright,
It is the knell of my departed hours:
Where are they? with the years beyond the flood.
It is the fignal that demands difpatch:
How much is to be done? my hopes and fears
Start up alarm'd, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down-On what? a fathomless abyss;
A dread eternity! how furely mine!
And can eternity belong to me,
Poor penfioner on the bounties of an hour?
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man?
How paffing wonder HE, who made him fuch?
Who center'd in our make fuch ftrange extremes?
From different natures marvellously mixt,
Connexion exquisite of diftant worlds!
Distinguish'd link in being's endless chain!
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
A beam etherial, fully'd, and abforpt!
Tho' fully'd, and difhonour'd, ftill divine!
Dim miniature of greatness abfolute!
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal! infect infinite!
A worm! a god!I tremble at myself,
And in myself am loft! at home a stranger,
Thought wanders up and down, furpriz'd, aghaft,
And wond'ring at her own: how reafon reels!
O what a miracle to man is man,
Triumphantly diftrefs'd! what joy, what dread!
Alternately transported, and alarm'd!
What can preferve my life? or what destroy?
An angel's arm can't fnatch me from the grave;
Legions of angels can't confine me there.
'Tis paft conjecture; all things rife in proof:
While o'er my limbs fleep's foft dominion spread,
What tho' my foul phantaftic measures trod
O'er fairy fields; or mourn'd along the gloom
Of pathlefs woods; or, down the craggy steep
Hurl'd headlong, fwam with pain the mantled pool:
Or fcal'd the cliff; or danc'd on hollow winds,
With antic fhapes, wild natives of the brain?
Her ceafelefs flight, tho' devious, speaks her nature
Of fubtler effence than the trodden clod;
Active, aerial, tow'ring, unconfin'd,
Unfetter'd with her grofs companion's fall.
Ev'n filent night proclaims my foul immortal:
Ev'n filent night proclaims eternal day.
For human weal, heav'n husbands all events;
Dull fleep inftructs, nor fport vain dreams in vain.
Why then their lofs deplore, that are not loft?
Why wanders wretched thought their tombs around,
In infidel diftrefs? Are angels there?
Slumbers, rak'd up in duft, etherial fire?
They live! they greatly live a life on earth
Unkindled, unconceiv'd; and from an eye
Of tenderness, let heavenly pity fall
On me, more juftly number'd with the dead,
This is the defart, this the folitude:
How populous, how vital, is the grave!
This is creation's melancholy vault,
The vale funereal, the fad cyprefs gloom;
The land of apparitions, empty fhades!
All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond
Is fubftance; the reverfe is folly's creed;
How folid all, where change shall be no more!
This is the bud of being, the dim dawn,
The twilight of our day, the vestibule.
Life's theatre as yet is fhut, and death,
Strong death, alone can heave the maffy bar,
This grofs impediment of clay remove,
And make us embryos of existence free.
From real life, but little more remote
Is he, not yet a candidate for light,
The future embryo, flumbering in his fire.
Embryos we must be, till we burst the shell,
Yon ambient azure fhell, and fpring to life,
The life of gods, O transport! and of man.
Yet man, fool man! here buries all his thoughts; Inters celestial hopes without one figh.
Prifoner of earth, and pent beneath the moon,
Here pinions all his wishes; wing'd by heaven
To fly at infinite; and reach it there,
Where feraphs gather immortality,
On life's fair tree, faft by the throne of God.
What golden joys ambrofial cluft'ring glow
In His full beam, and ripen for the just,
Where momentary ages are no more!
Where time, and pain, and chance, and death, expire?
And is it in the flight of threefcore years,
To push eternity from human thought,
And fmother fouls immortal in the duft?
A foul immortal, fpending all her fires,
Wafting her strength in ftrenuous idleness,
Thrown into tumult, raptur'd, or alarm'd,
At aught this fcene can threaten, or indulge,
Refembles ocean into tempeft wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.
Where falls this cenfure? It o'erwhelms myself.
How was my heart encrufted by the world!
O how felf-fetter'd was my groveling foul!
How, like a worm, was I wrapt round and round
In filken thought, which reptile fancy fpun,
Till darken'd reafon lay quite clouded o'er
With foft conceit of endless comfort here,
Nor yet put forth her wings to reach the skies!
Night-vifions may befriend, (as fung above:)
Our waking dreams are fatal: how I dreamt
Of things impoffible? (could fleep do more?)
Of joys perpetual in perpetual change?
Of stable pleasures on the toffing wave?
Eternal funshine in the ftorms of life?
How richly were my noon tide-trances hung
With gorgeous tapestries of pictured joys?
Joy behind joy, in endless perfpective!
Till at death's toll, whofe reftlefs iron tongue
Calls daily for his millions at a meal,
Starting I woke, and found myself undone.
Where now my frenzy's pompous furniture?
The cobweb'd cottage, with its ragged wall
Of mouldering mud, is royalty to me!
The spider's most attenuated thread
ls cord, is cable, to man's tender tie
On earthly blifs; it breaks at every breeze.
O ye bleft scenes of permanent delight!
Full, above measure! lafting, beyond bound!
A perpetuity of blifs is blifs.
Could you, fo rich in rapture, fear an end,
That ghaftly thought would drink up all your joy,
And quite unparadife the realms of light.
Safe are you lodg'd above thefe rolling fpheres;
The baleful influence of whose giddy dance
Sheds fad viciffitude on all beneath.
Here teems with revolutions every hour;
And rarely for the better; or the best,
More mortal than the common births of fate.
Each moment has its fickle, emulous
Of Time's enormous fcythe, whofe ample fweep
Strikes empires from the root; each moment plays
His little weapon in the narrower sphere
Of sweet domestic comfort, and cuts down
The fairest bloom of fublunary bliss.
Blifs! fublunary blifs!-proud words, and vain! Implicit treafon to divine decree!
A bold invasion of the rights of heaven!
I clafp'd the phantoms, and I found them air.
O had I weigh'd it ere my fond embrace!
What darts of agony had mifs'd my heart!
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