And finds all desert now! and meets the ghosts
Of my departed joys; a numerous train!
I rue the riches of my former fate!
Sweet comfort's blafted clusters I lament;
I tremble at the bleffings once fo dear;
And every pleasure pains me to the heart.

Yet why complain? or why complain for one?
Hangs out the fun its luftre but for me,
The fingle man? are angels all befide?
I mourn for millions: 'tis the common lot;
In this shape, or in that, has fate entail'd
The mother's throes on all of woman born,
Not more the children, than fure heirs of pain.
War, famine, pest, volcano, storm, and fire,
Intestine broils, oppreffion, with her heart
Wrapt up in triple brafs, befiege mankind.
GOD's image difinherited of day,

Here, plung'd in mines, forgets a fun was made.
There, beings deathless as their haughty lord,
Are hammer'd to the galling oar for life;
And plow the winter's wave, and reap despair.
Some for hard masters, broken under arms,
In battle lopt away, with half their limbs,
Beg bitter bread thro' realms their valour fav'd,
If fo the tyrant, or his minion, doom.
Want, and incurable disease, (fell pair!)
On hopeless multitudes remorseless seize
At once; and make a refuge of the grave:
How groaning hospitals eject their dead!
What numbers groan for fad admiffion there!
What numbers, once in fortune's lap high fed,
Solicit the cold hand of charity!

To fhock us more, solicit it in vain !

Ye filken fons of pleasure! fince in pains

You rue more modifh vifits, vifit here,

And breathe from your debauch: give, and reduce
Surfeit's dominion o'er you: but fo great
Your impudence, you blush at what is right.
Happy! did forrow feize on fuch alone.
Not prudence can defend, or virtue fave:
Disease invades the chafteft temperance;

And punishment the guiltlefs; and alarm,
Thro' thickest fhades, pursues the fond of peace.
Man's caution often into danger turns,

And his guard falling, crushes him to death..
Not happiness itself makes good her name;
Our very wishes give us not our wish.
How distant oft the thing we doat on most,
From that for which we doat, felicity?
The fmoothest course of nature has its pains;
And trueft friends, thro' error, wound our reit.
Without misfortune, what calamities?

And what hoftilities, without a foe?
Nor are foes wanting to the best on earth.
But endless is the lift of human ills,

And fighs might fooner fail, than cause to figh.
A part how small of the terraqueous globe
Is tenanted by man? the rest a waste,
Rocks, deferts, frozen feas, and burning fands!
Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, ftings, and death.
Such is earth's melancholy map! But far
More fad this earth is a true map of man :
So bounded are its haughty lord's delights
To woe's wide empire; where deep troubles tofs,
Loud forrows howl, envenom'd paffions bite,
Ravenous calamities our vitals feize,
And threat'ning fate wide opens to devour.
What then am I, who forrow for myself?
In age, in infancy, from others aid
Is all our hope; to teach us to be kind.
That, nature's first, last lesson to mankind :
The selfish heart deferves the pain it feels.
More generous forrow, while it finks, exalts;
And confcious virtue mitigates the pang.
Nor virtue, more than prudence, bids me give
Swoln thought a fecond channel; who divide,
They weaken too the torrent of their grief.
Take then, O world! thy much indebted tear :
How fad a fight is human happiness,

To those whose thought can pierce beyond an hour!
O thou! whate'er thou art, whofe heart exults!
Would't thou I should congratulate thy fate?

I know thou would't; thy pride demands it from me. Let thy pride pardon, what thy nature needs,

The falutary cenfure of a friend.

Thou happy wretch! by blindness thou art bleft;

By dotage dandled to perpetual fmiles.

Know, fmiler! at thy peril art thou pleas'd;
Thy pleasure is the promise of thy pain.
Misfortune, like a creditor severe,
But rifes in demand for her delay:
She makes a fcourge of paft profperity,
To fting thee more, and double thy distress.
Lorenzo, fortune makes her court to thee.
Thy fond heart dances, while the Syren fings.
Dear is thy welfare; think me not unkind;
I would not damp, but to fecure thy joys.
Think not that fear is facred to the ftorm.
Stand on thy guard against the smiles of fate.
Is heaven tremendous in its frowns? Moft fure ;
And in its favours formidable too :

Its favours here are trials, not rewards;
A call to duty, not discharge from care;
And fhould alarm us full as much as woes ;
Awake us to their cause and confequence;
And make us tremble, weigh'd with our desert ;
Awe nature's tumult, and chastise her joys,
Left while we clasp, we kill them; nay, invert
To worse than fimple mifery, their charms.
Revolted joys, like foes in civil war,
Like bofom friendships to resentment four'd,
With rage envenom'd rise against our peace.
Beware what earth calls happiness; beware
All joys, but joys that never can expire.
Who builds on lefs than an immortal base,
Fond as

he feems, condemns his joys to death.
Mine dy'd with thee, Philander! thy laft figh
Diffolv'd the charm; the difinchanted earth
Loft all her luftre. Where, her glittering towers?
Her golden mountains, where? all darken'd down
To naked wafte; a dreary vale of tears:

The great magician's dead! Thou poor, pale piece
Of outcaft earth, in darknefs! what a change

From yesterday! Thy darling hope fo near,
(Long labour'd prize!) O how ambition flush'd
Thy glowing cheek! ambition truly great,
Of virtuous praife. Death's fubtle feed within,
(Sly treacherous miner!) working in the dark,
Smil'd at thy well concerted scheme, and beckon'd
The worm to riot on that rose so red,
Unfaded ere it fell; one moment's prey!

Man's forefight is conditionally wife;
Lorenzo! wifdom into folly turns,

Oft, the firft inftant, its idea fair

To labouring thought is born. How dim our eye? The prefent moment terminates our fight;

Clouds, thick as those on doomsday, drown the next ;
We penetrate, we prophefy in vain.

Time is dealt out by particles; and each,
E'er mingled with the ftreaming fands of life,
By fate's inviolable oath is fworn

Deep filence, "Where eternity begins."

By nature's law, what may be, may be now;
There's no prerogative in human hours.
In human hearts what bolder thought can rife,
Than man's prefumption on to-morrow's dawn?
Where is to-morrow? In another world.

For numbers this is certain; the reverie
Is fure to none; and yet on this perhaps,
This peradventure, infamous for lies,
As on a rock of adamant, we build

Our mountain hopes; fpin out eternal schemes,.
As we the fatal fifters could out-fpin,
And, big with life's futurities, expire.

Not e'en Philander had bespoke his shroud;
Nor had he cause; a warning was deny'd;
How many fall as fudden, not as fafe!
As fudden, though for years admonish'd home.
Of human ills the laft extreme beware,
Beware, Lorenzo! a flow fudden death.
How dreadful that deliberate furprize!
Be wife to-day; 'tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead ;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.

Procraftination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vaft concerns of an eternal scene.
If not fo frequent, would not this be strange?
That 'tis fo frequent, this is ftranger ftill.

Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears
The palm, "That all men are about to live,"
For ever on the brink of being born.
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day fhall not drivel; and their pride
On this reverfion takes up ready praise;

At least, their own; their future felves applauds ;
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead !
Time lodg'd in their own hands is folly's vails;
That lodg'd in fate's, to wifdom they confign;
The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone ;
'Tis not in folly, not to fcorn a fool;

And fcarce in human wifdom to do more.
All promife is poor dilatory man,

And that through every stage: when young, indeed,
In full content we fometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourfelves; and only with,

As duteous fons, our fathers were more wife.
At thirty man fufpects himself a fool;

Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought

Refolves; and re-refolves; then dies the fame.
And why? because he thinks himself immortal.
All men think all men mortal, but themselves;
Themfelves, when fome alarming shock of fate
Strikes through their wounded hearts the fudden dread;
But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,
Soon clofe; where past the shaft, no trace is found;
As from the wing no fear the sky retains;
The parted wave no furrow from the keel;
So dies in human hearts the thought of death.
Even with the tender tear which nature sheds
O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave.