Who centred in our make such strange extremes!
From different natures marvelously mixt,
Connexion exquifite of diftant worlds!
Diftinguifh'd link in Being's endless chain!
Midway from Nothing to the Deity!
A beam ethereal, fully'd, and abforpt!
Though fully'd and dishonour'd, still 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 wondering 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 preserve 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 though my foul fantastic measures trod O'er fairy fields; or mourn'd along the gloom Of pathlefs woods; or, down the craggy steep Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool; Or fcal'd the cliff; or danc'd on hollow winds, With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain? Her ceafelefs flight, though devious, fpeaks her nature Of fubtler effence than the trodden clod;
Active, aërial, towering, unconfin'd,
Unfetter'd with her grofs companions fall.
| Ev'n filent night proclaims my foul immortal:
Ev'n filent night proclaims eternal day.
For human weal, heaven hufbands all events;
Dull fleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain. Why then their loss deplore, that are not loft? Why wanders wretched thought their tombs around, In infidel diftrefs? Are Angels there?
Slumbers, rak'd up in duft, ethereal 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 justly 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 cypress gloom;
The land of apparitions, empty fhades!
All, all on earth, is Şħadow, all beyond
Is Subftance; the reverfe is folly's creed:
How folid all, where change fhall 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 exiftence 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 shell, and spring to life,
The life of gods, O tranfport! and of man.
Yet man, fool man! here buries all his thoughts; 135 Inters celeftial 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 Seraphs gather immortality,
On life's fair tree, fast by the throne of God.
What golden joys ambrosial clustering glow,
In His full beam, and ripen for the juft,
Where momentary ages are no more!
Where time, and pain, and chance, and death expire! 145
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, spending all her fires,
Wafting her strength in ftrenuous idleness,
Thrown into tumult, raptur'd or alarm'd,
At ought this scene 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; 155
How was my heart incrusted 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 spun,
Till darken'd Reafon lay quite clouded o'er
With foft conceit of endless comfort here,
yet put forth her wings to reach the skies!,
Night-visions 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 pictur'd joys!
Joy behind joy, in endless perspective!
Till at death's toll, whose restless iron tongue
Calls daily for his millions at a meal,
Starting I woke, and found myself undone.
Where now my phrenzy's pompous furniture?
The cobweb'd cottage, with its ragged wall
Of mouldering mud, is royalty to me!
The Spider's moft attenuated thread
Is 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 bliss.
Could you, so rich in rapture, fear an end,
That ghaftly thought would drink up all your joy, 185
And quite unparadife the realms of light.
Safe are you lodg'd above these rolling spheres ;
The baleful influence of whofe 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 scythe, whose ample sweep
Strikes empires from the root; each moment plays 295
His little weapon in the narrower sphere
Of fweet domeftic comfort, and cuts down
The fairest bloom of fublunary blifs.
Blifs! fublunary blifs !-proud words, and vain! Implicit treafon to divine decree !
A bold invafion of the rights of heaven!
I clasp'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!
Death! great proprietor of all! tis thine
To tread out empire, and to quench the ftars.
The fun himself by thy permiffion fhines;
And, one day, thou fhalt pluck him from his sphere.
Amid fuch mighty plunder, why exhaust
Thy partial quiver on a mark fo mean?
Why thy peculiar rancour wreak'd on me?
Infatiate archer! could not one fuffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice; and thrice my peace was flain ;
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn.
O Cynthia why fo pale? Doft thou lament
Thy wretched neighbour? Grieve to fee thy wheel
Of ceaseless change outwhirl'd in human life ?
How wanes my borrow'd blifs! from fortunes fmile,
Precarious courtesy! not virtue's fure,
Self-given, folar ray of found delight.
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