So man is made, nought ministers delight,
But what his glowing passions can engage;
And glowing passions, bent on aught below,
Must, soon or late, with anguish turn the scale ;
And anguish after rapture, how severe !

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Rapture? bold man! who tempts the wrath divine, 140 By plucking fruit denied to mortal taste, While here presuming on the rights of Heaven. For transport dost thou call on every hour, Lorenzo? At thy friend's expense be wise : Lean not on earth; 'twill pierce thee to the heart; A broken reed at best; but oft a spear: On its sharp point Peace bleeds, and Hope expires. Turn, hopeless thought! turn from her.-Thought Resenting rallies, and wakes every woe. [repell'd Snatch'd ere thy prime! and in thy bridal hour! 150 And when kind Fortune, with thy lover, smiled! And when high-flavour'd thy fresh opening joys! And when blind man pronounced thy bliss complete! And on a foreign shore, where strangers wept ! Strangers to thee, and, more surprising still, Strangers to kindness wept. Their eyes let fall * Inhuman tears; strange tears! that trickled down From marble hearts! obdurate tenderness! A tenderness that call'd them more severe, In spite of Nature's soft persuasion steel'd: While Nature melted, Superstition raved; That mourn'd the dead, and this denied a grave. Their sighs incensed; sighs foreign to the will! Their will the tiger sucked, outraged the storm; For, oh! the cursed ungodliness of Zeal! While sinful flesh relented, spirit nursed In blind Infallibility's embrace, 'The sainted spirit petrified the breast. Denied the charity of dust to spread

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O'er dust! a charity their dogs enjoy.

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What could I do? what succour? what resource.

With pious sacrilege a grave I stole ;

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With impious piety that grave I wrong'd;
Short in my duty, coward in my grief!
More like her murderer than friend, I crept
With soft-suspended step, and, muffled deep
In midnight darkness, whisper'd my last sigh.
I whisper'd what should echo through their realms,
Nor writ her name, whose tomb should pierce the skies.
Presumptuous fear! how durst I dread her foes,
While Nature's loudest dictates I obey'd?

Pardon necessity, bless'd shade of grief
And indignation rival bursts I pour'd;
Half execration mingled with my prayer;

Kindled at man, while I his God adored :

Sore grudged the savage land her sacred dust;
Stamp'd the cursed soil; and with humanity
(Denied Narcissa) wish'd them all a grave.

Glows my resentment into guilt? what guilt
Can equal violations of the dead?

The dead how sacred! sacred is the dust
Of this heaven-labour'd form, erect, divine!
This heaven-assumed, majestic robe of earth
He deign'd to wear, who hung the vast expanse
With azure bright, and clothed the Sun in gold.
When every passion sleeps that can offend;
When strikes us every motive that can melt;
When man can wreak his rancour uncontroll❜d,
That strongest curb on insult and ill will;
Then! spleen to dust? the dust of innocence?
An angel's dust !-This Lucifer transcends;
When he contended for the patriarch's bones.
'Twas not the strife of malice, but of pride;
The strife of pontiff pride, not pontiff gall.
Far less than this is shocking in a race

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Most wretched, but from streams of mutual love;

And uncreated, but for love divine;

And but for love divine this moment lost,

By Fate resorb'd, and sunk in endless night.

Man hard of heart to man! of horrid things

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Most horrid! mid stupendous highly strange!
Yet oft his courtesies are smoother wrongs;
Pride brandishes the favours he confers,

And contumelious his humanity:

What then his vengeance? Hear it not, ye Stars! 215
And thou, pale Moon! turn paler at the sound,
Man is to man the sorest, surest ill.

A previous blast foretels the rising storm;
O'erwhelming turrets threaten, ere they fall;
Volcanos bellow, ere they disembogue;
Earth trembles, ere her yawning jaws devour;
And smoke betrays the wide consuming fire:
Ruin from man is most conceal'd when near,
And sends the dreadful tidings in the blow.
Is this the flight of Fancy? would it were!
Heaven's Sovereign saves all beings, but himself,
That hideous sight, a naked human heart.

Fired is the Muse? and let the Muse be fired:
Who not inflamed, when what he speaks he feels,
And in the nerve most tender, in his friends;
Shame to mankind! Philander had his foes;
He felt the truths I sing, and I in him;
But he nor I feel more. Past ills, Narcissa!
Are sunk in thee, thou recent wound of heart,

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Which bleeds with other cares, with other pangs, 235 Pangs numerous as the numerous ills that swarm'd O'er thy distinguish'd fate, and, clustering there, Thick as the locust on the land of Nile,

Made death more deadly, and more dark the grave. Reflect (if not forgot my touching tale)

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How was each circumstance with aspics arm'd!
An aspic each, and all an hydra woe.

What strong Herculean virtue could suffice?—
Or is it virtue to be conquer'd here

This hoary cheek a train of tears bedews,

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And each tear mourns its own distinct distress,
And each distress, distinctly mourn'd, demands
Of grief still more as heighten'd by the whole.

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

Tó damp 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 port 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 heights,
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,

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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 :

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:

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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.