Chapter 6

Heaven gives the needful, but neglected, call.What day, what hour, but knocks at human hearts,To wake the soul to sense of future scenes?3Deaths stand, like Mercuries, in every way,And kindly point us to our journey’s end.Pope, who could’st make immortals! art thou dead?I give thee joy: nor will I take my leave;So soon to follow. Man but dives in death;Dives from the sun, in fairer day to rise;The grave, his subterranean road to bliss.10Yes, infinite indulgence plann’d it so;Through various parts our glorious story runs;Time gives the preface, endless age unrollsThe volume (ne’er unroll’d!) of human fate.This, earth and skies already[32]have proclaim’d.The world’s a prophecy of worlds to come;And who, what God foretells (who speaks in things,Still louder than in words) shall dare deny?If Nature’s arguments appear too weak,Turn a new leaf, and stronger read in Man.20If man sleeps on, untaught by what he sees,Can he prove infidel to what he feels?He, whose blind thought futurity denies,Unconscious bears, Bellerophon![33]like thee,His own indictment; he condemns himself;Who reads his bosom, reads immortal life;Or, Nature, there, imposing on her sons,Has written fables; man was made a lie.Why Discontent for ever harbour’d there?Incurable consumption of our peace!30Resolve me, why, the cottager, and king,He, whom sea-sever’d realms obey, and heWho steals his whole dominion from the waste,Repelling winter blasts with mud and straw34Disquieted alike, draw sigh for sigh,In fate so distant, in complaint so near?Is it, that things terrestrial can’t content?Deep in rich pasture will thy flocks complain?Not so; but to their master is deniedTo share their sweet serene. Man, ill at ease,In this, not his own place, this foreign field,Where Nature fodders him with other food,42Than was ordain’d his cravings to suffice,Poor in abundance, famish’d at a feast,Sighs on for something more, when most enjoy’d.Is Heaven, then, kinder to thy flocks than thee?Not so; thy pasture richer, but remote;In part, remote; for that remoter partMan bleats from instinct, though perhaps, debauch’dBy sense, his reason sleeps, nor dreams the cause.50The cause how obvious, when his reason wakes!His grief is but his grandeur in disguise;And discontent is immortality.Shall sons of ether, shall the blood of heaven,Set up their hopes on earth, and stable here,With brutal acquiescence in the mire?Lorenzo, no! they shall be nobly pain’d;The glorious foreigners, distress’d, shall sighOn thrones; and thou congratulate the sigh:Man’s misery declares him born for bliss;60His anxious heart asserts the truth I sing,And gives the sceptic in his head the lie.Our heads, our hearts, our passions, and our powers,Speak the same language; call us to the skies:Unripen’d these in this inclement clime,Scarce rise above conjecture, and mistake;And for this land of trifles those too strongTumultuous rise, and tempest human life:68What prize on earth can pay us for the storm?Meet objects for our passions Heaven ordain’d,Objects that challenge all their fire, and leaveNo fault, but in defect: bless’d Heaven! avertA bounded ardour for unbounded bliss!O for a bliss unbounded! Far beneathA soul immortal, is a mortal joy.Nor are our powers to perish immature;But, after feeble effort here, beneathA brighter sun, and in a nobler soil,Transplanted from this sublunary bed,Shall flourish fair, and put forth all their bloom.80Reason progressive, Instinct is complete;Swift Instinct leaps; slow Reason feebly climbs.Brutes soon their zenith reach; their little allFlows in at once; in ages they no moreCould know, or do, or covet, or enjoy.Were man to live coeval with the sun,The patriarch-pupil would be learning still;Yet, dying, leave his lesson half unlearn’d.Men perish in advance, as if the sunShould set ere noon, in eastern oceans drown’d;90If fit, with dim, illustrious to compare,The sun’s meridian with the soul of man.To man, why, stepdame Nature! so severe?Why thrown aside thy masterpiece half wrought,While meaner efforts thy last hand enjoy?Or, if abortively, poor man must die,Nor reach, what reach he might, why die in dread?Why cursed with foresight? wise to misery?Why of his proud prerogative the prey?Why less pre-eminent in rank than pain?100His immortality alone can tell;Full ample fund to balance all amiss,102And turn the scale in favour of the just!His immortality alone can solveThe darkest of enigmas, human hope;Of all the darkest, if at death we die.Hope, eager Hope, th’ assassin of our joy,All present blessings treading under foot,Is scarce a milder tyrant than Despair.With no past toils content, still planting new,110Hope turns us o’er to death alone for ease.Possession, why more tasteless than pursuit?Why is a wish far dearer than a crown?That wish accomplish’d, why the grave of bliss?Because, in the great future buried deep,Beyond our plans of empire and renown,Lies all that man with ardour should pursue;And He who made him, bent him to the right.Man’s heart th’ Almighty to the future sets,By secret and inviolable springs;120And makes his hope his sublunary joy.Man’s heart eats all things, and is hungry still;“More, more!” the glutton cries: for something newSo rages appetite, if man can’t mount,He will descend. He starves on the possess’d.Hence, the world’s master, from ambition’s spire,In Caprea plunged; and dived beneath the brute.In that rank sty why wallow’d empire’s sonSupreme? Because he could no higher fly;His riot was ambition in despair.130Old Rome consulted birds; Lorenzo! thouWith more success, the flight of Hope survey;Of restless Hope, for ever on the wing.High perch’d o’er every thought that falcon sits,To fly at all that rises in her sight;And never stooping, but to mount again136Next moment, she betrays her aim’s mistake,And owns her quarry lodged beyond the grave.There should it fail us (it must fail us there,If being fails), more mournful riddles rise,And Virtue vies with Hope in mystery.Why Virtue? where its praise, its being, fled?Virtue is true self-interest pursued:143What true self-interest of quite-mortal man?To close with all that makes him happy here.If vice (as sometimes) is our friend on earth,Then vice is virtue; ’tis our sovereign good.In self-applause is virtue’s golden prize;No self-applause attends it on thy scheme:Whence self-applause? From conscience of the right.And what is right, but means of happiness?151No means of happiness when virtue yields;That basis failing, falls the building too,And lays in ruin every virtuous joy.The rigid guardian of a blameless heart,So long revered, so long reputed wise,Is weak; with rank knight-errantries o’errun.Why beats thy bosom with illustrious dreamsOf self-exposure, laudable, and great?Of gallant enterprise, and glorious death?160Die for thy country!—Thou romantic fool!Seize, seize the plank thyself, and let her sink:Thy country! what to thee?—the Godhead, what?(I speak with awe!) though He should bid thee bleed?If, with thy blood, thy final hope is spilt,Nor can Omnipotence reward the blow,Be deaf; preserve thy being; disobey.Nor is it disobedience: know, Lorenzo!Whate’er th’ Almighty’s subsequent command,His first command is this:—“Man, love thyself.”170In this alone, free agents are not free.Existence is the basis, bliss the prize;If virtue costs existence, ’tis a crime;Bold violation of our law supreme,Black suicide; though nations, which consultTheir gain, at thy expence, resound applause.Since Virtue’s recompence is doubtful, here,If man dies wholly, well may we demand,Why is man suffer’d to be good in vain?Why to be good in vain, is man enjoin’d?180Why to be good in vain, is man betray’d?Betray’d by traitors lodged in his own breast,By sweet complacencies from virtue felt?Why whispers Nature lies on Virtue’s part?Or if blind Instinct (which assumes the nameOf sacred conscience) plays the fool in man,Why Reason made accomplice in the cheat?Why are the wisest loudest in her praise?Can man by Reason’s beam be led astray?Or, at his peril, imitate his God?190Since virtue sometimes ruins us on earth,Or both are true, or man survives the grave.Or man survives the grave, or own, Lorenzo,Thy boast supreme, a wild absurdity.Dauntless thy spirit; cowards are thy scorn.Grant man immortal, and thy scorn is just.The man immortal, rationally brave,Dares rush on death—because he cannot die.But if man loses all, when life is lost,He lives a coward, or a fool expires.200A daring infidel (and such there are,From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge,Or pure heroical defect of thought),203Of all earth’s madmen, most deserves a chain.When to the grave we follow the renown’dFor valour, virtue, science, all we love,And all we praise; for worth, whose noontide beam,Enabling us to think in higher style,Mends our ideas of ethereal powers;Dream we, that lustre of the moral world210Goes out in stench, and rottenness the close?Why was he wise to know, and warm to praise,And strenuous to transcribe, in human life,The Mind Almighty? Could it be, that Fate,Just when the lineaments began to shine,And dawn the Deity, should snatch the draught,With night eternal blot it out, and giveThe skies alarm, lest angels too might die?If human souls, why not angelic tooExtinguish’d? and a solitary God,220O’er ghastly ruin, frowning from his throne?Shall we this moment gaze on God in man?The next, lose man for ever in the dust?From dust we disengage, or man mistakes;And there, where least his judgment fears a flaw.Wisdom and worth, how boldly he commends!Wisdom and worth, are sacred names; revered,Where not embraced; applauded; deified;Why not compassion’d too? If spirits die,Both are calamities, inflicted both,230To make us but more wretched: Wisdom’s eyeAcute, for what? to spy more miseries;And worth, so recompensed, new-points their stings.Or man surmounts the grave, or gain is loss,And worth exalted humbles us the more.Thou wilt not patronise a scheme that makes236Weakness and vice the refuge of mankind.“Has virtue, then, no joys?”—Yes, joys dear-bought.Talk ne’er so long, in this imperfect state,Virtue and vice are at eternal war,Virtue’s a combat; and who fights for nought?Or for precarious, or for small reward?Who virtue’s self-reward so loud resound,243Would take degrees angelic here below,And virtue, while they compliment, betray,By feeble motives, and unfaithful guards.The crown, th’ unfading crown, her soul inspires:’Tis that, and that alone, can countervailThe body’s treacheries, and the world’s assaults:On earth’s poor pay our famish’d virtue dies.250Truth incontestible! in spite of allA Bayle has preach’d, or a Voltaire believed.In man the more we dive, the more we seeHeaven’s signet stamping an immortal make.Dive to the bottom of his soul, the baseSustaining all; what find we? knowledge, love.As light and heat, essential to the sun,These to the soul. And why, if souls expire?How little lovely here? how little known?Small knowledge we dig up with endless toil;260And love unfeign’d may purchase perfect hate.Why starved, on earth, our angel appetites;While brutal are indulged their fulsome fill?Were then capacities divine conferr’d,As a mock-diadem, in savage sport,Rank insult of our pompous poverty,Which reaps but pain, from seeming claims so fair?In future age lies no redress? and shutsEternity the door on our complaint?If so, for what strange ends were mortals made!270The worst to wallow, and the best to weep;The man who merits most, must most complain:Can we conceive a disregard in heaven,What the worst perpetrate, or best endure?This cannot be. To love, and know, in manIs boundless appetite, and boundless power;And these demonstrate boundless objects too.Objects, powers, appetites, Heaven suits in all;Nor, nature through, e’er violates this sweet,Eternal concord, on her tuneful string.280Is Man the sole exception from her laws?Eternity struck off from human hope(I speak with truth, but veneration too),Man is a monster, the reproach of Heaven,A stain, a dark impenetrable cloudOn Nature’s beauteous aspect; and deforms(Amazing blot!), deforms her with her lord.If such is man’s allotment, what is heaven?Or own the soul immortal, or blaspheme.Or own the soul immortal, or invert290All order. Go, mock-majesty! go, man!And bow to thy superiors of the stall;Through every scene of sense superior far:They graze the turf untill’d; they drink the streamUnbrew’d, and ever full, and unembitter’dWith doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despairs;Mankind’s peculiar! reason’s precious dower!No foreign clime they ransack for their robes;Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar;Their good is good entire, unmix’d, unmarr’d;300They find a paradise in every field,On boughs forbidden where no curses hang:Their ill no more than strikes the sense; unstretch’dBy previous dread, or murmur in the rear:304When the worst comes, it comes unfear’d; one strokeBegins, and ends, their woe: they die but once;Bless’d, incommunicable privilege! for whichProud man, who rules the globe, and reads the stars,Philosopher, or hero, sighs in vain.Account for this prerogative in brutes.No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot,But what beams on it from eternity.312O sole and sweet solution! that untiesThe difficult, and softens the severe;The cloud on nature’s beauteous face dispels;Restores bright order; casts the brute beneath;And re-enthrones us in supremacyOf joy, even here: admit immortal life,And virtue is knight-errantry no more;Each virtue brings in hand a golden dower,320Far richer in reversion: Hope exults;And though much bitter in our cup is thrown,Predominates, and gives the taste of heaven.O wherefore is the Deity so kind?Astonishing beyond astonishment!Heaven our reward—for heaven enjoy’d below.Still unsubdued thy stubborn heart?—for thereThe traitor lurks who doubts the truth I sing.Reason is guiltless; will alone rebels.What, in that stubborn heart, if I should find330New, unexpected witnesses against thee?Ambition, pleasure, and the love of gain!Canst thou suspect that these, which make the soulThe slave of earth, should own her heir of heaven?Canst thou suspect what makes us disbelieveOur immortality, should prove it sure?First, then, Ambition summon to the bar.Ambition’s shame, extravagance, disgust338And inextinguishable nature, speak.Each much deposes; hear them in their turn.Thy soul, how passionately fond of fame!How anxious, that fond passion to conceal!We blush, detected in designs on praise,Though for best deeds, and from the best of men:And why? Because immortal. Art divineHas made the body tutor to the soul;Heaven kindly gives our blood a moral flow;Bids it ascend the glowing cheek, and thereUpbraid that little heart’s inglorious aim,Which stoops to court a character from man;350While o’er us, in tremendous judgment sitFar more than man, with endless praise, and blame.Ambition’s boundless appetite outspeaksThe verdict of its shame. When souls take fireAt high presumptions of their own desert,One age is poor applause; the mighty shout,The thunder by the living few begun,Late time must echo; worlds unborn resound.We wish our names eternally to live:Wild dream! which ne’er had haunted human thought,Had not our natures been eternal too.361Instinct points out an interest in hereafter;But our blind reason sees not where it lies;Or, seeing, gives the substance for the shade.Fame is the shade of immortality,And in itself a shadow. Soon as caught,Contemn’d; it shrinks to nothing in the grasp.Consult th’ ambitious, ’tis ambition’s cure.“And is this all?” cried Cæsar at his height,Disgusted. This third proof Ambition brings370Of immortality. The first in fame.Observe him near, your envy will abate:372Shamed at the disproportion vast, betweenThe passion and the purchase, he will sighAt such success, and blush at his renown.And why? Because far richer prize invitesHis heart; far more illustrious glory calls:It calls in whispers, yet the deafest hear.And can Ambition a fourth proof supply?It can, and stronger than the former three;380Yet quite o’erlook’d by some reputed wise.Though disappointments in ambition pain,And though success disgusts; yet still, Lorenzo!In vain we strive to pluck it from our hearts;By Nature planted for the noblest ends.Absurd the famed advice to Pyrrhus[34]given,More praised, than ponder’d; specious, but unsound;Sooner that hero’s sword the world had quell’d,Than Reason, his ambition. Man must soar.An obstinate activity within,390An insuppressive spring, will toss him upIn spite of Fortune’s load. Not kings alone,Each villager has his ambition too;No Sultan prouder than his fetter’d slave:Slaves build their little Babylons of straw,Echo the proud Assyrian, in their hearts,And cry,—“Behold the wonders of my might!”And why? Because immortal as their lord;And souls immortal must for ever heaveAt something great; the glitter, or the gold;400The praise of mortals, or the praise of Heaven.Nor absolutely vain is human praise,When human is supported by divine.I’ll introduce Lorenzo to himself;404Pleasure and Pride (bad masters!) share our hearts.As love of pleasure is ordain’d to guardAnd feed our bodies, and extend our race;The love of praise is planted to protect,And propagate the glories of the mind.What is it, but the love of praise, inspires,Matures, refines, embellishes, exalts,Earth’s happiness? From that, the delicate,412The grand, the marvellous, of civil life,Want and convenience, underworkers, layThe basis, on which love of glory builds.Nor is thy life, O Virtue! less in debtTo praise, thy secret stimulating friend.Were men not proud, what merit should we miss!Pride made the virtues of the Pagan world.Praise is the salt that seasons right to man,420And whets his appetite for moral good.Thirst of applause is Virtue’s second guard;Reason, her first; but reason wants an aid;Our private reason is a flatterer;Thirst of applause calls public judgment in,To poise our own, to keep an even scale,And give endanger’d Virtue fairer play.Here a fifth proof arises, stronger still:Why this so nice construction of our hearts?These delicate moralities of sense;430This constitutional reserve of aidTo succour virtue, when our reason fails;If virtue, kept alive by care and toil,And oft, the mark of injuries on earth,When labour’d to maturity (its billOf disciplines, and pains, unpaid), must die?Why freighted rich, to dash against a rock?Were man to perish when most fit to live,438O how misspent were all these stratagems,By skill divine inwoven in our frame!Where are Heaven’s holiness and mercy fled?Laughs Heaven, at once, at Virtue, and at Man?If not, why that discouraged, this destroy’d?Thus far Ambition. What says Avarice?This her chief maxim, which has long been thine:“The wise and wealthy are the same,”—I grant it.To store up treasure with incessant toil,This is man’s province, this his highest praise.To this great end keen Instinct stings him on.To guide that instinct, Reason! is thy charge;450’Tis thine to tell us where true treasure lies:But, Reason failing to discharge her trust,Or to the deaf discharging it in vain,A blunder follows; and blind Industry,Gall’d by the spur, but stranger to the course(The course where stakes of more than gold are won),O’erloading, with the cares of distant age,The jaded spirits of the present hour,Provides for an eternity below.“Thou shalt not covet,” is a wise command;460But bounded to the wealth the sun surveys:Look farther, the command stands quite reversed,And avarice is a virtue most divine.Is faith a refuge for our happiness?Most sure: and is it not for reason too?Nothing this world unriddles, but the next.Whence inextinguishable thirst of gain?From inextinguishable life in man.Man, if not meant, by worth, to reach the skies,Had wanted wing to fly so far in guilt.470Sour grapes, I grant, ambition, avarice,Yet still their root is immortality:472These its wild growths so bitter, and so base,(Pain and reproach!) Religion can reclaim,Refine, exalt, throw down their poisonous lee,And make them sparkle in the bowl of bliss.See, the third witness laughs at bliss remote,And falsely promises an Eden here:Truth she shall speak for once, though prone to lie,A common cheat, and Pleasure is her name.480To Pleasure never was Lorenzo deaf;Then hear her now, now first thy real friend.Since Nature made us not more fond than proudOf happiness (whence hypocrites in joy!Makers of mirth! artificers of smiles!),Why should the joy most poignant sense affords,Burn us with blushes, and rebuke our pride?—Those heaven-born blushes tell us man descends,Even in the zenith of his earthly bliss:Should Reason take her infidel repose,490This honest instinct speaks our lineage high;This instinct calls on darkness to concealOur rapturous relation to the stalls.Our glory covers us with noble shame,And he that’s unconfounded, is unmann’d.The man that blushes, is not quite a brute.Thus far with thee, Lorenzo, will I close:Pleasure is good, and man for pleasure made;But pleasure full of glory, as of joy;Pleasure, which neither blushes, nor expires.500The witnesses are heard; the cause is o’er;Let Conscience file the sentence in her court,Dearer than deeds that half a realm convey;Thus seal’d by Truth, th’ authentic record runs:“Know all; know, infidels,—unapt to know!’Tis immortality your nature solves;506’Tis immortality deciphers man,And opens all the mysteries of his make.Without it, half his instincts are a riddle;Without it, all his virtues are a dream.His very crimes attest his dignity;His sateless thirst of pleasure, gold, and fame,Declares him born for blessings infinite:513What less than infinite makes unabsurdPassions, which all on earth but more inflames?Fierce passions, so mismeasured to this scene,Stretch’d out, like eagles’ wings, beyond our nest,Far, far beyond the worth of all below,For earth too large, presage a nobler flight,And evidence our title to the skies.”520Ye gentle theologues, of calmer kind!Whose constitution dictates to your pen,Who, cold yourselves, think ardour comes from hell!Think not our passions from Corruption sprung,Though to Corruption now they lend their wings;That is their mistress, not their mother. All(And justly) Reason deem divine: I see,I feel a grandeur in the passions too,Which speaks their high descent, and glorious end;Which speaks them rays of an eternal fire.530In Paradise itself they burn’d as strong,Ere Adam fell; though wiser in their aim.Like the proud Eastern,[35]struck by Providence,What though our passions are run mad, and stoopWith low, terrestrial appetite, to grazeOn trash, on toys, dethroned from high desire?Yet still, through their disgrace, no feeble rayOf greatness shines, and tells us whence they fell:But these (like that fallen monarch when reclaim’d),539When Reason moderates the rein aright,Shall reascend, remount their former sphere,Where once they soar’d illustrious; ere seducedBy wanton Eve’s debauch, to stroll on earth,And set the sublunary world on fire.But grant their phrensy lasts; their phrensy failsTo disappoint one providential end,For which Heaven blew up ardour in our hearts:Were Reason silent, boundless Passion speaksA future scene of boundless objects too,And brings glad tidings of eternal day.550Eternal day! ’tis that enlightens all;And all, by that enlighten’d, proves it sure.Consider man as an immortal being,Intelligible all; and all is great;A crystalline transparency prevails,And strikes full lustre through the human sphere:Consider man as mortal, all is dark,And wretched; Reason weeps at the survey.The learn’d Lorenzo cries, “And let her weep,Weak, modern Reason: ancient times were wise.560Authority, that venerable guide,Stands on my part; the famed Athenian porch(And who for wisdom so renown’d as they?)Denied this immortality to man.”I grant it; but affirm, they proved it too.A riddle this!—have patience; I’ll explain.What noble vanities, what moral flights,Glittering through their romantic wisdom’s page,Make us at once despise them, and admire?Fable is flat to these high-season’d sires;570They leave th’ extravagance of song below.“Flesh shall not feel; or, feeling, shall enjoyThe dagger, or the rack; to them, alike573A bed of roses, or the burning bull.”In men exploding all beyond the grave,Strange doctrine, this! As doctrine, it was strange;But not, as prophecy; for such it proved,And, to their own amazement, was fulfill’d:They feign’d a firmness Christians need not feign.The Christian truly triumph’d in the flame:580The Stoic saw, in double wonder lost,Wonder at them, and wonder at himself,To find the bold adventures of his thoughtNot bold, and that he strove to lie in vain.Whence, then, those thoughts? those towering thoughts, that flewSuch monstrous heights?—From instinct, and from pride.The glorious instinct of a deathless soul,Confusedly conscious of her dignity,Suggested truths they could not understand.In Lust’s dominion, and in Passion’s storm,590Truth’s system broken, scatter’d fragments lay,As light in chaos, glimmering through the gloom:Smit with the pomp of lofty sentiments,Pleased Pride proclaim’d, what Reason disbelieved.Pride, like the Delphic priestess, with a swell,Raved nonsense, destined to be future sense,When life immortal, in full day, shall shine;And death’s dark shadows fly the Gospel sun.They spoke, what nothing but immortal soulsCould speak; and thus the truth they question’d, proved.Can then absurdities, as well as crimes,601Speak man immortal? All things speak him so.Much has been urged; and dost thou call for more?Call; and with endless questions be distress’d,All unresolvable, if earth is all.“Why life, a moment; infinite, desire?606Our wish, eternity? Our home, the grave?Heaven’s promise dormant lies in human hope;Who wishes life immortal, proves it too.Why happiness pursued, though never found?Man’s thirst of happiness declares it is,(For nature never gravitates to nought);That thirst unquench’d declares it is not here.613My Lucia, thy Clarissa call to thought;Why cordial friendship riveted so deep,As hearts to pierce at first, at parting, rend,If friend, and friendship, vanish in an hour?Is not this torment in the mask of joy?Why by reflection marr’d the joys of sense?Why past, and future, preying on our hearts,620And putting all our present joys to death?Why labours Reason? Instinct were as well;Instinct far better; what can choose, can err:O how infallible the thoughtless brute!’Twere well his Holiness were half as sure.Reason with inclination, why at war?Why sense of guilt? why Conscience up in arms?”Conscience of guilt, is prophecy of pain,And bosom-council to decline the blow.Reason with inclination ne’er had jarr’d,630If nothing future paid forbearance here:Thus on—these, and a thousand pleas uncall’d,All promise, some insure, a second scene;Which, were it doubtful, would be dearer farThan all things else most certain; were it false,What truth on earth so precious as the lie?This world it gives us, let what will ensue;This world it gives, in that high cordial, hope:The future of the present is the soul.How this life groans, when sever’d from the next!640Poor mutilated wretch, that disbelieves!By dark distrust his being cut in two,In both parts perishes; life void of joy,Sad prelude of eternity in pain!Couldst thou persuade me, the next life could failOur ardent wishes; how should I pour outMy bleeding heart in anguish, new, as deep!Oh! with what thoughts, thy hope, and my despair,Abhorr’d annihilation! blasts the soul,And wide extends the bounds of human woe!650Could I believe Lorenzo’s system true,In this black channel would my ravings run:“Grief from the future borrow’d peace, erewhile.The future vanish’d! and the present pain’d!Strange import of unprecedented ill!Fall, how profound! Like Lucifer’s, the fall!Unequal fate! his fall, without his guilt!From where fond Hope built her pavilion high,The gods among, hurl’d headlong, hurl’d at onceTo night! to nothing! darker still than night.660If ’twas a dream, why wake me, my worst foe,Lorenzo! boastful of the name of friend?O for delusion! O for error still!Could vengeance strike much stronger than to plantA thinking being in a world like this,Not over-rich before, now beggar’d quite;More cursed than at the fall?—The sun goes out!The thorns shoot up! What thorns in every thought!Why sense of better? It embitters worse.Why sense? why life? If but to sigh, then sink670To what I was! twice nothing! and much woe!Woe, from Heaven’s bounties! woe from what was wontTo flatter most, high intellectual powers.Thought, virtue, knowledge!—blessings, by thy scheme,All poison’d into pains. First, knowledge, once675My soul’s ambition, now her greatest dread.To know myself, true wisdom?—No, to shunThat shocking science, parent of despair!Avert thy mirror: if I see, I die.“Know my Creator! climb his bless’d abodeBy painful speculation, pierce the veil,Dive in his nature, read his attributes,And gaze in admiration—on a foe,683Obtruding life, withholding happiness!From the full rivers that surround his throne,Not letting fall one drop of joy on man;Man gasping for one drop, that he might ceaseTo curse his birth, nor envy reptiles more!Ye sable clouds! ye darkest shades of night!Hide him, for ever hide him, from my thought,690Once all my comfort; source, and soul of joy!Now leagued with furies, and with thee,[36]against me.“Know his achievements? study his renown?Contemplate this amazing universe,Dropp’d from his hand, with miracles replete!For what? ’Mid miracles of nobler name,To find one miracle of misery?To find the being, which alone can knowAnd praise his works, a blemish on his praise?Through nature’s ample range, in thought, to stroll,700And start at man, the single mourner there,Breathing high hope, chain’d down to pangs, and death?Knowing is suffering: and shall Virtue shareThe sigh of knowledge?—Virtue shares the sigh.By straining up the steep of excellent,By battles fought, and, from temptation won,What gains she, but the pang of seeing worth,707Angelic worth, soon shuffled in the darkWith every vice, and swept to brutal dust?Merit is madness; virtue is a crime;A crime to reason, if it costs us painUnpaid: what pain, amidst a thousand more,To think the most abandon’d, after days713Of triumph o’er their betters, find in deathAs soft a pillow, nor make fouler clay!“Duty! Religion!—these, our duty done,Imply reward. Religion is mistake.Duty!—there’s none, but to repel the cheat.Ye cheats, away! ye daughters of my pride!Who feign yourselves the favourites of the skies:720Ye towering hopes! abortive energies!That toss, and struggle, in my lying breast,To scale the skies, and build presumptions there,As I were heir of an eternity.Vain, vain ambitions! trouble me no more.Why travel far in quest of sure defeat?As bounded as my being, be my wish.All is inverted; wisdom is a fool.Sense! take the rein; blind Passion! drive us on;And, Ignorance! befriend us on our way;730Ye new, but truest patrons of our peace!Yes; give the pulse full empire; live the brute,Since, as the brute, we die. The sum of man,Of godlike man! to revel, and to rot.“But not on equal terms with other brutes:Their revels a more poignant relish yield,And safer too; they never poisons choose.Instinct, than reason, makes more wholesome meals,And sends all-marring murmur far away.For sensual life they best philosophize;740Theirs, that serene, the sages sought in vain:741’Tis man alone expostulates with Heaven;His all the power, and all the cause, to mourn.Shall human eyes alone dissolve in tears?And bleed, in anguish, none but human hearts?The wide-stretch’d realm of intellectual woe,Surpassing sensual far, is all our own.In life so fatally distinguish’d, whyCast in one lot, confounded, lump’d, in death?“Ere yet in being, was mankind in guilt?750Why thunder’d this peculiar clause against us,All-mortal, and all-wretched!—Have the skiesReasons of state, their subjects may not scan,Nor humbly reason, when they sorely sigh?All-mortal, and all-wretched!—’Tis too much:Unparallell’d in nature: ’tis too muchOn being unrequested at thy hands,Omnipotent! for I see nought but power.“And why see that? Why thought? To toil, and eat,Then make our bed in darkness, needs no thought.760What superfluities are reasoning souls!Oh give eternity! or thought destroy.But without thought our curse were half unfelt;Its blunted edge would spare the throbbing heart;And, therefore, ’tis bestow’d, I thank thee, Reason!For aiding life’s too small calamities,And giving being to the dread of Death.Such are thy bounties!—was it then too muchFor me, to trespass on the brutal rights?Too much for Heaven to make one emmet more?770Too much for chaos to permit my massA longer stay with essences unwrought,Unfashion’d, untormented into man?Wretched preferment to this round of pains!Wretched capacity of phrensy, thought!775Wretched capacity of dying, life!Life, thought, worth, wisdom, all (O foul revolt!)Once friends to peace, gone over to the foe.“Death, then, has changed his nature too: O Death!Come to my bosom, thou best gift of Heaven!Best friend of man! since man is man no more.Why in this thorny wilderness so long,Since there’s no promised land’s ambrosial bower,783To pay me with its honey for my stings?If needful to the selfish schemes of HeavenTo sting us sore, why mock’d our misery?Why this so sumptuous insult o’er our heads?Why this illustrious canopy display’d?Why so magnificently lodged Despair?At stated periods, sure returning, roll790These glorious orbs, that mortals may computeTheir length of labours, and of pains; nor loseTheir misery’s full measure?—Smiles with flowers,And fruits, promiscuous, ever-teeming earth,That man may languish in luxurious scenes,And in an Eden mourn his wither’d joys?Claim earth and skies man’s admiration, dueFor such delights! Blest animals! too wiseTo wonder, and too happy to complain!“Our doom decreed demands a mournful scene:800Why not a dungeon dark, for the condemn’d?Why not the dragon’s subterranean den,For man to howl in? Why not his abodeOf the same dismal colour with his fate?A Thebes, a Babylon, at vast expenceOf time, toil, treasure, art, for owls and adders,As congruous as, for man, this lofty dome,Which prompts proud thought, and kindles high desire;If, from her humble chamber in the dust,809While proud thought swells, and high desire inflames,The poor worm calls us for her inmates there;And, round us, Death’s inexorable handDraws the dark curtain close; undrawn no more.“Undrawn no more!—Behind the cloud of death,Once I beheld a sun; a sun which giltThat sable cloud, and turn’d it all to gold:How the grave’s alter’d! fathomless, as hell!A real hell to those who dreamt of heaven.Annihilation! how it yawns before me!Next moment I may drop from thought, from sense,820The privilege of angels, and of worms,An outcast from existence! and this spirit,This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul,This particle of energy divine,Which travels nature, flies from star to star,And visits gods, and emulates their powers,For ever is extinguish’d. Horror! death!Death of that death I fearless once survey’d!—When horror universal shall descend,And heaven’s dark concave urn all human race,830On that enormous, unrefunding tomb,How just this verse! this monumental sigh!”

Heaven gives the needful, but neglected, call.

What day, what hour, but knocks at human hearts,

To wake the soul to sense of future scenes?3

Deaths stand, like Mercuries, in every way,

And kindly point us to our journey’s end.

Pope, who could’st make immortals! art thou dead?

I give thee joy: nor will I take my leave;

So soon to follow. Man but dives in death;

Dives from the sun, in fairer day to rise;

The grave, his subterranean road to bliss.10

Yes, infinite indulgence plann’d it so;

Through various parts our glorious story runs;

Time gives the preface, endless age unrolls

The volume (ne’er unroll’d!) of human fate.

This, earth and skies already[32]have proclaim’d.

The world’s a prophecy of worlds to come;

And who, what God foretells (who speaks in things,

Still louder than in words) shall dare deny?

If Nature’s arguments appear too weak,

Turn a new leaf, and stronger read in Man.20

If man sleeps on, untaught by what he sees,

Can he prove infidel to what he feels?

He, whose blind thought futurity denies,

Unconscious bears, Bellerophon![33]like thee,

His own indictment; he condemns himself;

Who reads his bosom, reads immortal life;

Or, Nature, there, imposing on her sons,

Has written fables; man was made a lie.

Why Discontent for ever harbour’d there?

Incurable consumption of our peace!30

Resolve me, why, the cottager, and king,

He, whom sea-sever’d realms obey, and he

Who steals his whole dominion from the waste,

Repelling winter blasts with mud and straw34

Disquieted alike, draw sigh for sigh,

In fate so distant, in complaint so near?

Is it, that things terrestrial can’t content?

Deep in rich pasture will thy flocks complain?

Not so; but to their master is denied

To share their sweet serene. Man, ill at ease,

In this, not his own place, this foreign field,

Where Nature fodders him with other food,42

Than was ordain’d his cravings to suffice,

Poor in abundance, famish’d at a feast,

Sighs on for something more, when most enjoy’d.

Is Heaven, then, kinder to thy flocks than thee?

Not so; thy pasture richer, but remote;

In part, remote; for that remoter part

Man bleats from instinct, though perhaps, debauch’d

By sense, his reason sleeps, nor dreams the cause.50

The cause how obvious, when his reason wakes!

His grief is but his grandeur in disguise;

And discontent is immortality.

Shall sons of ether, shall the blood of heaven,

Set up their hopes on earth, and stable here,

With brutal acquiescence in the mire?

Lorenzo, no! they shall be nobly pain’d;

The glorious foreigners, distress’d, shall sigh

On thrones; and thou congratulate the sigh:

Man’s misery declares him born for bliss;60

His anxious heart asserts the truth I sing,

And gives the sceptic in his head the lie.

Our heads, our hearts, our passions, and our powers,

Speak the same language; call us to the skies:

Unripen’d these in this inclement clime,

Scarce rise above conjecture, and mistake;

And for this land of trifles those too strong

Tumultuous rise, and tempest human life:68

What prize on earth can pay us for the storm?

Meet objects for our passions Heaven ordain’d,

Objects that challenge all their fire, and leave

No fault, but in defect: bless’d Heaven! avert

A bounded ardour for unbounded bliss!

O for a bliss unbounded! Far beneath

A soul immortal, is a mortal joy.

Nor are our powers to perish immature;

But, after feeble effort here, beneath

A brighter sun, and in a nobler soil,

Transplanted from this sublunary bed,

Shall flourish fair, and put forth all their bloom.80

Reason progressive, Instinct is complete;

Swift Instinct leaps; slow Reason feebly climbs.

Brutes soon their zenith reach; their little all

Flows in at once; in ages they no more

Could know, or do, or covet, or enjoy.

Were man to live coeval with the sun,

The patriarch-pupil would be learning still;

Yet, dying, leave his lesson half unlearn’d.

Men perish in advance, as if the sun

Should set ere noon, in eastern oceans drown’d;90

If fit, with dim, illustrious to compare,

The sun’s meridian with the soul of man.

To man, why, stepdame Nature! so severe?

Why thrown aside thy masterpiece half wrought,

While meaner efforts thy last hand enjoy?

Or, if abortively, poor man must die,

Nor reach, what reach he might, why die in dread?

Why cursed with foresight? wise to misery?

Why of his proud prerogative the prey?

Why less pre-eminent in rank than pain?100

His immortality alone can tell;

Full ample fund to balance all amiss,102

And turn the scale in favour of the just!

His immortality alone can solve

The darkest of enigmas, human hope;

Of all the darkest, if at death we die.

Hope, eager Hope, th’ assassin of our joy,

All present blessings treading under foot,

Is scarce a milder tyrant than Despair.

With no past toils content, still planting new,110

Hope turns us o’er to death alone for ease.

Possession, why more tasteless than pursuit?

Why is a wish far dearer than a crown?

That wish accomplish’d, why the grave of bliss?

Because, in the great future buried deep,

Beyond our plans of empire and renown,

Lies all that man with ardour should pursue;

And He who made him, bent him to the right.

Man’s heart th’ Almighty to the future sets,

By secret and inviolable springs;120

And makes his hope his sublunary joy.

Man’s heart eats all things, and is hungry still;

“More, more!” the glutton cries: for something new

So rages appetite, if man can’t mount,

He will descend. He starves on the possess’d.

Hence, the world’s master, from ambition’s spire,

In Caprea plunged; and dived beneath the brute.

In that rank sty why wallow’d empire’s son

Supreme? Because he could no higher fly;

His riot was ambition in despair.130

Old Rome consulted birds; Lorenzo! thou

With more success, the flight of Hope survey;

Of restless Hope, for ever on the wing.

High perch’d o’er every thought that falcon sits,

To fly at all that rises in her sight;

And never stooping, but to mount again136

Next moment, she betrays her aim’s mistake,

And owns her quarry lodged beyond the grave.

There should it fail us (it must fail us there,

If being fails), more mournful riddles rise,

And Virtue vies with Hope in mystery.

Why Virtue? where its praise, its being, fled?

Virtue is true self-interest pursued:143

What true self-interest of quite-mortal man?

To close with all that makes him happy here.

If vice (as sometimes) is our friend on earth,

Then vice is virtue; ’tis our sovereign good.

In self-applause is virtue’s golden prize;

No self-applause attends it on thy scheme:

Whence self-applause? From conscience of the right.

And what is right, but means of happiness?151

No means of happiness when virtue yields;

That basis failing, falls the building too,

And lays in ruin every virtuous joy.

The rigid guardian of a blameless heart,

So long revered, so long reputed wise,

Is weak; with rank knight-errantries o’errun.

Why beats thy bosom with illustrious dreams

Of self-exposure, laudable, and great?

Of gallant enterprise, and glorious death?160

Die for thy country!—Thou romantic fool!

Seize, seize the plank thyself, and let her sink:

Thy country! what to thee?—the Godhead, what?

(I speak with awe!) though He should bid thee bleed?

If, with thy blood, thy final hope is spilt,

Nor can Omnipotence reward the blow,

Be deaf; preserve thy being; disobey.

Nor is it disobedience: know, Lorenzo!

Whate’er th’ Almighty’s subsequent command,

His first command is this:—“Man, love thyself.”170

In this alone, free agents are not free.

Existence is the basis, bliss the prize;

If virtue costs existence, ’tis a crime;

Bold violation of our law supreme,

Black suicide; though nations, which consult

Their gain, at thy expence, resound applause.

Since Virtue’s recompence is doubtful, here,

If man dies wholly, well may we demand,

Why is man suffer’d to be good in vain?

Why to be good in vain, is man enjoin’d?180

Why to be good in vain, is man betray’d?

Betray’d by traitors lodged in his own breast,

By sweet complacencies from virtue felt?

Why whispers Nature lies on Virtue’s part?

Or if blind Instinct (which assumes the name

Of sacred conscience) plays the fool in man,

Why Reason made accomplice in the cheat?

Why are the wisest loudest in her praise?

Can man by Reason’s beam be led astray?

Or, at his peril, imitate his God?190

Since virtue sometimes ruins us on earth,

Or both are true, or man survives the grave.

Or man survives the grave, or own, Lorenzo,

Thy boast supreme, a wild absurdity.

Dauntless thy spirit; cowards are thy scorn.

Grant man immortal, and thy scorn is just.

The man immortal, rationally brave,

Dares rush on death—because he cannot die.

But if man loses all, when life is lost,

He lives a coward, or a fool expires.200

A daring infidel (and such there are,

From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge,

Or pure heroical defect of thought),203

Of all earth’s madmen, most deserves a chain.

When to the grave we follow the renown’d

For valour, virtue, science, all we love,

And all we praise; for worth, whose noontide beam,

Enabling us to think in higher style,

Mends our ideas of ethereal powers;

Dream we, that lustre of the moral world210

Goes out in stench, and rottenness the close?

Why was he wise to know, and warm to praise,

And strenuous to transcribe, in human life,

The Mind Almighty? Could it be, that Fate,

Just when the lineaments began to shine,

And dawn the Deity, should snatch the draught,

With night eternal blot it out, and give

The skies alarm, lest angels too might die?

If human souls, why not angelic too

Extinguish’d? and a solitary God,220

O’er ghastly ruin, frowning from his throne?

Shall we this moment gaze on God in man?

The next, lose man for ever in the dust?

From dust we disengage, or man mistakes;

And there, where least his judgment fears a flaw.

Wisdom and worth, how boldly he commends!

Wisdom and worth, are sacred names; revered,

Where not embraced; applauded; deified;

Why not compassion’d too? If spirits die,

Both are calamities, inflicted both,230

To make us but more wretched: Wisdom’s eye

Acute, for what? to spy more miseries;

And worth, so recompensed, new-points their stings.

Or man surmounts the grave, or gain is loss,

And worth exalted humbles us the more.

Thou wilt not patronise a scheme that makes236

Weakness and vice the refuge of mankind.

“Has virtue, then, no joys?”—Yes, joys dear-bought.

Talk ne’er so long, in this imperfect state,

Virtue and vice are at eternal war,

Virtue’s a combat; and who fights for nought?

Or for precarious, or for small reward?

Who virtue’s self-reward so loud resound,243

Would take degrees angelic here below,

And virtue, while they compliment, betray,

By feeble motives, and unfaithful guards.

The crown, th’ unfading crown, her soul inspires:

’Tis that, and that alone, can countervail

The body’s treacheries, and the world’s assaults:

On earth’s poor pay our famish’d virtue dies.250

Truth incontestible! in spite of all

A Bayle has preach’d, or a Voltaire believed.

In man the more we dive, the more we see

Heaven’s signet stamping an immortal make.

Dive to the bottom of his soul, the base

Sustaining all; what find we? knowledge, love.

As light and heat, essential to the sun,

These to the soul. And why, if souls expire?

How little lovely here? how little known?

Small knowledge we dig up with endless toil;260

And love unfeign’d may purchase perfect hate.

Why starved, on earth, our angel appetites;

While brutal are indulged their fulsome fill?

Were then capacities divine conferr’d,

As a mock-diadem, in savage sport,

Rank insult of our pompous poverty,

Which reaps but pain, from seeming claims so fair?

In future age lies no redress? and shuts

Eternity the door on our complaint?

If so, for what strange ends were mortals made!270

The worst to wallow, and the best to weep;

The man who merits most, must most complain:

Can we conceive a disregard in heaven,

What the worst perpetrate, or best endure?

This cannot be. To love, and know, in man

Is boundless appetite, and boundless power;

And these demonstrate boundless objects too.

Objects, powers, appetites, Heaven suits in all;

Nor, nature through, e’er violates this sweet,

Eternal concord, on her tuneful string.280

Is Man the sole exception from her laws?

Eternity struck off from human hope

(I speak with truth, but veneration too),

Man is a monster, the reproach of Heaven,

A stain, a dark impenetrable cloud

On Nature’s beauteous aspect; and deforms

(Amazing blot!), deforms her with her lord.

If such is man’s allotment, what is heaven?

Or own the soul immortal, or blaspheme.

Or own the soul immortal, or invert290

All order. Go, mock-majesty! go, man!

And bow to thy superiors of the stall;

Through every scene of sense superior far:

They graze the turf untill’d; they drink the stream

Unbrew’d, and ever full, and unembitter’d

With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despairs;

Mankind’s peculiar! reason’s precious dower!

No foreign clime they ransack for their robes;

Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar;

Their good is good entire, unmix’d, unmarr’d;300

They find a paradise in every field,

On boughs forbidden where no curses hang:

Their ill no more than strikes the sense; unstretch’d

By previous dread, or murmur in the rear:304

When the worst comes, it comes unfear’d; one stroke

Begins, and ends, their woe: they die but once;

Bless’d, incommunicable privilege! for which

Proud man, who rules the globe, and reads the stars,

Philosopher, or hero, sighs in vain.

Account for this prerogative in brutes.

No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot,

But what beams on it from eternity.312

O sole and sweet solution! that unties

The difficult, and softens the severe;

The cloud on nature’s beauteous face dispels;

Restores bright order; casts the brute beneath;

And re-enthrones us in supremacy

Of joy, even here: admit immortal life,

And virtue is knight-errantry no more;

Each virtue brings in hand a golden dower,320

Far richer in reversion: Hope exults;

And though much bitter in our cup is thrown,

Predominates, and gives the taste of heaven.

O wherefore is the Deity so kind?

Astonishing beyond astonishment!

Heaven our reward—for heaven enjoy’d below.

Still unsubdued thy stubborn heart?—for there

The traitor lurks who doubts the truth I sing.

Reason is guiltless; will alone rebels.

What, in that stubborn heart, if I should find330

New, unexpected witnesses against thee?

Ambition, pleasure, and the love of gain!

Canst thou suspect that these, which make the soul

The slave of earth, should own her heir of heaven?

Canst thou suspect what makes us disbelieve

Our immortality, should prove it sure?

First, then, Ambition summon to the bar.

Ambition’s shame, extravagance, disgust338

And inextinguishable nature, speak.

Each much deposes; hear them in their turn.

Thy soul, how passionately fond of fame!

How anxious, that fond passion to conceal!

We blush, detected in designs on praise,

Though for best deeds, and from the best of men:

And why? Because immortal. Art divine

Has made the body tutor to the soul;

Heaven kindly gives our blood a moral flow;

Bids it ascend the glowing cheek, and there

Upbraid that little heart’s inglorious aim,

Which stoops to court a character from man;350

While o’er us, in tremendous judgment sit

Far more than man, with endless praise, and blame.

Ambition’s boundless appetite outspeaks

The verdict of its shame. When souls take fire

At high presumptions of their own desert,

One age is poor applause; the mighty shout,

The thunder by the living few begun,

Late time must echo; worlds unborn resound.

We wish our names eternally to live:

Wild dream! which ne’er had haunted human thought,

Had not our natures been eternal too.361

Instinct points out an interest in hereafter;

But our blind reason sees not where it lies;

Or, seeing, gives the substance for the shade.

Fame is the shade of immortality,

And in itself a shadow. Soon as caught,

Contemn’d; it shrinks to nothing in the grasp.

Consult th’ ambitious, ’tis ambition’s cure.

“And is this all?” cried Cæsar at his height,

Disgusted. This third proof Ambition brings370

Of immortality. The first in fame.

Observe him near, your envy will abate:372

Shamed at the disproportion vast, between

The passion and the purchase, he will sigh

At such success, and blush at his renown.

And why? Because far richer prize invites

His heart; far more illustrious glory calls:

It calls in whispers, yet the deafest hear.

And can Ambition a fourth proof supply?

It can, and stronger than the former three;380

Yet quite o’erlook’d by some reputed wise.

Though disappointments in ambition pain,

And though success disgusts; yet still, Lorenzo!

In vain we strive to pluck it from our hearts;

By Nature planted for the noblest ends.

Absurd the famed advice to Pyrrhus[34]given,

More praised, than ponder’d; specious, but unsound;

Sooner that hero’s sword the world had quell’d,

Than Reason, his ambition. Man must soar.

An obstinate activity within,390

An insuppressive spring, will toss him up

In spite of Fortune’s load. Not kings alone,

Each villager has his ambition too;

No Sultan prouder than his fetter’d slave:

Slaves build their little Babylons of straw,

Echo the proud Assyrian, in their hearts,

And cry,—“Behold the wonders of my might!”

And why? Because immortal as their lord;

And souls immortal must for ever heave

At something great; the glitter, or the gold;400

The praise of mortals, or the praise of Heaven.

Nor absolutely vain is human praise,

When human is supported by divine.

I’ll introduce Lorenzo to himself;404

Pleasure and Pride (bad masters!) share our hearts.

As love of pleasure is ordain’d to guard

And feed our bodies, and extend our race;

The love of praise is planted to protect,

And propagate the glories of the mind.

What is it, but the love of praise, inspires,

Matures, refines, embellishes, exalts,

Earth’s happiness? From that, the delicate,412

The grand, the marvellous, of civil life,

Want and convenience, underworkers, lay

The basis, on which love of glory builds.

Nor is thy life, O Virtue! less in debt

To praise, thy secret stimulating friend.

Were men not proud, what merit should we miss!

Pride made the virtues of the Pagan world.

Praise is the salt that seasons right to man,420

And whets his appetite for moral good.

Thirst of applause is Virtue’s second guard;

Reason, her first; but reason wants an aid;

Our private reason is a flatterer;

Thirst of applause calls public judgment in,

To poise our own, to keep an even scale,

And give endanger’d Virtue fairer play.

Here a fifth proof arises, stronger still:

Why this so nice construction of our hearts?

These delicate moralities of sense;430

This constitutional reserve of aid

To succour virtue, when our reason fails;

If virtue, kept alive by care and toil,

And oft, the mark of injuries on earth,

When labour’d to maturity (its bill

Of disciplines, and pains, unpaid), must die?

Why freighted rich, to dash against a rock?

Were man to perish when most fit to live,438

O how misspent were all these stratagems,

By skill divine inwoven in our frame!

Where are Heaven’s holiness and mercy fled?

Laughs Heaven, at once, at Virtue, and at Man?

If not, why that discouraged, this destroy’d?

Thus far Ambition. What says Avarice?

This her chief maxim, which has long been thine:

“The wise and wealthy are the same,”—I grant it.

To store up treasure with incessant toil,

This is man’s province, this his highest praise.

To this great end keen Instinct stings him on.

To guide that instinct, Reason! is thy charge;450

’Tis thine to tell us where true treasure lies:

But, Reason failing to discharge her trust,

Or to the deaf discharging it in vain,

A blunder follows; and blind Industry,

Gall’d by the spur, but stranger to the course

(The course where stakes of more than gold are won),

O’erloading, with the cares of distant age,

The jaded spirits of the present hour,

Provides for an eternity below.

“Thou shalt not covet,” is a wise command;460

But bounded to the wealth the sun surveys:

Look farther, the command stands quite reversed,

And avarice is a virtue most divine.

Is faith a refuge for our happiness?

Most sure: and is it not for reason too?

Nothing this world unriddles, but the next.

Whence inextinguishable thirst of gain?

From inextinguishable life in man.

Man, if not meant, by worth, to reach the skies,

Had wanted wing to fly so far in guilt.470

Sour grapes, I grant, ambition, avarice,

Yet still their root is immortality:472

These its wild growths so bitter, and so base,

(Pain and reproach!) Religion can reclaim,

Refine, exalt, throw down their poisonous lee,

And make them sparkle in the bowl of bliss.

See, the third witness laughs at bliss remote,

And falsely promises an Eden here:

Truth she shall speak for once, though prone to lie,

A common cheat, and Pleasure is her name.480

To Pleasure never was Lorenzo deaf;

Then hear her now, now first thy real friend.

Since Nature made us not more fond than proud

Of happiness (whence hypocrites in joy!

Makers of mirth! artificers of smiles!),

Why should the joy most poignant sense affords,

Burn us with blushes, and rebuke our pride?—

Those heaven-born blushes tell us man descends,

Even in the zenith of his earthly bliss:

Should Reason take her infidel repose,490

This honest instinct speaks our lineage high;

This instinct calls on darkness to conceal

Our rapturous relation to the stalls.

Our glory covers us with noble shame,

And he that’s unconfounded, is unmann’d.

The man that blushes, is not quite a brute.

Thus far with thee, Lorenzo, will I close:

Pleasure is good, and man for pleasure made;

But pleasure full of glory, as of joy;

Pleasure, which neither blushes, nor expires.500

The witnesses are heard; the cause is o’er;

Let Conscience file the sentence in her court,

Dearer than deeds that half a realm convey;

Thus seal’d by Truth, th’ authentic record runs:

“Know all; know, infidels,—unapt to know!

’Tis immortality your nature solves;506

’Tis immortality deciphers man,

And opens all the mysteries of his make.

Without it, half his instincts are a riddle;

Without it, all his virtues are a dream.

His very crimes attest his dignity;

His sateless thirst of pleasure, gold, and fame,

Declares him born for blessings infinite:513

What less than infinite makes unabsurd

Passions, which all on earth but more inflames?

Fierce passions, so mismeasured to this scene,

Stretch’d out, like eagles’ wings, beyond our nest,

Far, far beyond the worth of all below,

For earth too large, presage a nobler flight,

And evidence our title to the skies.”520

Ye gentle theologues, of calmer kind!

Whose constitution dictates to your pen,

Who, cold yourselves, think ardour comes from hell!

Think not our passions from Corruption sprung,

Though to Corruption now they lend their wings;

That is their mistress, not their mother. All

(And justly) Reason deem divine: I see,

I feel a grandeur in the passions too,

Which speaks their high descent, and glorious end;

Which speaks them rays of an eternal fire.530

In Paradise itself they burn’d as strong,

Ere Adam fell; though wiser in their aim.

Like the proud Eastern,[35]struck by Providence,

What though our passions are run mad, and stoop

With low, terrestrial appetite, to graze

On trash, on toys, dethroned from high desire?

Yet still, through their disgrace, no feeble ray

Of greatness shines, and tells us whence they fell:

But these (like that fallen monarch when reclaim’d),539

When Reason moderates the rein aright,

Shall reascend, remount their former sphere,

Where once they soar’d illustrious; ere seduced

By wanton Eve’s debauch, to stroll on earth,

And set the sublunary world on fire.

But grant their phrensy lasts; their phrensy fails

To disappoint one providential end,

For which Heaven blew up ardour in our hearts:

Were Reason silent, boundless Passion speaks

A future scene of boundless objects too,

And brings glad tidings of eternal day.550

Eternal day! ’tis that enlightens all;

And all, by that enlighten’d, proves it sure.

Consider man as an immortal being,

Intelligible all; and all is great;

A crystalline transparency prevails,

And strikes full lustre through the human sphere:

Consider man as mortal, all is dark,

And wretched; Reason weeps at the survey.

The learn’d Lorenzo cries, “And let her weep,

Weak, modern Reason: ancient times were wise.560

Authority, that venerable guide,

Stands on my part; the famed Athenian porch

(And who for wisdom so renown’d as they?)

Denied this immortality to man.”

I grant it; but affirm, they proved it too.

A riddle this!—have patience; I’ll explain.

What noble vanities, what moral flights,

Glittering through their romantic wisdom’s page,

Make us at once despise them, and admire?

Fable is flat to these high-season’d sires;570

They leave th’ extravagance of song below.

“Flesh shall not feel; or, feeling, shall enjoy

The dagger, or the rack; to them, alike573

A bed of roses, or the burning bull.”

In men exploding all beyond the grave,

Strange doctrine, this! As doctrine, it was strange;

But not, as prophecy; for such it proved,

And, to their own amazement, was fulfill’d:

They feign’d a firmness Christians need not feign.

The Christian truly triumph’d in the flame:580

The Stoic saw, in double wonder lost,

Wonder at them, and wonder at himself,

To find the bold adventures of his thought

Not bold, and that he strove to lie in vain.

Whence, then, those thoughts? those towering thoughts, that flew

Such monstrous heights?—From instinct, and from pride.

The glorious instinct of a deathless soul,

Confusedly conscious of her dignity,

Suggested truths they could not understand.

In Lust’s dominion, and in Passion’s storm,590

Truth’s system broken, scatter’d fragments lay,

As light in chaos, glimmering through the gloom:

Smit with the pomp of lofty sentiments,

Pleased Pride proclaim’d, what Reason disbelieved.

Pride, like the Delphic priestess, with a swell,

Raved nonsense, destined to be future sense,

When life immortal, in full day, shall shine;

And death’s dark shadows fly the Gospel sun.

They spoke, what nothing but immortal souls

Could speak; and thus the truth they question’d, proved.

Can then absurdities, as well as crimes,601

Speak man immortal? All things speak him so.

Much has been urged; and dost thou call for more?

Call; and with endless questions be distress’d,

All unresolvable, if earth is all.

“Why life, a moment; infinite, desire?606

Our wish, eternity? Our home, the grave?

Heaven’s promise dormant lies in human hope;

Who wishes life immortal, proves it too.

Why happiness pursued, though never found?

Man’s thirst of happiness declares it is,

(For nature never gravitates to nought);

That thirst unquench’d declares it is not here.613

My Lucia, thy Clarissa call to thought;

Why cordial friendship riveted so deep,

As hearts to pierce at first, at parting, rend,

If friend, and friendship, vanish in an hour?

Is not this torment in the mask of joy?

Why by reflection marr’d the joys of sense?

Why past, and future, preying on our hearts,620

And putting all our present joys to death?

Why labours Reason? Instinct were as well;

Instinct far better; what can choose, can err:

O how infallible the thoughtless brute!

’Twere well his Holiness were half as sure.

Reason with inclination, why at war?

Why sense of guilt? why Conscience up in arms?”

Conscience of guilt, is prophecy of pain,

And bosom-council to decline the blow.

Reason with inclination ne’er had jarr’d,630

If nothing future paid forbearance here:

Thus on—these, and a thousand pleas uncall’d,

All promise, some insure, a second scene;

Which, were it doubtful, would be dearer far

Than all things else most certain; were it false,

What truth on earth so precious as the lie?

This world it gives us, let what will ensue;

This world it gives, in that high cordial, hope:

The future of the present is the soul.

How this life groans, when sever’d from the next!640

Poor mutilated wretch, that disbelieves!

By dark distrust his being cut in two,

In both parts perishes; life void of joy,

Sad prelude of eternity in pain!

Couldst thou persuade me, the next life could fail

Our ardent wishes; how should I pour out

My bleeding heart in anguish, new, as deep!

Oh! with what thoughts, thy hope, and my despair,

Abhorr’d annihilation! blasts the soul,

And wide extends the bounds of human woe!650

Could I believe Lorenzo’s system true,

In this black channel would my ravings run:

“Grief from the future borrow’d peace, erewhile.

The future vanish’d! and the present pain’d!

Strange import of unprecedented ill!

Fall, how profound! Like Lucifer’s, the fall!

Unequal fate! his fall, without his guilt!

From where fond Hope built her pavilion high,

The gods among, hurl’d headlong, hurl’d at once

To night! to nothing! darker still than night.660

If ’twas a dream, why wake me, my worst foe,

Lorenzo! boastful of the name of friend?

O for delusion! O for error still!

Could vengeance strike much stronger than to plant

A thinking being in a world like this,

Not over-rich before, now beggar’d quite;

More cursed than at the fall?—The sun goes out!

The thorns shoot up! What thorns in every thought!

Why sense of better? It embitters worse.

Why sense? why life? If but to sigh, then sink670

To what I was! twice nothing! and much woe!

Woe, from Heaven’s bounties! woe from what was wont

To flatter most, high intellectual powers.

Thought, virtue, knowledge!—blessings, by thy scheme,

All poison’d into pains. First, knowledge, once675

My soul’s ambition, now her greatest dread.

To know myself, true wisdom?—No, to shun

That shocking science, parent of despair!

Avert thy mirror: if I see, I die.

“Know my Creator! climb his bless’d abode

By painful speculation, pierce the veil,

Dive in his nature, read his attributes,

And gaze in admiration—on a foe,683

Obtruding life, withholding happiness!

From the full rivers that surround his throne,

Not letting fall one drop of joy on man;

Man gasping for one drop, that he might cease

To curse his birth, nor envy reptiles more!

Ye sable clouds! ye darkest shades of night!

Hide him, for ever hide him, from my thought,690

Once all my comfort; source, and soul of joy!

Now leagued with furies, and with thee,[36]against me.

“Know his achievements? study his renown?

Contemplate this amazing universe,

Dropp’d from his hand, with miracles replete!

For what? ’Mid miracles of nobler name,

To find one miracle of misery?

To find the being, which alone can know

And praise his works, a blemish on his praise?

Through nature’s ample range, in thought, to stroll,700

And start at man, the single mourner there,

Breathing high hope, chain’d down to pangs, and death?

Knowing is suffering: and shall Virtue share

The sigh of knowledge?—Virtue shares the sigh.

By straining up the steep of excellent,

By battles fought, and, from temptation won,

What gains she, but the pang of seeing worth,707

Angelic worth, soon shuffled in the dark

With every vice, and swept to brutal dust?

Merit is madness; virtue is a crime;

A crime to reason, if it costs us pain

Unpaid: what pain, amidst a thousand more,

To think the most abandon’d, after days713

Of triumph o’er their betters, find in death

As soft a pillow, nor make fouler clay!

“Duty! Religion!—these, our duty done,

Imply reward. Religion is mistake.

Duty!—there’s none, but to repel the cheat.

Ye cheats, away! ye daughters of my pride!

Who feign yourselves the favourites of the skies:720

Ye towering hopes! abortive energies!

That toss, and struggle, in my lying breast,

To scale the skies, and build presumptions there,

As I were heir of an eternity.

Vain, vain ambitions! trouble me no more.

Why travel far in quest of sure defeat?

As bounded as my being, be my wish.

All is inverted; wisdom is a fool.

Sense! take the rein; blind Passion! drive us on;

And, Ignorance! befriend us on our way;730

Ye new, but truest patrons of our peace!

Yes; give the pulse full empire; live the brute,

Since, as the brute, we die. The sum of man,

Of godlike man! to revel, and to rot.

“But not on equal terms with other brutes:

Their revels a more poignant relish yield,

And safer too; they never poisons choose.

Instinct, than reason, makes more wholesome meals,

And sends all-marring murmur far away.

For sensual life they best philosophize;740

Theirs, that serene, the sages sought in vain:741

’Tis man alone expostulates with Heaven;

His all the power, and all the cause, to mourn.

Shall human eyes alone dissolve in tears?

And bleed, in anguish, none but human hearts?

The wide-stretch’d realm of intellectual woe,

Surpassing sensual far, is all our own.

In life so fatally distinguish’d, why

Cast in one lot, confounded, lump’d, in death?

“Ere yet in being, was mankind in guilt?750

Why thunder’d this peculiar clause against us,

All-mortal, and all-wretched!—Have the skies

Reasons of state, their subjects may not scan,

Nor humbly reason, when they sorely sigh?

All-mortal, and all-wretched!—’Tis too much:

Unparallell’d in nature: ’tis too much

On being unrequested at thy hands,

Omnipotent! for I see nought but power.

“And why see that? Why thought? To toil, and eat,

Then make our bed in darkness, needs no thought.760

What superfluities are reasoning souls!

Oh give eternity! or thought destroy.

But without thought our curse were half unfelt;

Its blunted edge would spare the throbbing heart;

And, therefore, ’tis bestow’d, I thank thee, Reason!

For aiding life’s too small calamities,

And giving being to the dread of Death.

Such are thy bounties!—was it then too much

For me, to trespass on the brutal rights?

Too much for Heaven to make one emmet more?770

Too much for chaos to permit my mass

A longer stay with essences unwrought,

Unfashion’d, untormented into man?

Wretched preferment to this round of pains!

Wretched capacity of phrensy, thought!775

Wretched capacity of dying, life!

Life, thought, worth, wisdom, all (O foul revolt!)

Once friends to peace, gone over to the foe.

“Death, then, has changed his nature too: O Death!

Come to my bosom, thou best gift of Heaven!

Best friend of man! since man is man no more.

Why in this thorny wilderness so long,

Since there’s no promised land’s ambrosial bower,783

To pay me with its honey for my stings?

If needful to the selfish schemes of Heaven

To sting us sore, why mock’d our misery?

Why this so sumptuous insult o’er our heads?

Why this illustrious canopy display’d?

Why so magnificently lodged Despair?

At stated periods, sure returning, roll790

These glorious orbs, that mortals may compute

Their length of labours, and of pains; nor lose

Their misery’s full measure?—Smiles with flowers,

And fruits, promiscuous, ever-teeming earth,

That man may languish in luxurious scenes,

And in an Eden mourn his wither’d joys?

Claim earth and skies man’s admiration, due

For such delights! Blest animals! too wise

To wonder, and too happy to complain!

“Our doom decreed demands a mournful scene:800

Why not a dungeon dark, for the condemn’d?

Why not the dragon’s subterranean den,

For man to howl in? Why not his abode

Of the same dismal colour with his fate?

A Thebes, a Babylon, at vast expence

Of time, toil, treasure, art, for owls and adders,

As congruous as, for man, this lofty dome,

Which prompts proud thought, and kindles high desire;

If, from her humble chamber in the dust,809

While proud thought swells, and high desire inflames,

The poor worm calls us for her inmates there;

And, round us, Death’s inexorable hand

Draws the dark curtain close; undrawn no more.

“Undrawn no more!—Behind the cloud of death,

Once I beheld a sun; a sun which gilt

That sable cloud, and turn’d it all to gold:

How the grave’s alter’d! fathomless, as hell!

A real hell to those who dreamt of heaven.

Annihilation! how it yawns before me!

Next moment I may drop from thought, from sense,820

The privilege of angels, and of worms,

An outcast from existence! and this spirit,

This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul,

This particle of energy divine,

Which travels nature, flies from star to star,

And visits gods, and emulates their powers,

For ever is extinguish’d. Horror! death!

Death of that death I fearless once survey’d!—

When horror universal shall descend,

And heaven’s dark concave urn all human race,830

On that enormous, unrefunding tomb,

How just this verse! this monumental sigh!”

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