THE COMPLAINT. NIGHT THE FIRST. ON LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY. то THE RIGHT HON. ARTHUR ONSLOW, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. IR'D Nature's fweet reftorer, balmy Sleep! TH He, like the world, his ready vifit pays Where Fortune fmiles; the wretched he forfakes; I wake: How happy they, who wake no more! 5 Tumultuous; where my wreck'd defponding thought, 10 From wave to wave of fancied mifery, At random drove, her helm of reafon loft. The Day too fhort for my distress; and Night, Is funthine to the colour of my fate. Night, fable goddess! from her ebon throne, In raylefs majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden fceptre o'er a lumbering world. Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound! Nor eye, nor liftening ear, an object finds; Creation fleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse Of life ftood ftill, and nature made a pause; An awful paufe! prophetic of her end. And let her prophecy be foon fulfill'd; Fate! drop the curtain; I can lofe no more. Silence and Darkness! folemn fifters! twins From ancient Night, who nurse the tender thought! To Reason, and on Reafon build Refolve, (That column of true majesty in man) Affift me: I will thank you in the grave; The grave, your kingdom: There this frame fhall fa A victim facred to your dreary fhrine. But what are ye?— Thou, who didft put to flight Primæval Silence, when the morning stars, Exulting, fhouted o'er the rifing ball; O Thou, whofe word from folid darkness struck That fpark, the fun; ftrike wisdom from my foul; 4 M 3 My foul, which flies to Thee, her truft, her treasure, Through this opaque of Nature, and of Soul, 45 50 The bell ftrikes One. We take no note of time 55 But from its lofs. To give it then a tongue, Is wife in man. As if an angel spoke, I feel the folemn found. If heard aright, It is the knell of my departed hours: Where are they? With the years beyond the flood. 60 It is the fignal that demands dispatch: How much is to be done? My hopes and fears Start up alarm'd, and o'er life's narrow verge Look down-On what? a fathomless abyss; A dread eternity! how furely mine! 65 And can eternity belong to me, Poor penfioner on the bounties of an hour? How poor, how rich, how abject, how auguft, B 3 70 Who Who centred in our make such strange extremes ! A worm! a god!—I tremble at myself, Triumphantly distress'd! what joy, what dread! What can preferve my life! or what destroy! grave; 'Tis paft conjecture; all things rise in proof: While o'er my limbs sleep's soft 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 fteep 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 ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her natu Of fubtler effence than the trodden clod; 10 Active, aërial, towering, unconfin'd, Unfetter'd with her grofs companions fall. 105 Ev'n filent night proclaims my soul immortal : Slumbers, rak'd up in dust, ethereal fire? They live! they greatly live a life on earth On me, more juftly number'd with the dead. The twilight of our day, the vestibule; Life's theatre as yet is fhut, and death, B 4 115 120 125 130 The |