Senseless as herds that graze their hallow'd graves,
Tread under foot their agonies and groans,
Frustrate their anguish, and destroy their deaths?
LORENZO! read with me Narcissa's stone;
(Narcissa was thy favourite) let us read
Her moral stone; few doctors preach so well;
Few orators so tenderly can touch
The feeling heart. What pathos in the date!
Apt words can strike; and yet in them we see
Faint images of what we here enjoy.
What cause have we to build on length of life?
Temptations seize when fear is laid asleep,
And ill foreboding is our strongest guard.
See from her tomb, as from an humble shrine,
Truth, radiant goddess! sallies on my soul,
And puts Delusion's dusky train to flight;
Dispels the mist our sultry passions raise,
From objects low, terrestrial, and obscene,
And shows the real estimate of things,
Which no man, unafflicted, ever saw;
Pulls off the veil from Virtue's rising charms;
Detects temptation in a thousand lies.
Truth bids me look on men as autumn-leaves,
And all they bleed for as the summer's dust
Driv'n by the whirlwind; lighted by her beams,
I widen my horizon, gain new powers,
See things invisible, feel things remote,
Am present with futurities; think nought
To man so foreign as the joys possess❜d,
Nought so much his as those beyond the grave,
WHAT am I? how produc'd? and for what end?
Whence drew I being? to what period tend?
Am I th' abandon'd orphan of blind chance,
Dropp'd by wild atoms in disorder'd dance?
Or from an endless chain of causes wrought,
And of unthinking substance, born with thought?
By motion which began without a cause,
Supremely wise, without design or laws?
Am I but what I seem, mere flesh and blood?
A branching channel, with a mazy flood?
The purple stream that through my vessels glides,
Dull and unconscious flows, like common tides;
The pipes through which the circling juices stray,
Are not that thinking I, no more than they :
This frame, compacted with transcendent skill
Of moving joints obedient to my will,
Nurs'd from the fruitful glebe, like yonder tree,
Waxes and wastes; I call it mine, not me.
New matter still the mould'ring mass sustains:
The mansion chang'd, the tenant still remains,
And from the fleeting stream repair'd by food,
Distinct, as is the swimmer from the flood.
What am I then? sure of a noble birth;
By parents' right, I own as mother, Earth;
But claim superior lineage by my sire,
Who warm'd th' unthinking clod with heavenly fire;
Essence divine, with lifeless clay allay'd,
By double nature, double instinct sway'd:
With look erect, I dart my longing eye,
Seem wing'd to part, and gain my native sky;
I strive to mount, but strive, alas! in vain,
Tied to this massy globe with magic chain.
Now with swift thought I range from pole to pole,
View worlds around their flaming centres roll:
What steady pow'rs their endless motions guide
Through the same trackless paths of boundless void!
I trace the blazing comet's fiery tail,
And weigh the whirling planets in a scale;
These godlike thoughts while eager I pursue,
Some glitt'ring trifle offer'd to my view,
A gnat, an insect of the meanest kind,
Erase the new-born image from my mind:
Some beastly want, craving, importunate,
Vile as the grinning mastiff at my gate,
Calls off from heavenly truth this reas'ning me,
And tells me I'm a brute as much as he.
If, on sublimer wings of love and praise,
My soul above the starry vault I raise,
Lur'd by some vain conceit, or shameful lust,
I flag, I drop, and flutter in the dust.
The tow'ring lark thus, from her lofty strain,
Stoops to an emmet, or a barley grain.
By adverse gusts of jarring instincts tost,
I rove to one, now to the other coast;
To bliss unknown my lofty soul aspires,
My lot unequal to my vast desires.
As 'mongst the hinds a child of royal birth
Finds his high pedigree by conscious worth;
So man, amongst his fellow brutes expos'd,
Sees he's a king, but 'tis a king depos'd.
Pity him, beasts! you by no law confin'd,
And barr'd from devious paths by being blind;
Whilst man, through op'ning views of various ways
Confounded, by the aid of knowledge strays;
Too weak to choose, yet choosing still in haste,
One moment gives the pleasure and distaste;
Bilk'd by past minutes, while the present cloy,
The flatt'ring future still must give the joy:
Not happy, but amus'd upon the road,
And (like you) thoughtless of his last abode,
Whether next sun his being shall restrain
To endless nothing, happiness or pain.
Around me, lo! the thinking thoughtless crew
(Bewilder'd each) their diff'rent paths pursue;
Of them I ask the way; the first replies,
Thou art a god; and sends me to the skies:
Down on the turf, the next, two-legged beast,
There fix thy lot, thy bliss and endless rest:
Between these wide extremes the length is such,
I find I know too little or too much.
'Almighty pow'r, by whose most wise command,
Helpless, forlorn, uncertain here I stand;
Take this faint glimm'ring of thyself away,
Or break into my soul with perfect day!'
This said, expanded lay the sacred text,
The balm, the light, the guide of souls perplex'd.
Thus the benighted traveller, that strays
Through doubtful paths, enjoys the morning rays:
The nightly mist, and thick descending dew,
Parting, unfolds the fields and vaulted blue.
'O Truth divine! enlighten'd by thy ray,
I grope and guess no more, but see my way;
Thou clear'dst the secret of my high descent,
And told'st me what those mystic tokens meant;
Marks of my birth, which I had worn in vain,
Too hard for worldly sages to explain.
Zeno's were vain, vain Epicurus' schemes,
Their systems false, delusive were their dreams;
Unskill'd my two-fold nature to divide,
One nurs❜d my pleasure, and one nurs'd my pride
Those jarring truths which human art beguile,
Thy sacred page thus bids me reconcile.'
Offspring of God, no less thy pedigree,
What thou once wert, art now, and still may be,
Thy God alone can tell, alone decree;
Faultless thou dropp'dst from his unerring skill,
With the bare pow'r to sin, since free of will:
Yet charge not with thy guilt his bounteous love,
For who has pow'r to walk has pow'r to rove:
Who acts by force, impell'd can nought deserve;
And wisdom short of infinite may swerve.
Borne on thy new-imp'd wings, thou took'st thy flight,
Left thy Creator, and the realms of light;
Disdain'd his gentle precept to fulfil,
And thought to grow a god by doing ill:
Though by foul guilt thy heav'nly form defac'd,
In nature chang'd, from happy mansions chas'd,
Thou still retain'st some sparks of heav'nly fire,
Too faint to mount, yet restless to aspire;
Angel enough to seck thy bliss again,
And brute enough to make thy search in vain.
The creatures now withdraw their kindly use,
Some fly thee, some torment, and some seduce;
Repast ill-suited to such diff'rent guests,
For what thy sense desires, thy soul distastes:
Thy lust, thy curiosity, thy pride,
Curb'd or indulg'd, or balk'd or gratified,
Rage on, and make thee equally unbless'd
In what thou want'st, and what thou hast possess'd.
In vain thou hop'st for bliss on this poor clod;
Return and seek thy Father and thy God;
Yet think not to regain thy native sky,
Borne on the wings of vain philosophy!
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