And can eternity belong to me,

Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful is man!
How passing wonder HE who made him such!
Who center'd in our make such strange extremes!
From diff'rent natures, marvellously mix'd,
Connection exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguish'd link in being's endless chain!
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
A beam ethereal, sullied and absorpt!
Though sullied and dishonour'd, still divine!
Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal! insect infinite!

A worm a god!-I tremble at myself,
And in myself am lost. At home, a stranger,
Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
And wond'ring at her own. How reason reels!
O what a miracle to man is man,

Triumphantly distress'd! what joy! what dread!
Alternately transported and alarm'd!

What can preserve my life? or what destroy?
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave;
Legions of angels can't confine me there.

'Tis past conjecture: all things rise in proof.
While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread,
What though my soul fantastic measures trod
O'er fairy fields, or mourn'd along the gloom
Of pathless woods, or, down the craggy steep
Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool,
Or scaled the cliff, or danced on hollow winds
With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain?
Her ceaseless flight, tho' devious, speaks her nature
Of subtler essence than the trodden clod,
Active, aerial, towering, unconfined,

Unfetter'd with her gross companion's fall.
E'en silent night proclaims my soul immortal:
E'en silent night proclaims eternal day.
For human weal Heav'n husbands all events:
Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain.
Why then their loss deplore that are not lost?

Why wanders wretched thought their tombs around
In infidel distress? Are angels there?
Slumbers, raked up in dust, ethereal fire?

They live! they greatly live a life on earth
Unkindled, unconceived; and from an eye
Of tenderness let heav'nly pity fall

On me, more justly number'd with the dead.
This is the desert, this the solitude:
How populous, how vital is the grave!
This is creation's melancholy vault,
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom,
The land of apparitions, empty shades!
All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond
Is substance; the reverse is folly's creed:
How solid all where change shall 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 shut, and Death,
Strong Death, alone can heave the massy bar,
This gross impediment of clay remove,
And make us embryos of existence free.
From real life, but little more remote
Is he, not yet a candidate for light,
The future embryo, slumb'ring in his sire.
Embryos we inust be till we burst the shell,
Yon ambient azure shell, and spring to life,
The life of Gods (O transport!) and of man.

Yet man, fool man, here buries all his thoughts;
Inters celestial hopes without one sigh:
Pris'ner of earth, and pent beneath the moon,
Here pinions all his wishes; wing'd by Heav'n
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 clust'ring glow
In his full beam, and ripen for the just,
Where momentary ages are no more!
WhereTime, and Pain, and Chance,and Death expire!
And is it in the flight of threescore years
To push eternity from human thought,
And smother souls immortal in the dust?
A soul immortal, spending all her fires,

Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness,
Thrown into tumult, raptured or alarm'd
At aught this scene can threaten or indulge,
Resembles ocean into tempest wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.

Where falls this censure? It o'erwhelms myself.
How was my heart incrusted by the world!
O how self-fetter'd was my grov'ling soul!
How, like a worm, was I wrapt round and round
In silken thought, which reptile Fancy spun,
Till darken'd reason lay quite clouded o'er
With soft conceit of endless comfort here,
Nor yet put forth her wings to reach the skies!
Night visions may befriend (as sung above):
Our waking dreams are fatal. How I dreamt
Of things impossible! (could sleep do more?)
Of joys perpetual in perpetual change!
Of stable pleasures on the tossing wave!
Eternal sunshine in the storms of life!
How richly were my noontide trances hung
With gorgeous tapestries of pictured 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 frenzy's pompous furniture?
The cobwebb'd cottage, with its ragged wall
Of mould'ring mud, is royalty to me!
The spider's most attenuated thread
Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie
On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze.
O ye blest scenes of permanent delight!
Full above measure! lasting beyond bound!
A perpetuity of bliss is bliss.

Could you, so rich in rapture, fear an end,
That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy,
And quite unparadise the realms of light.
Safe are you lodged above these rolling spheres;
The baleful influence of whose giddy dance

Sheds sad vicissitude 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 sickle, emulous

Of Time's enormous sithe, whose ample sweep
Strikes empires from the root: each moment plays
His little weapon in the narrower sphere
Of sweet domestic comfort, and cuts down
The fairest bloom of sublunary bliss.

Bliss! sublunary bliss!-proud words, and vain! Implicit treason to divine decree!

A bold invasion of the rights of Heav'n!
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 miss'd my heart!
Death! great proprietor of all! 'tis thine
To tread out empire, and to quench the stars.
The sun himself by thy permission shines,
And, one day, thou shalt pluck him from his sphere.
Amidst such mighty plunder, why exhaust
Thy partial quiver on a mark so mean?
Why thy peculiar rancour wreck'd on me?
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?

Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain;
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn.
O Cynthia! why so pale? dost thou lament
Thy wretched neighbour? grieve to see thy wheel
Of ceaseless change outwhirl'd in human life!
How wanes my borrow'd bliss! from Fortune's smile,
Precarious courtesy ! not virtue's sure,
Self-given, solar, ray of sound delight.

In ev'ry varied posture, place, and hour,
How widow'd ev'ry thought of ev'ry joy!
Thought, busy thought! too busy for my peace!
Through the dark postern of time long elapsed,
Led softly, by the stillness of the night,
Led, like a murderer, (and such it proves !)
Strays (wretched rover!) o'er the pleasing past:
In quest of wretchedness perversely strays;
And finds all desert now; and meets the ghosts
Of my departed joys, a num'rous train!
I rue the riches of my former fate;

Sweet Comfort's blasted clusters I lament;
I tremble at the blessings once so dear,
And ev'ry pleasure pains me to the heart.
Yet why complain? or why complain for one?
Hangs out the sun his lustre but for me,
The single man? are angels all beside?
I mourn for millions; 'tis the common lot:
In this shape or in that has Fate entail'd
The mother's throes on all of woman born,
Not more the children than sure heirs of pain.
War, famine, pest, volcano, storm, and fire,
Intestine broils, Oppression, with her heart
Wrapt up in triple brass, besiege mankind.
God's image, disinherited of day,

Here, plunged in mines, forgets a sun was made;
There, beings, deathless as their haughty lord,
Are hammer'd to the galling oar for life;
And plough the winter's wave, and reap despair.
Some for hard masters, broken under arms,
In battle lopp'd away, with half their limbs,
Beg bitter bread through realms their valour saved,
If so the tyrant or his minion doom.
Want and incurable disease, (fell pair!)
On hopeless multitudes remorseless seize
At once, and make a refuge of the grave.
How groaning hospitals eject their dead!
What numbers groan for sad admission there!
What numbers, once in Fortune's lap high-fed,
Solicit the cold hand of charity!

To shock us more, solicit it in vain!

Ye silken sons of Pleasure! since in pains
You rue more modish visits, visit here,

And breathe from your debauch; give, and reduce
Surfeit's dominion o'er you. But so great
Your impudence, you blush at what is right.
Happy! did sorrow seize on such alone:
Not prudence can defend, or virtue save;
Disease invades the chastest temperance,
And punishment the guiltless; and alarm,
Through thickest shades, pursues the fond of peace.
Man's caution often into danger turns,
And, his guard falling, crushes him to death.