Contents of the Seventh Night.

In the Sixth Night, arguments were drawn from Nature, in proof of immortality: here, others are drawn from man: from his discontent; from his passions and powers; from the gradual growth of reason; from his fear of death; from the nature of hope, and of virtue; from knowledge and love, as being the most essential properties of the soul; from the order of creation; from the nature of ambition; avarice; pleasure. A digression on the grandeur of the passions. Immortality alone renders our present state intelligible. An objection from the Stoic's disbelief of immortality answered. Endless questions unresolvable, but on supposition of our immortality. The natural, most melancholy, and pathetic complaint of a worthy man, under the persuasion of no futurity. The gross absurdities and horrours of annihilation urged home on Lorenzo. The soul's vast importance; from whence it arises. The difficulty of being an infidel. The infamy, the cause, and the character of an infidel state. What true free-thinking is. The necessary punishment of the false. Man's ruin is from himself. An infidel accuses himself of guilt, and hypocrisy; and that of the worst sort. His obligation to Christians. What danger he incurs by virtue. Vice recommended to him. His high pretences to virtue and benevolence exploded. The conclusion, on the nature of faith, reason, and hope, with an apology for this attempt.

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?

Deaths stand, like Mercuries, in every way,

And kindly point us to our journey's end.
Pope, who couldst made 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.
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 have proclaim'd. The world's a prophecy of worlds to come; And who, what God fortels (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. 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! 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! 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 straw,

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
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, tho' perhaps, debauch'd
By sense, his reason sleeps, nor dreams the cause.
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 ;
His anrious 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 :
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. Blest 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.
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 unlearnt.
Men perish in advance, as if the Sun
Should set ere noon, in eastern oceans drown'd;
If fit, with dim, illustrious to compare,

The Sun's meridian with the soul of man.
To man, why, step-dame Nature! so severe ?
Why thrown aside thy master-piece 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 curst with foresight? Wise to misery?

Why of his proud prerogative the prey?
Why less pre-eminent in rank, than pain?
His immortality alone can tell;

Full ample fund to balance all amiss,

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 planning new,
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;

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 possest.
Hence, the world's master, from ambition's spire,
In Caprea plung'd; and div'd 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.