With impious piety that grave I wrong'd,
Short in my duty, coward in my grief!
More like her murderer than friend, I crept
With soft-suspended step, and, muffled deep
In midnight darkness, whisper'd my last sigh.
I whisper'd what should echo through their realms,
Nor writ her name, whose tomb should pierce the skies.
Presumptuous fear! how durst I dread her foes, 180
While Nature's loudest aictates I obey'd?
Pardon necessity, bless'd shade! of grief
And indignation rival bursts I pour'd;
Half execration mingled with my prayer;
Kindled at man, while I his God adored:
Sore grudged the savage land her sacred dust;
Stamp'd the cursed soil; and with humanity
(Denied Narcissa) wish'd them all a grave.
Glows my resentment into guilt? what guilt
Can equal violations of the dead?
The dead how sacred! sacred is the dust
Of this heaven-labour'd form, erect, divine!
This heaven-assumed, majestic robe of earth
He deign'd to wear, who hung the vast expanse
With azure bright, and clothed the Sun in gold. 195
When every passion sleeps that can offend;
When strikes us every motive that can melt;
When man can wreak his rancour uncontroll'd,
That strongest curb on insult and ill will;
Then spleen to dust? the dust of innocence?
An angel's dust!-This Lucifer transcends;
When he contended for the patriarch's bones.
"Twas not the strife of malice, but of pride;
The strife of pontiff pride, not pontiff gall.
Far less than this is shocking in a race
Most wretched, but from streams of mutual love;
And uncreated, but for love divine;
And but for love divine this moment lost,
By Fate resorb'd, and sunk in endless night.
Man hard of heart to man! of horrid things
Most horrid! mid stupendous highly strange!
Yet oft his courtesies are smoother wrongs;
Pride brandishes the favours he confers,
And contumelious his humanity :
What then his vengeance? Hear it not, ye Stars! 215
And thou, pale Moon! turn paler at the sound,
Man is to man the sorest, surest ill.
A previous blast foretels the rising storm;
O'erwhelming turrets threaten, ere they fall;
Volcanos bellow, ere they disembogue;
Earth trembles, ere her yawning jaws devour;
And smoke betrays the wide consuming tire :
Ruin from man is most conceal'd when near,
And sends the dreadful tidings in the blow.
Is this the flight of Fancy? would it were!
Heaven's Sovereign saves all beings, but himself,
That hideous sight, a naked human heart.
Fired is the Muse? and let the Muse be fired:
Who not inflamed, when what he speaks he feels,
And in the nerve most tender, in his friends;
Shame to mankind! Philander had his foes;
He felt the truths I sing, and I in him;
But he nor I feel more. Past ills, Narcissa!
Are sunk in thee, thou recent wornd of heart,
Which bleeds with other cares, with other pangs, 235 Pangs numerous as the numerous ills that swarm'd
O'er thy distinguish'd fate, and, clustering there,
Thick as the locust on the land of Nile,
Made death more deadly, and more dark the grave.
Reflect (if not forgot my touching tale)
How was each circumstance with aspics arm'd!
An aspic each, and all an hydra woe.
What strong Herculean virtue could suffice?-
Or is it virtue to be conquer'd here?
This hoary cheek a train of tears bedews,
And each tear mourns its own distinct distress, And each distress, distinctly mourn'd, demands of grief still more as heighten'd by the whole.
A grief like this proprietors excludes:
Not friends alone such obsequies deplore;
They make mankind the mourner; carry sighs
Far as the fatal Fame can wing her way,
And turn the gayest thought of gayest age
Down their right channel, through the vale of death.
The vale of death! that hush'd Cimmerian vale,
Where Darkness, brooding o'er unfinish'd fates,
With raven wing incumbent, waits the day
(Drend day!) that interdicts all future change;
That subterranean world, that land of ruin!
Fit walk, Lorenzo! for proud human thought!
There let my thoughts expatiate, and explore
Balsamic truths and healing sentiments,
Of all most wanted, and most welcome, here.
For gay Lorenzo's sake, and for thy own,
My soul! The fruits of dying friends survey;
Expose the vain of life; weigh life and death:
Give Death his eulogy; thy fear subdued;
And labour that first palm of noble minds,
A manly scorn of terror from the tomb.'
This harvest reap from thy Narcissa's grave. As poets feign'd from Ajax' streaming blood Arose, with grief inscribed, a mournful flower, Let wisdom blossom from my mortal wound. And first, of dying friends; what fruit from these? It brings us more than triple aid; an aid To chase our thoughtlessness, fear, pride, and guilt. Our dying friends come o'er us like a cloud,
To damp our brainless ardours, and abate
That glare of life which often blinds the wise.
Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth
Our rugged pass to death; to break those bars
Of terror and abhorrence Nature throws
Cross our obstructed way, and thus to make
Welcome, as safe, our port from every storm.
Each friend by Fate snatch'd from us is a plume, 285 Pluck'd from the w`ng of human vanity,
Which makes us stoop from our aeria! heights,
And damp'd with omen of our own decease,
On drooping pinions of ambition lower'd,
Just skim earth's surface ere we break it up,
O'er putrid earth to scratch a little dust,
And save the world a nuisance. Smitten friends
Are angels sent on errands full of love;
For us they languish, and for us they die :
And shall they languish, shall they die, in vain? 235
Ungrateful, shall we grieve their hovering shades,
Which wait the revolution in our hearts?
Shall we disdain their silent, soft, address,
Their posthumous advice, and pious prayer?
Senseless as herds that graze their hallow'd graves, Tread under foot their agonies and groans, Frustrate their anguish, and destroy their deaths? Lorenzo! no; the thought of death indulge;
Give it its wholesome empire! let it reign,
That kind chastiser of thy soul, in joy!
Its reign will spread thy glorious conquests far,
And still the tumults of thy ruffled breast.
Auspicious era! golden days, begin!
The thought of death shall, like a god, inspire.
And why not think on death? Is life the theme
Of every thought? and wish of every hour?
And song of every joy? surprising truth!
The beaten spaniel's fondness not so strange.
To wave the numerous ills that seize on life
As their own property, their lawful prey;
Ere man has measured half his weary stage,
His luxuries have left him no reserve,
No maiden relishes, unbroach'd delights:
Which starve on orts, and glean their former field.
Live ever here, Lorenzo !-shocking thought! 325
So shocking! they who wish, disown it too;
Disown from shame, what they from folly crave.
Live ever in the womb, nor see the light?
For what, live ever here?—with labouring step
To tread our former footsteps? pace the round
Eternal? to climb life's worn heavy wheel,
Which draws up nothing new? to beat, and beat
The beaten track? to bid each wretched day
The former mock to surfeit on the same,
And yawn our joys? or thank a misery
For change though sad! to see what we have seen ?
Hear, till unheard, the same old slabber'd tale?
Ill ground, and worse concocted! load, not life!
The rational foul kennels of excess !
Still-streaming thoroughfares of dull debauch!
Trembling each gulp, lest Death should snatch the bowl.
Such of our fine ones is the wish refined!
So would they have it: elegant desire!
Why not invite the bellowing stalls and wilds?
But such examples might their riot awe.
Through want of virtue, that is, want of thought,
(Though on bright Thought they father all their flights)
To what are they reduced? to love and hate
The same vain world; to censure and espouse
This painted shrew of life, who calls them fool 355
Each moment of each day; to flatter bad,
Through dread of worse; to cling to this rude rock,
Barren to them of good, and sharp with ills,
And hourly blacken'd with impending storms,
And infamous for wrecks of human hope-
Scared at the gloomy gulf that yawns beneath.
Such are their triumphs! such their pangs of joy!
|