How this life groans, when sever'd from the next!
Poor mutilated wretch, that disbelieves!

By dark distrust his being cut in two,
In both parts perishes; life void of joy,
Sad prelude of eternity in pain!

Couldst thou persuade me, the next life could fail
Our ardent wishes; how should I pour out

My bleeding heart in anguish, new, as deep!
Oh! with what thoughts, thy hope, and my despair,
Abhorr'd annihilation! blasts the soul,

And wide extends the bounds of human woe!
Could I believe Lorenzo's system true,
In this black channel would my ravings run:
"Grief from the future borrow'd
peace, erewhile.
The future vanish'd! and the present pain'd!
Strange import of unprecedented ill!

Fall, how profound! Like Lucifer's, the fall!
Unequal fate! his fall, without his guilt!
From where fond Hope built her pavilion high,
The gods among, hurl'd headlong, hurl'd at once
To night! to nothing! darker still than night.
If 'twas a dream, why wake me, my worst foe,
Lorenzo! boastful of the name of friend?
O for delusion! O for error still!

Could vengeance strike much stronger than to plant
A thinking being in a world like this,

Not over-rich before, now beggar'd quite ;

More curs'd than at the fall?-The sun goes out!

The thorns shoot up!

Why sense of better?

Why sense? why life?

640

650

660*

What thorns in every thought!
It embitters worse.

If but to sigh, then sink

To what I was! twice nothing! and much woe!

670

Woe, from Heav'n's bounties! woe from what was wont

To flatter most, high intellectual pow'rs.

675

Thought, virtue, knowledge !-blessings, by thy scheme,
All poison'd into pains. First, knowledge, once
My soul's ambition, now her greatest dread.
To know myself, true wisdom ?-No, to shun
That shocking science, parent of despair!
Avert thy mirror: if I see, I die.

"Know my Creator! climb his bless'd abode
By painful speculation, pierce the veil,
Dive in his nature, read his attributes,
And gaze in admiration-on a foe,
Obtruding life, withholding happiness!
From the full rivers that surround his throne,
Not letting fall one drop of joy on man;
Man gasping for one drop, that he might cease
To curse his birth, nor envy reptiles more!
Ye sable clouds! ye darkest shades of night!
Hide him, for ever hide him, from my thought,
Once all my comfort; source, and soul of joy!
Now leagu'd with furies, and with thee,1 against me.
"Know his achievements? study his renown?
Contemplate this amazing universe,

Dropp'd from his hand, with miracles replete !
For what? 'Mid miracles of nobler name,

To find one miracle of misery?

To find the being, which alone can know

And praise his works, a blemish on his praise?

683

690

Through nature's ample range, in thought, to stroll, 700
And start at man, the single mourner there,
Breathing high hope, chain'd down to pangs, and death?
Knowing is suffering and shall Virtue share

The sigh of knowledge?-Virtue shares the sigh.
By straining up the steep of excellent,

By battles fought, and, from temptation won,

16 'Thee: Lorenzo.

707

What gains she, but the pang of seeing worth,
Angelic worth, soon shuffled in the dark
With every vice, and swept to brutal dust?
Merit is madness; virtue is a crime;
A crime to reason, if it costs us pain

Unpaid what pain, amidst a thousand more,
To think the most abandon'd, after days
Of triumph o'er their betters, find in death
As soft a pillow, nor make fouler clay !

Duty! Religion !—these, our duty done,
Imply reward. Religion is mistake.

Duty!-there's none, but to repel the cheat.
Ye cheats, away! ye daughters of my pride!
Who feign yourselves the favourites of the skies:
Ye tow'ring hopes! abortive energies!
That toss, and struggle, in my lying breast,
To scale the skies, and build presumptions there,
As I were heir of an eternity.

Vain, vain ambitions! trouble me no more.
Why travel far in quest of sure defeat?
As bounded as my being, be my wish.
All is inverted; wisdom is a fool.

Sense! take the rein; blind Passion! drive us on ;
And, Ignorance! befriend us on our way;

Ye new, but truest patrons of our peace!

Yes; give the pulse full empire; live the brute,
Since, as the brute, we die. The sum of man,
Of godlike man! to revel, and to rot.

"But not on equal terms with other brutes:
Their revels a more poignant relish yield,
And safer too; they never poisons choose.

Instinct, than reason, makes more wholesome meals,
And sends all-marring murmur far away.

For sensual life they best philosophize;

718

.720

730

740

Theirs, that serene, the sages sought in vain :
'Tis man alone expostulates with Heaven;
His all the pow'r, and all the cause, to mourn.
Shall human eyes alone dissolve in tears?
And bleed, in anguish, none but human hearts?
The wide-stretch'd realm of intellectual woe,
Surpassing sensual far, is all our own.
In life so fatally distinguish'd, why

Cast in one lot, confounded, lump'd, in death?
"Ere yet in being, was mankind in guilt?
Why thunder'd this peculiar clause against us,
All-mortal, and all-wretched!-Have the skies
Reasons of state, their subjects may not scan,
Nor humbly reason, when they sorely sigh?
All-mortal, and all-wretched !-'Tis too much :
Unparallell'd in nature: 'tis too much

On being unrequested at thy hands,

Omnipotent! for I see naught but pow'r.

741

750

700

"And why see that? Why thought? To toil, and eat, Then make our bed in darkness, needs no thought. What superfluities are reasoning souls!

Oh give eternity! or thought destroy.

But without thought our curse were half unfelt;
Its blunted edge would spare the throbbing heart;
And, therefore, 'tis bestow'd, I thank thee, Reason!
For aiding life's too small calamities,

And giving being to the dread of Death.

Such are thy bounties !—was it then too much
For me, to trespass on the brutal rights?

Too much for Heaven to make one emmet more?
Too much for chaos to permit my mass
A longer stay with essences unwrought,
Unfashion'd, untormented into man?

Wretched preferment to this round of pains!

770

Wretched capacity of phrensy, thought!
Wretched capacity of dying, life!

Life, thought, worth, wisdom, all (O foul revolt!)
Once friends to peace, gone over to the foe.

775

Death, then, has chang'd his nature too: O Death! Come to my bosom, thou best gift of Heaven!

Best friend of man! since man is man no more.
Why in this thorny wilderness so long,

Since there's no promis'd land's ambrosial bow'r,
To pay me with its honey for my stings?
If needful to the selfish schemes of Heav'n
To sting us sore, why mock'd our misery?
Why this so sumptuous insult o'er our heads?
Why this illustrious canopy display'd?
Why so magnificently lodg'd Despair?
At stated periods, sure returning, roll

These glorious orbs, that mortals may compute
Their length of labours, and of pains; nor lose
Their misery's full measure ?-Smiles with flow 'rs,
And fruits, promiscuous, ever-teeming earth,
That man may languish in luxurious scenes,
And in an Eden mourn his wither'd joys?
Claim earth and skies man's admiration, due
For such delights! Blest animals! too wise
To wonder, and too happy to complain!

783

790

"Our doom decreed demands a mournful scene: 800 Why not a dungeon dark, for the condemn'd?

Why not the dragon's subterranean den,

For man to howl in? Why not his abode.

Of the same dismal colour with his fate?

A Thebes, a Babylon, at vast expense

Of time, toil, treasure, art, for owls and adders,

As congruous as, for man, this lofty dome,

Which prompts proud thought, and kindles high desire ;