(How juftly!) før dependence on their stay.
Wide scatter, firft, our play-things; then, our duft.
Doft court abundance for the fake of peace?
Learn, and lament thy felf-defeated scheme:
Riches enable to be richer ftill
;
And, richer fill, what mortal can refift?
Thus wealth (a cruel task-mafter!) injoins
New toils, fucceeding toils, an endless train!
And murders peace, which taught it first to fhine.
The poor are half as wretched, as the rich;
Whose proud and painful privilege it is,
At once, to bear a double load of woe ;
To feel the ftings of envy, and of want,
Outrageous want! both Indies cannot cure.
A competence is vital to content.
Much wealth is corpulence, if not disease ;
Sick, or incumber'd, is our happiness.
A competence is all we can enjoy.
O be content, where heav'n can give no more!
More, like a flash of water from a lock,
Quickens our spirit's movement for an hour;
But foon its force is spent, nor rife our joys
Above our native temper's common stream.
Hence difappointment lurks in ev'ry prize,
As bees in flow'rs; and ftings us with fuccefs.
The rich man, who denies it, proudly feigns;
Nor knows the wife are privy to the lye.
Much learning fhews how little mortals know;
Much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy :
At best, it babies us with endless toys,
And keeps us children till we drop to duft.
As monkeys at a mirror stand amaz'd,
They fail to find what they fo plainly fee;
Thus men, in fhining riches, fee the face
Of happiness, nor know it is a fhade;
But gaze, and touch, and peep, and peep again,
And wifh, and wonder it is abfent still.
How few can rescue opulence from want!
Who lives to nature, rarely can be poor;
Who lives to fancy, never can be rich.
Poor is the man in debt; the man of gold,
In debt to fortune, trembles at her pow'r.
The man of reason fmiles at her, and death.
O what a patrimony this! A being
Of fuch inherent ftrength and majesty,
Not worlds poffeft can raise it; worlds deftroy'd
Can't injure; which holds on its glorious courfe,
When thine, O Nature! ends; too bleft to mourn
Creation's obfequies. What treasure, this!
The Monarch is a beggar to the Man.
Immortal! Ages paft, yet nothing gone!
Morn without eve! a race without a goal!
Unfhorten'd by progreffion infinite!
Futurity for ever future! Life
Beginning ftill where computation ends I
'Tis the description of a Deity!
'Tis the description of the meanest flave:
The meanest flave dares then LORENZO fcorn?
The meanest flave thy fou'reign glory shares.
Proud youth! faftidious of the lower world!
Man's lawful. pride includes humility;
Stoops to the loweft; is too great to find
Inferiors; all immortal! brothers all!
Proprietors eternal of thy love.
IMMORTAL! What can strike the fenfe fo ftrong,
As this the foul? It thunders to the thought;
Reafon amazes; gratitude o'erwhelms ;
No more we flumber on the brink of fate;
Rous'd at the found, th' exulting foul afcends,
And breathes her native air; an air that feeds
Ambitions high, and fans ethereal fires;
Quick-kindles all that is divine within us;
Nor leaves one loit'ring thought beneath the ftars.
Has not LORENZO's bofom caught the flame?
Immortal! Were but one immortal, how
Would others envy! How would thrones adore!
Because 'tis common, is the blessing loft?
How this ties up the bounteous hand of heav'n!
O vain, vain, vain! all elfe! Eternity!
A glorious, and a needful refuge, that,
From vile imprisonment, in abject views.
'Tis immortality, 'tis that alone,
Amid life's pains, abafements, emptiness,
The foul can comfort, elevate, and fill.
That only, and that amply, this performs;
Lifts us above life's pains, her joys above;
Their terror thofe, and these their luftre lose;
Eternity depending covers all;
Eternity depending all atchieves ;
Sets earth at distance; cafts her into fhades ;
Blends her diftinctions; abrogates her pow'rs;
The low, the lofty, joyous, and fevere,
Fortune's dread frowns, and fascinating fmiles,
Make one promifcuous and neglected heap,
The man beneath; if I may call him man,
Whom Immortality's full force infpires.
Nothing terrestrial touches his high thought;
Suns fhine unfeen, and thunders roll unheard,
By minds quite confcious of their high defcent,
Their prefent province, and their future prize;
Divinely darting upward ev'ry wish,
Warm on the wing, in glorious absence lost !
Doubt you this truth? Why labours your belief?
If earth's whole orb, by fome due distanc'd eye
Were seen at once, her tow'ring Alps would fink,
And level'd Atlas leave an even sphere.
Thus earth, and all that earthly minds admire,
Is fwallow'd in Eternity's vaft round.
To that flupendous view, when fouls awake,
So large of late, fo mountainous to man,
Time's toys fubfide; and equal all below.
Enthufiaftic, this? Then all are weak,
But rank enthufiafts. To this godlike height
Some fouls have foar'd; or martyrs ne'er had bled.
And all may do, what has by man been done.
Who, beaten by thefe fublunary ftorms,
Boundlefs, interminable joys can weigh,
Unraptur'd, unexalted, uninflam'd?
What flave unbleft, who from to-morrow's dawn
Expects an empire? He forgets his chain,
And, thron'd in thought, his abfent fceptre waves.
And what a fceptre waits us! what a throne !
Her own immenfe appointments to compute,
Or comprehend her high prerogatives,
In this her dark minority, how toils,
How vainly pants, the human foul divine!
Too great the bounty feems for earthly joy;
What heart but trembles at so strange a bliss ?
In spite of all the truths the mufe has fung,
Ne'er to be priz'd enough! enough revolv'd!
Are there who wrap the world fo close about them,
They fee no farther than the clouds; and dance
On heedlefs vanity's phantaftic toe,
Till, ftumbling at a straw, in their career,
Headlong they plunge, where end both dance and fong?
Are there, LORENZO? Is it poffible?
Are there on earth (let me not call them men)
Who lodge a foul immortal in their breafts;
Unconscious as the mountain of its ore;
Or rock, of its ineftimable gem?
When rocks fhall melt, and mountains vanish, these
Shall know their treasure; treasure, then, no more.
Are there (ftill more amazing!) who refift
The rifing thought? Who fmother, in its birth,
The glorious truth? Who ftruggle to be brutes?
Who thro' this bofom-barrier burst their way?
And, with reverft ambition, ftrive to fink?
Who labour downwards thro' th' oppofing pow'rs
Of instinct, reason, and the world against them,
To dismal hopes, and shelter in the shock
Of endless night? Night darker than the grave's?
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