And toil we still for sublunary pay?
Defy the dangers of the field, and flood,
Or, spider-like, spin out our precious all,
Our more than vitals spin in curious webs
Of subtle thought, and exquisite design;
(Fine net-work of the brain!) to catch a fly?
The momentary buz of vain renown!
A name, a mortal immortality.
§ 193. Genius connected with Ignominy.
GENIUS and art, ambition's boasted wings,
Our boast but ill deserve. A feeble aid!
Heart-merit wanting, mount we ne'er so high,
Our height is but the gibbet of our name.
When I behold a genius bright and base,
Of towering talents, and terrestrial aims;
Methinks, I see, as thrown from her high sphere,
The glorious fragments of a soul immortal,
With rubbish mixt, and glittering in the dust.
Hearts are proprietors of all applause,
Right ends, and means, make wisdom: worldly-
Is but half-witted, at its highest praise. [wise
§ 194. Exalted Station.
-WHAT is station high?
'Tis a proud mendicant; it boasts, and begs;
It begs an alms of homage from the throng,
And oft the throng denies its charity.
Monarchs and ministers are awful names;
Whoever wear them, challenge our devoir.
Religion, public order, both exact
External homage, and a supple knee,
To beings pompously set up, to serve
The meanest slave; all more is merit's due;
Her sacred and inviolable right,
Nor ever paid the monarch, but the man.
Our hearts ne'er bow but to superior worth;
Nor ever fail of their allegiance there.
Fools indeed drop the man in their account,
And vote the mantle into majesty.
Let the small savage boast his silver fur;
His royal robe unborrow'd, and unbought,
His own, descending fairly from his sires.
Shall man be proud to wear his livery,
And souls in ermine scorn a soul without?
Can place or lessen us or aggrandise?
Pigmies are pigmies still, though percht on Alps,
And pyramids are pyramids in vales.
Each man makes his own stature, builds himself:
Virtue alone out-builds the pyramids;
Her monuments shall last, when Egypt's fall.
Of these sure truths dost thou demand the cause?
The cause is lodg'd in immortality.
Hear, and assent. Thy bosom burns for pow'r;
'Tis thine. And art thou greater than before?
Then thou before was something less than man.
Has thy new post betray'd thee into pride?
That pride defames humanity, and calls [raise.
The being mean, which staffs or strings can
§ 195. True Greatness.
THAT prince, and that alone, is truly great,
Who draws the sword reluctant, gladly sheaths;
On empire builds what empire far outweighs,
And makes his throne a scaffold to the skies.
Why this so rare? because forgot of all
The day of death; that venerable day, [nounce
Which sits as judge: that day which shall pro-
On all our days, absolve them, or condemn.
Lorenzo! never shut thy thought against it;
Be levees ne'er so full, afford it room,
And give it audience in the cabinet.
That friend consulted, flatteries apart,
Will tell thee fair, if thou art great or mean.
To doat on aught may leave us, or be left,
Is that ambition? then let flames descend,
Point to the centre their inverted spires:
When blind ambition quite mistakes her road,
And downward pores, for that which shines
Substantial happiness, and true renown; [above,
Then, like an idiot gazing on the brook,
We leap at stars, and fasten in the mud;
At glory grasp, and sink in infamy.
§ 196. The Torment of Ambition. AMBITION! powerful source of good and ill! Thy strength in man, like length of wing in birds,
When disengag'd from earth, with greater ease
And swifter flight, transports us to the skies.
By toys entangled, or in guilt bemir'd,
It turns a curse; it is our chain, and scourge,
In this dark dungeon, where confin'd we lie,
Close-grated by the sordid bars of sense;
All prospect of eternity shut out;
And but for execution ne'er set free.
WITH error in ambition, justly charg'd,
Find we Lorenzo wiser in his wealth?
[me,"
Where thy true treasure? Gold says, "not in
And, "not in me," the diamond. Gold is poor;
India's insolvent: seek it in thyself;
Seek in thy naked self, and find it there :
In being so descended, form'd, endow'd;
Sky-born, sky-guided, sky-returning race!
Erect, immortal, rational, divine!
In senses, which inherit earth and heavens;
Enjoy the various riches nature yields :
Far nobler! give the riches they enjoy;
Give taste to fruits; and harmony to groves;
Their radiant beams to gold, and gold's bright
fire;
Take in at once the landscape of the world,
At a small inlet, which a grain might close,
And half create the wondrous world they see.
Our senses, as our reason, are divine.
But for the magic organ's powerful charm,
Earth were a rude, uncolor'd chaos still.
Ours is the cloth, the pencil, and the paint,
Which beautifies creation's ample dome.
Say then, shall man, his thoughts all sent abroad,
Superior wonders in himself forgot,
His admiration waste on objects round,
When heaven makes him the soul of all he sees?
Absurd! not rare! so great, so mean, is man.
What wealth in senses such as these! what
In fancy, fir'd to form a fairer scene
Than sense surveys! in memory's firm record,
Which, should it perish, could this world recall
From the dark shadows of o'erwhelming years!
In colors fresh, originally bright
Preserve its portrait, and report its fate!
What wealth in intellect, that sovereign power!
Which sense, and fancy summons to the bar;
Interrogates, approves, or reprehends :
And from the mass those underlings import,
From their materials sifted, and refin'd,'
Forms art, and science, government, and law.
What wealth in souls that soar, dive, range
around.
Disdaining limit, or from place, or time;
And hear at once, in thought extensive, hear
Th' almighty fiat, and the trumpet's sound!
Bold, on creation's outside walk, and view
What was, and is, and more than e'er shall be;
Commanding, with omnipotence of thought,
Creations new, in fancy's field to rise!
Souls, that can grasp whate'er th' Almighty made;
And wander wild through things impossible;
What wealth, in faculties of endless growth,
In liberty to choose, in power to reach,
And in duration (how thy riches rise!)
Duration to perpetuate-boundless bliss!
$198. The Vanity of Wealth. HIGH-BUILT abundance, heap on heap!
To breed new wants, and beggar us the more;
Then make a richer scramble for the throng?
Soon as this feeble pulse, which leaps so long,
Almost by miracles, is tir'd with play,
Like rubbish, from disploding engines thrown,
Our magazines of hoarded trifles fly;
Fly diverse; fly to foreigners, to foes;
New masters court, and call the former fool
(How justly!) for dependence on their stay.
Wide scatter first, our play-things, then our dust.
Much learning shows how little mortals
Much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy:
At best it babies us with endless toys;
And keeps us children till we drop to dust.
As monkies at a mirror stand amaz'd,
They fail to find what they so plainly see;
Thus men in shining riches see the face
Of happiness, nor know it is a shade;
But gaze, and touch, and peep, and peep again,
And wish, and wonder it is absent 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 smiles at her, and death.
O what a patrimony, this! a being
Of such inherent strength and majesty,
Not worlds possest can raise it; worlds destroy'd
Can't injure; which hold on its glorious course,
When thine, O nature, ends; too blest to mourn
Creation's obsequies. What treasure, this!
The monarch is a beggar to the man.
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Immortal! was but one immortal, how
Would others envy! how would thrones adore!
Because 'tis common, is the blessing lost?
How this ties up the bounteous hand of Heaven!
O vain, vain, vain! all else: eternity!
A glorious, and a needful refuge that,
From vile imprisonment in abject views.
'Tis immortality, 'tis that alone,
Amidst life's pains, abasements, emptiness,
The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill.
Eternity depending covers all;
Sets earth at distance, casts her into shades;
Blends her distinctions; abrogates her pow'rs;
The low, the lofty, joyous, and severe,
Fortune's dread frowns, and fascinating smiles,
Make one promiscuous and neglected heap,
The man beneath; if I may call him man,
Whom immortality's full force inspires.
Nothing terrestrial touches his high thought;
Suns shine unseen, and thunders roll unheard,
By minds quite conscious of their high descent,
Their present province, and their future prize;
Divinely darting upward every wish,
Warm on the wing, in glorious absence lost.
Doubt you this truth? why labors
your be-
If earth's whole orb by some due distanc'd eye
Was seen at once, her tow'ring Alps would sink,
And levell'd Atlas leave an even sphere.
Thus earth, and all that earthly minds admire,
Is swallow'd in eternity's vast round.
To that stupendous view when souls awake,
So large of late, so mountainous to man,
Time's toys subside; and equal all below.
§ 200. Man ignorant of his real Greatness. In spite of all the truths the Muse has sung, Are there who wrap the world so close about them,
They see no farther than the clouds; and dance
On heedless vanity's fantastic toc,
Till, stumbling at a straw in their career,
Headlong they plunge, where end both dance
and song?
Are there on earth (let me not call them men)
Who lodge a soul immortal in their breasts,
Unconscious as the mountain of its ore,
Or rock, of its inestimable gem? [these
When rocks shall melt, and mountains vanish,
Shall know their treasure; treasure, then, no
$201. Disbelief of a Future State. ARE there (still more amazing!) who resist The rising thought? who smother in its birth The glorious truth? who struggle to be brutes? Who through this bosom-barrier burst their way,
And, with rever'd ambition, strive to sink? Who labor downwards through th' opposing 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?
Who fight the proofs of immortality?
To contradict them, see all nature rise!
What object, what event, the moon beneath,
But argues, or endears, an after-scene?
To reason proves, or weds it to desire?
All things proclaim it needful; some advance
One precious step beyond, and prove it sure.
A thousand arguments swarm round my pen,
From heaven, and earth, and man. Indulge a
By nature, as her common habit worn. [few,
Thou! whose all-providential eye surveys,
Whose hand directs, whose Spirit fills, and
Creation, and holds empire far beyond![warms
Eternity's inhabitant august!
Of two eternities amazing Lord!
One past, ere man's or angel's had begun;
Aid, while I rescue from the foe's assault
Thy glorious immortality in man.
§ 202. Man's Immortality proved by Nature.
NATURE, thy daughter, ever-changing birth
Of thee the great Immutable, to man
Speaks wisdom; is his oracle supreme;
And he who most consults her, is most wise.
Look nature through, 'tis revolution all. [night
All change, no death. Day follows night; and
The dying day; stars rise, and set, and rise;
Earth takes th' example. See the summer gay,
With her green chaplet, and ambrosial flow'rs,
Droops into pallid autumn; winter grey,
Horrid with frost, and turbulent with storm,
Blows autumn, and his golden fruits away,
Then melts into the spring; soft spring with
breath
Favonian, from warm chambers of the south,
Recalls the first. All, to re-flourish, fades:
As in a wheel, all sinks, to re-ascend :
Emblems of man, who passes, not expires.
With this minute distinction, emblems just,
Nature revolves, but man advances; both
Eternal; that a circle, this a line.
That gravitates, this soars. Th' aspiring soul
Ardent, and tremulous, like flame ascends;
Zeal, and humility, her wings to heaven.
The world of matter, with its various forms,
All dies into new life. Life born from death
Rolls the vast mass, and shall for ever roll.
No single atom, once in being lost,
With change of counsel charges the Most High.
Matter, immortal? and shall spirit die?
Above the nobler, shall less noble rise?
Shall man alone, from whom all else revives,
No resurrection know? shall man alone,
Imperial man! be sown in barren ground,
Less privileg'd than grain, on which he feeds?
Is man, in whom alone is power to prize
The bliss of being, or with previous pain
Deplore its period, by the spleen of fate,
Severely doom'd death's single unredeem'd?
Discontent.
WHY discontent for ever harbor'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 own dominion from the waste,
Repelling winter's blast with mud and straw,
Disquietude 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 deny'd 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, [joy'd. Sighs on for something more, when most enIs 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, though, 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 heav'n,
Set up their hopes on earth, and stable here
With brutal acquiescence in the mire?
No, no, my friend: they shall be nobly pain'd;
The glorious foreigners distrest, shall sigh
On thrones; and thou congratulate the sigh:
Man's misery declares him born for bliss;
His anxious heart asserts the truth I sing.
Our heads, our hearts, our passions, and our pow'rs,
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 Heav'n ordain'd,
Objects that challenge all their fire, and leave
No fault, but in defect: blest Heav'n! avert
A bounded ardor 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 Hourish fair, and put forth all their bloom.
$204. Reason and Instinct.
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.
Was 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.
To man, why, stepdame 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, [dread?
Nor reach what reach he might, why die in
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 favor of the just.
His immortality alone can solve
That darkest of ænigmas, 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 bury'd 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 make his hope his sublunary joy.
Man's heart eats all things, and is hungry still;
"More, more, the glutton cries:" for something
So rages appetite, if man can't mount, [new
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.
See restless hope, for ever on the wing!
High perch'd o'er every thought that falcon sits,
To fly at all that rises in her sight;
And never stooping, but to mount again!
Next moment, she betrays her aim's mistake,
And owns her quarry lodg'd beyond the
There should it fail us (it must fail us there,
If being fails) more mournful riddles rise,
And virtue vies with hope in mystery.
Why virtde? Where its praise, its being, fled?
Virtue is true self-interest pursued;
What true self-int'rest of quite mortal man?
To close with all that makes him happy here,
If vice (as sometimes) is our friend on earth,
Then vice is virtue, 'tis our sov'reign good.
The rigid guardian of a blameless heart,
So long rever'd, so long reputed wise,
Is weak; with rank knight-errantries o'errun.
Why beats thy bosom with illustrious dreams
Of gallant enterprise, and glorious death?
Die for thy country?-thou romantic fool!
Seise, seise the plank thyself; and let her sink!
Thy country! what to thee? (I speak with awe)
The Godhead, what? though he should bid
thee bleed?
If, with thy blood, thy final hope is split,
Nor can Omnipotence reward the blow,
Be deaf; preserve thy being; disobey.
$206. The Madness of Infidelity.
SINCE virtue's recompense is doubtful, here,
If man dies wholly, well may we demand,
Why is man suffer'd to be good in vain?
Why to be good in vain, is man enjoin'd?
Why to be good in vain, is man betray'd?
Betray'd by traitors lodg'd in his own breast,
By sweet complacencies from virtue felt?
Why whispers nature lies on virtue's part?
Or if blind instinct (which assumes the name
Of sacred conscience) plays the fool in man,
Why reason made accomplice in the cheat?
Why are the wisest, loudest in her praise?
Can man by reason's beam be laid astray?
Or, at his peril, imitate his God?
Since virtue sometimes ruins us on earth,
Or, both are true, or man survives the grave.
Or man survives the grave, or own, Lorenzo,
Thy boast supreme, a wild absurdity.
Dauntless thy spirit; cowards are thy scorn.
Grant man immortal, and thy scorn is just.
The man immortal, rationally brave,
Dares rush on death,—because he cannot die.
But if man loses all, when life is lost;
He lives a coward, or a fool expires.
A daring infidel (and such there are,
From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge,
Or pure heroical defect of thought),
Of all earth's madmen, most deserves a chain.
When to the grave we follow the renown'd
For valor, virtue, science, all we love, [beam
And all we praise; for worth, whose noontide
Mends our ideas of ethereal pow'rs;
Dream we, that lustre of the moral world
Goes out in stench, and rottenness the close?
Why was he wise to know, and warm to praise,
And strenuous to transcribe, in human life,
The mind almighty? could it be, that fate,
Just when the lineaments began to shine,
Should snatch the draught, and blot it out for ever?
Shall we, this moment, gaze on God in man?
The next, lose man for ever in the dust?
From dust we disengage, or man mistakes;
And there, where least his judgement fears a
flaw !
O sole and sweet solution! that unties
The difficult, and softens the severe;
The cloud on nature's beauteous face dispels;
Restores bright order; casts the brute beneath;
And re-inthrones us in supremacy
Wisdom, and worth, how boldly he commends!
Wisdom and worth are sacred names; rever'd,Of joy, ev'n here: admit immortal life,
Where not embrac'd; applauded! deified!
Why not compassion'd too? If spirits die,
Both are calamities, inflicted both
To make us but more wretched; wisdom's eye,
Acute, for what? To spy more miseries;
And worth, so recompens'd, new points their
stings.
Or man the grave surmounts, or gain is loss,
And worth exalted humbles us the more.
Were then capacities divine conferr'd,
As a mock diadem, in savage sport,
Rank insult of our pompous poverty,
Which reaps but pain, from seeming claims so
In future age lies no redress? and shuts
Eternity the door on our complaint!
If so, for what strange ends were mortals made?
The worst to wallow, and the best to weep.
Can we conceive a disregard in Heaven,
What the worst perpetrate, or best endure?
This cannot be. To love, and know, in man
Is boundless appetite, and boundless pow'r ;
And these demonstrate boundless objects too.
Objects, pow'rs, appetites, heav'n suits in all;
Nor, nature through, e'er violates this sweet,
Eternal concord, on her tuneful string.
Is man the sole exception from her laws?
Eternity struck off from human hope,
Man is a monster, the reproach of heav'n,
A stain, a dark impenetrable cloud
On nature's beauteous aspect; and deforms,
(Amazing blot!) deforms her with her lord.
Or own the soul immortal, or invert
All order. Go, mock-majesty! go, man,
And bow to thy superiors of the stall;
Through every scene of sense superior far:
They graze the turf untill'd; they drink the
Unbrew'd, and ever full, and unimbitter'd With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despairs,
Mankind's peculiar! reason's precious dow'r !
No foreign clime they ransack for their robes,
Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar :
Their good is good entire, unmixt, unmarr'd;
They find a paradise in ev'ry field,
On boughs forbidden, where no curses hang; Their ill no more than strikes the sense, unstretcht
By previous dread, or murmur in the rear; When the worst comes, it comes unfear'd; one stroke
Begins and ends their woe: they die but once; Blest, incommunicable privilege! [stars, For which who rules the globe, and reads the Philosopher, or hero, sighs in vain.
Account for this prerogative in brutes : No day, no glimpse of day to solve the knot, But what beams on it from eternity.
And virtue is knight-errantry no more:
Each virtue brings in hand a golden dow'r,
Far richer in reversion: hope exults;
And, though much bitter in our cup is thrown,
Predominates, and gives the taste of heav'n.
O wherefore is the Deity so kind?
Heav'n our reward-for heav'n enjoy'd below.
Still unsubdu'd thy stubborn heart? For there The traitor lurks, who doubts the truth I sing: Reason is guiltless; will alone rebels.
What, in that stubborn heart, if I should find New, unexpected witnesses against thee? Ambition, and the fateless love of gain! [soul Canst thou suspect that these, which make the The slave of earth, should own her heir of heav'n?
Canst thou suspect, what makes us disbelieve Our immortality, should prove it sure?
§ 207. Ambition and Fame. FIRST, then, ambition summon to the bar : Ambition's shame, extravagance, disgust, And inextinguishable nature, speak: Each much deposes: hear them in their turn.
Thy soul how passionately fond of fame! How anxious that fond passion to conceal! We blush detected in designs on praise, Though for best deeds, and from the best of men: And why? because immortal. Art divine Has made the body tutor to the soul: Heav'n kindly gives our blood a moral flow; Bids it ascend the glowing cheek, and there Upbraid that little heart's inglorious aim, Which stoops to court a character from man; While o'er us, in tremendous judgement sit Far more than man, with endless praise, and
Ambition's boundless appetite out-speaks
The verdict of its shame. When souls take fire
At high presumptions of their own desert,
One age is poor applause; the mighty shout,
The thunder by the living few begun,
Late time must echo; worlds unborn resound:
We wish our names eternally to live:
Wild dream! which ne'er had haunted human
thought,
Had not our natures been eternal too.
Instinct points out an int'rest in hereafter;
But our blind reason sees not where it lies;
Or, seeing, gives the substance for the shade.
Fame is the shade of immortality,
And in itself a shadow; soon as caught,
Contemn'd; it shrinks to nothing in the grasp.
Consult the ambitious; 'tis ambition's cure.
"And is this all?" cry'd Cæsar at his height,
Disgusted. This third proof ambition brings
Of immortality. The first in fame,
Observe him near, your envy will abate :
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