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From “Night Thoughts,” Night I.
BE wise to-day; ’t is madness to defer; | |
| Next day the fatal precedent will plead; | |
| Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life. | |
| Procrastination is the thief of time; | |
| Year after year it steals, till all are fled, | 5 |
| And to the mercies of a moment leaves | |
| The vast concerns of an eternal scene. | |
| If not so frequent, would not this be strange? | |
| That ’t is so frequent, this is stranger still. | |
| Of man’s miraculous mistakes this bears | 10 |
| The palm, “That all men are about to live,” | |
| Forever on the brink of being born. | |
| All pay themselves the compliment to think | |
| They one day shall not drivel: and their pride | |
| On this reversion takes up ready praise; | 15 |
| At least, their own; their future selves applaud: | |
| How excellent that life they ne’er will lead! | |
| Time lodged in their own hands is folly’s veils; | |
| That lodged in Fate’s, to wisdom they consign; | |
| The thing they can’t but purpose, they postpone: | 20 |
| ’T is not in folly not to scorn a fool, | |
| And scarce in human wisdom to do more. | |
| All promise is poor dilatory man, | |
| And that through every stage. When young, indeed, | |
| In full content we sometimes nobly rest, | 25 |
| Unanxious for ourselves, and only wish, | |
| As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise. | |
| At thirty, man suspects himself a fool; | |
| Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; | |
| At fifty, chides his infamous delay, | 30 |
| Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; | |
| In all the magnanimity of thought, | |
| Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same. | |
| And why? Because he thinks himself immortal. | |
| All men think all men mortal but themselves; | 35 |
| Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate | |
| Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread; | |
| But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air, | |
| Soon close; where passed the shaft, no trace is found. | |
| As from the wing no scar the sky retains, | 40 |
| The parted wave no furrow from the keel, | |
| So dies in human hearts the thought of death: | |
| Even with the tender tears which Nature sheds | |
| O’er those we love, we drop it in their grave. | |
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