| |
| THOUGH 1 guilt and folly tremble o’er the grave, | |
| No life can charm, no death affright the brave. | |
| The wise at nature’s laws will ne’er repine, | |
| Nor think to scan or mend the grand design | |
| That takes unbounded nature for its care, | 5 |
| Bids all her millions claim an equal share. | |
| Late in a microscopic worm confined, | |
| Then in a prison’d fetus drown’d the mind; | |
| Now of the ape kind both for sense and size, | |
| Man eats and drinks and propagates and dies. | 10 |
| Good God! if thus to live our errand here, | |
| Is parting with life’s trifles worth our fear? | |
| Or what grim furies have us in their power, | |
| More in the dying than the living hour. | |
| Ills from ourselves, but none from nature flow, | 15 |
| And virtue’s road cannot descend to wo. | |
| What nature gives, receive, her laws obey; | |
| If you must die tomorrow, live today. | |
| The prior states thy mind has varied through | |
| Are drown’d in Lethe where black waves pursue, | 20 |
| To roll oblivion o’er each yesterday, | |
| And will tomorrow sweep thyself away. | |
| But where? no more unknown in future fate | |
| Than your own end or essence in this state. | |
| The past, the future and our nature hid, | 25 |
| Now comic and now tragic scenes we tread. | |
| Unconscious actors: with a drama run | |
| And act a part, but for a plot unknown. | |
| We see their shapes, we feel ten thousand things, | |
| We reason, act and sport on fancy’s wings, | 30 |
| While yet this agent, this percipient lies | |
| Hid from itself and puzzles all the wise. | |
| In vain we seek, inverted eyes are blind, | |
| And nature form’d no mirror for the mind. | |
| Like some close cell whence art excludes the day, | 35 |
| Save what through optics darts its pencil’d ray, | |
| And paints the lively landscape to the sight, | |
| While yet the room itself is veil’d in night. | |
| Nor can you find with all your boasted art, | |
| The curious touch that bids the salient heart | 40 |
| Send its warm purple round the venal maze, | |
| To fill each nerve with life, with bloom the face. | |
| How o’er the heart the numbing palsies creep | |
| To chill the carcase to eternal sleep. | |
| ’T is ours t’ improve this life, not ours to know | 45 |
| From whence this meteor, when or where ’t will go. | |
| As o’er a fen when heaven ’s involved in night, | |
| An ignis fatuus waves its new-born light, | |
| Now up, now down, the mimic taper plays | |
| As varying Auster puffs the trembling blaze; | 50 |
| Soon the light phantom spends its magic store, | |
| Dies into darkness, and is seen no more. | |
| Thus run our changes, but in this secure, | |
| Heaven trusts no mortal’s fortune in his power. | |
| Nor hears the prayers impertinent we send | 55 |
| To alter fate, and providence to mend. | |
| As well in judgment as in mercy kind, | |
| God hath for both the fittest date design’d. | |
| The wise on death, the fools on life depend, | |
| From toils and pains some sweet reverse to find. | 60 |
| Scheme after scheme the dupe successive tries, | |
| And never gains, but hopes to gain the prize. | |
| From the delusion still he ne’er will wake, | |
| But dream of bliss, and live on the mistake. | |
| Thus Tantalus in spite the furies placed | 65 |
| Tortured and charm’d to wish, and yet accursed: | |
| In every wish infatuate, dreads lest Jove | |
| Should move him from the torments of his love | |
| To see the tempting fruit and stream no more, | |
| And trust his Maker on some unknown shore. | 70 |
| Death buries all diseases in the grave, | |
| And gives us freedom from each fool and knave, | |
| To worlds unknown it kindly wafts us o’er— | |
| Come death, my guide, I ’m raptured to explore. | |
