And fcatters death; the arrow that by night
Cuts the dank mift, and fatal wings its flight;
The billowing fnow, and violence of the shower,
That from the hills disperse their dreadful store, 130
And o'er the vales collected ruin pour;
The worm that gnaws the ripening fruit, fad gueft,
Canker or locuft, hurtful to infest
The blade; while husks elude the tiller's care,
And eminence of want diftinguishes the year.
Pafs we the flow disease, and subtle pain,
Which our weak frame is destin'd to sustain;
The cruel stone with congregated war
Tearing his bloody way; the cold catarrh,
With frequent impulse, and continued ftrife,
Weakening the wafted feats of irksome life;
The gout's fierce rack, the burning fever's rage,
The fad experience of decay; and age,
Herfelf the foreft ill; while death and ease,
Oft' and in vain invok'd or to appease
Or end the grief, with hafty wings recede
From the vext patient and the fickly bed.
Nought shall it profit, that the charming fair,
Angelic, fofteft work of Heaven, draws near
To the cold fhaking paralytic hand,
Senfelefs of beauty's touch, or love's command;
Nor longer apt or able to fulfil
The dictates of its feeble mafter's will.
Nought fhall the pfaltry and the harp avail,
The pleafing fong, or well-repeated tale,
When the quick spirits their warm march forbear,
And numbing coldness has unbrac'd the car.
The verdant rifing of the flowery hill,
The vale enamell'd, and the crystal rill,
The ocean rolling and the fhelly shore,
Beautiful objects, fhall delight no more,
When the lax'd finews of the weaken'd eye
In watery damps or dim fuffufion lie.
Day follows night; the clouds return again
After the falling of the latter rain;
But to the aged-blind shall neʼer return
Grateful viciffitude: he ftill must mourn
The fun, and moon, and every starry light,
Eclips'd to him, and loft in everlasting night.
Behold where age's wretched victim lies,
See his head trembling, and his half-clos'd eyes;
Frequent for breath his panting bofom heaves;
To broken fleep his remnant fense he gives,
And only by his pains, awaking, finds he lives.
Loos'd by devouring time, the filver cord
Diffever'd lies; unhonour'd from the board
The crystal urn, when broken, is thrown by,
And apter utenfils their place fupply.
These things and thou must share one equal lot,
Die and be loft, corrupt and be forgot;
While still another and another race
Shall now fupply, and now give up the place;
From earth all came, to earth must all return,
Frail as the cord, and brittle as the urn.
But be the terror of these ills fuppress'd,
And view we man with health and vigour bleft.
Home he returns with the declining fun,
His deftin❜d task of labour hardly done;
Goes forth again with the ascending ray,
Again his travel for his bread to pay,
And find the ill fufficient to the day.
Haply at night he does with horror fhun
A widow'd daughter or a dying fon;
His neighbour's offspring he to-morrow fees,
And doubly feels his want in their increase ;
The next day, and the next, he must attend
His foe triumphant, or his buried friend.
In every
Public calamities, or household ills;
The due reward to just desert refus❜d,
The truft betray'd, the nuptial bed abus'd;
The judge corrupt, the long-depending caufe,.
And doubtful iffue of misconstrued laws;
The crafty turns of a dishonest state,
act and turn of life he feels
And violent will of the wrong-doing great ;
The venom'd tongue, injurious to his fame,
Which nor can wifdom fhun, nor fair advice reclaim.
Efteem we thefe, my friends, event and chance,
Produc'd as atoms from their fluttering dance?
Or higher yet their effence may we draw
From deftin'd order and eternal law?
Again, my Mufe, the cruel doubt repeat:
Spring they, I fay, from accident or fate?
Yet fuch we find they are as can control
The fervile actions of our wavering foul :
Can fright, can alter, or can chain, the will;
Their ills all built on life, that fundamental ill.
O fatal fearch! in which the labouring mind,
Still prefs'd with weight of woe, still hopes to find
A fhadow of delight, a dream of peace,
From years of pain one moment of release;
Hoping at leaft fhe may herself deceive,
Against experience willing to believe,
Defirous to rejoice, condemn'd to grieve.
Happy the mortal man, who now at last
Has through this doleful vale of misery past,
Who to his deftin'd ftage has carry'd on
The tedious load, and laid his burden down ;
Whom the cut brass, or wounded marble, fhews
Victor o'er Life, and all her train of woes.
He, happier yet, who, privileg'd by Fate
To shorter labour and a lighter weight,
Receiv'd but yesterday the gift of breath,
Order'd to-morrow to return to death.
But O! beyond description happiest he,
Who ne'er muft roll on Life's tumultuous fea;
Who, with blefs'd freedom, from the general doom
Exempt, must never force the teeming womb,
Nor fee the fun, nor fink into the tomb!
Who breathes, muft fuffer; and who thinks, must
And he alone is blefs'd, who ne'er was born.
"Yet in thy turn, thou frowning Preacher, hear: "Are not these general maxims too severe ? "Say: cannot power fecure its owner's bliss? "And is not wealth the potent fire of peace? 245 "Are victors blefs'd with fame, or kings with ease?". I tell thee, life is but one common care, And man was born to fuffer, and to fear. "But is no rank, no station, no degree, "From this contagious taint of forrow free?"
None, mortal! none. Yet in a bolder ftrain
Let me this melancholy truth maintain.
But hence, ye worldly and prophane, retire;
For I adapt my voice, and raise my lyre,
To notions not by vulgar ear receiv'd:
Ye ftill must covet life, and be deceiv'd;
Your fear of death shall make you try
To catch the fhade of immortality;
Wishing on earth to linger, and to fave
Part of its prey from the devouring grave;
To those who may furvive you to bequeath
Something entire, in fpite of Time and Death;
A fancy'd kind of being to retrieve,
And in a book, or from a building, live.
Falfe hope! vain labour! let fome ages fly,.
The dome shall moulder, and the volume die :
Wretches, ftill taught, ftill will ye think it strange,
That all the parts of this great fabric change,
Quit their old ftation, and primæval frame,
And lose their shape, their effence, and their name? 270
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