If fo the tyrant, or his minion, doom.
Want, and incurable Disease (fell pair!)
On hopeless multitudes remorfeless feize
At once; and make a refuge of the grave.
How groaning hofpitals eject their dead!
What numbers groan for fad admiffion there!
What numbers, once in Fortune's lap high-fed,
Solicit the cold hand of Charity!

To fhock us more, folicit it in vain!

Ye filken fons of Pleasure! fince in pains
You rue more modifh vifits, vifit here,

And breathe from your debauch: give, and reduce
Surfeit's dominion o'er you: but fo great
Your impudence, you blush at what is right.
Happy! did Sorrow feize on fuch alone.
Not Prudence can defend, or Virtue fave;
Disease invades the chafteft temperance;
And punishment the guiltless; and Alarm,
Thro' thickest fhades, purfues the fond of peace.
Man's caution often into danger turns,
And his guard falling, crushes him to death.
Not Happiness itfelf makes good her name;
Our very wishes give us not our wish.
How diftant, oft, the thing we doat on moft,
From that for which we doat, Felicity?
The smootheft courfe of Nature has its pains;
And truest friends, thro' error, wound our reft.
Without Misfortune, what calamities ?
And what hoftilities, without a foe?
Nor are foes wanting to the best on earth.

But

But endless is the lift of human ills,

And fighs might fooner fail, than cause to figh.
A part, how small, of the terraqueous globe,
Is tenanted by man! the rest a waste,

Rocks, defarts, frozen feas, and burning fands! Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings, and death. Such is Earth's melancholy map! But far

More fad this earth is a true map of

man.

So bounded are its haughty lord's delights

To Woe's wide empire; where deep Troubles tofs,
Loud Sorrows howl, invenom'd Passions bite,
Rav'nous Calamities our vitals feize,

And threat'ning Fate wide opens to devour.
What then am I, who forrow for myself?
In age, in infancy, from others aid
Is all our hope; to teach us to be kind.
That, Nature's firft, laft leffon to mankind;
The selfish heart deferves the pain it feels.
More gen'rous forrow, while it finks, exalts;
And confcious Virtue mitigates the pang.
Nor Virtue, more than Prudence, bids me give
Swoln Thought a fecond channel; who divide,
They weaken too, the torrent of their grief.
Take, then, O World! thy much-indebted tear:
How fad a fight is human happiness,

To those whose thought can pierce beyond an hour?
O thou, whate'er thou art, whofe heart exults!
Wouldst thou I should congratulate thy fate?

I know thou wouldft; thy pride demands it from me. Let thy pride pardon what thy nature needs,

I

The falutary cenfure of a friend.

Thou happy wretch! by blindness thou art bleft;
By dotage dandled to perpetual fmiles.
Know, fmiler! at thy peril art thou pleas'd;
Thy pleasure is the promise of thy pain.
Misfortune, like a creditor fevere,
But rifes in demand for her delay;
She makes a fcourge of paft profperity,
To fting thee more, and double thy diftress.
Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to thee,
Thy fond heart dances, while the fyren fings.
Dear is thy welfare; think me not unkind;
I would not damp, but to fecure thy joys.
Think not that Fear is facred to the ftorm.
Stand on thy guard against the fmiles of Fate.
Is Heav'n tremendous in its frowns? Moft fure;
And in its favours formidable too :

Its favours here are trials, not rewards;
A call to duty, not discharge from care;
And fhould alarm us full as much as woes;
Awake us to their caufe, and confequence;
And make us tremble, weigh'd with our defert;
Awe Nature's tumult, and chastize her joys,
Left, while we clafp, we kill them; nay, invert
To worse than fimple mifery, their charms.
Revolted joys, like foes in civil war,
Like bofom friendships to refentment four'd,
With rage invenom'd rife against our peace.
Beware what earth calls happiness; beware
All joys, but joys that never can expire.

Whe

Who builds on less than an immortal base,
Fond as he seems, condemns his joys to death.
Mine dy'd with thee, Philander! thy laft figh
Diffolv'd the charm; the difinchanted earth
Loft all her luftre. Where her glitt❜ring towers?
Her golden mountains where? all darken'd down
To naked wafte; a dreary vale of tears:

The great magician's dead! Thou poor, pale piece
Of out-caft earth, in darkness! what a change
From yesterday! thy darling hope fo near.
(Long-labour'd prize!) O how ambition flush'd
Thy glowing cheek! Ambition, truly great,
Of virtuous praife. Death's fubtle feed within,
(Sly, treach'rous miner!) working in the dark,
Smil'd at thy well-concerted scheme, and beckon'd
The worm to riot on that rose so red,
Unfaded ere it fell; one moment's prey!
Man's forefight is conditionally wife;
Lorenzo! Wifdom into Folly turns
Oft, the first inftant, its idea fair

To labouring thought is born. How dim our eye!
The present moment terminates our fight;

Clouds, thick as those on Doomsday, drown the next;
We penetrate, we prophefy in vain.

Time is dealt out by particles, and each,

Ere mingled with the ftreaming fands of life,
By Fate's inviolable oath is fworn

Deep filence, "Where Eternity begins."
By Nature's law, what may be, may be now;
There's no prerogative in human hours.

In human hearts what bolder thought can rise,
Than man's prefumption on to-morrow's dawn ?
Where is to-morrow? In another world.

For numbers this is certain; the reverfe
Is fure to none; and yet on this perhaps,
This peradventure, infamous for lyes,
As on a rock of adamant, we build.
Our mountain hopes; fpin our eternal fchemes,
As we the fatal fifters would out-fpin,
And, big with life's futurities, expire.

Not ev'n Philander had bespoke his shroud.
Nor had he caufe; a warning was deny'd:
How many fall as fudden, not as fafe!
As fudden, tho' for years admonisht home.
Of human ills the last extreme beware.
Beware, Lorenzo! a flow-fudden death.
How dreadful that deliberate furprize!
Be wife to-day: 'tis madnefs to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead ;
Thus on, till Wisdom is pufh'd out of life.
Procraftination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all is fled,
And, to the mercies of a moment, leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not fo frequent, would not this be ftrange?
That 'tis fo frequent, this is ftranger ftill.

Of man's miraculous miftakes, this bears
The palm, "That all men are about to live,"
For ever on the brink of being born.

All pay themselves the compliment to think

They