"Tis plain, these useless toys of
every kind
As little can relieve the lab'ring mind:
Unless we could suppose the dreadful fight
Of marshal❜d legions moving to the fight,
Could, with their found and terrible array,
Expel our fears, and drive the thoughts of death
away.
But, fince the fuppofition vain appears,
Since clinging cares, and trains of inbred fears,
Are not with founds to be affrighted thence,
But in the midst of pomp purfue the prince,
Not aw'd by arms, but in the presence bold,
Without respect to purple, or to gold;
Why should not we these pageantries despise;
Whofe worth but in our want of reafon lies?
For life is all in wandring errors led;
And just as children are furpriz'd with dread,
And tremble in the dark, fo riper years
E'en in broad day-light are poffefs'd with fears;
And shake at shadows fanciful and vain,
As those which in the breafts of children reign.
These bugbears of the mind, this inward hell,
No rays of outward funshine can dispel;
But nature and right reason must display
Their beams abroad, and bring the darksome soul
to-day.
Against the Fear of Death.
HAThas this bugbear death to frighten men,
If fouls can die, as well as bodies can?'
For, as before our birth we felt no pain,
When Punic arms infefted land and main,
When Heav'n and earth were in confufion hurl'd For the debated empire of the world,
Which aw'd with dreadful expectation lay, Sure to be flaves, uncertain who should sway: So, when our mortal flame shall be disjoin'd, The lifeless lump uncoupled from the mind, From sense of grief and pain we shall be free; We shall not feel, because we fhall not Be. Tho earth in feas, and seas in Heav'n were loft, We fhould not move, we only should be toft.
Nay, even fuppofe when we have fuffer'd fate,
The foul could feel in her divided state,
What's that to us? for we are only We
While fouls and bodies in one frame agree.
Nay, tho our atoms should revolve by chance,
And matter leap into the former dance;
Tho time our life and motion could reftore,
And make our bodies what they were before,
What gain to us would all this bustle bring?
The new-made man would be another thing.
When once an interrupting pause is made,
That individual being is decay'd,
We, who are dead and gone, fhall bear no part
In all the pleasures, nor shall feel the smart,
Which to that other mortal fhall accrue,
Whom of our matter time fhall mould anew. For backward if you look on that long space Of
ages past, and view the changing face Of matter, toft and variously combin'd In fundry shapes, 'tis eafy for the mind From thence t'infer, that feeds of things have been In the fame order as they now are seen : Which yet our dark remembrance cannot trace, Because a pause of life, a gaping space, Has come betwixt, where memory lies dead, And all the wandring motions from the sense are fled.
i For whofoe'er shall in misfortunes live,
Must Be, when thofe misfortunes fhall arrive; And fince the man who Is not, feels not woe, (For death exempts him, and wards off the blow, Which we, the living, only feel and bear) What is there left for us in death to fear? When once that pause of life has come between, 'Tis just the fame as we had never been,
And therefore if a man bemoan his lot,
That after death his mouldring limbs shall rot,
Or flames, or jaws of beafts devour his mass,
Know, he's an unfincere, unthinking ass.
A secret sting remains within his mind;
The fool is to his own caft offals kind.
He boasts no fenfe can after death remain;
Yet makes himself a part of life again;
As if fome other He could feel the pain.
If, while we live, this thought moleft his head,
What wolf or vulture fhall devour me dead?
He wastes his days in idle grief, nor can
Diftinguish 'twixt the body and the man;
But thinks himself can ftill himself furvive ;
And, what when dead he feels not, feels alive.
Then he repines that he was born to die,
Nor knows in death there is no other He,
No living He remains his grief to vent,
And o'er his fenfelefs carcafe to lament.
If after death 'tis painful to be torn
By birds, and beafts, then why not so to burn,
Or drench'd in floods of honey to be foak'd,
Imbalm'd to be at once preferv'd and choak'd;
Or on an airy mountain's top to lie,
Expos'd to cold and Heav'n's inclemency;
Or crowded in a tomb to be opprest
With monumental marble on thy breast?
But to be fnatch'd from all the houshold joys,
From thy chafte wife, and thy dear prattling boys,
Whofe little arms about thy legs are caft,
And climbing for a kifs prevent their mother's haste,
Infpiring fecret pleasure thro thy breast;
Ah! these shall be no more: thy friends opprest
Thy care and courage now no more shall free;
Ah! wretch, thou cry'st, ah! miserable me?
One woful day fweeps children, friends, and wife,
And all the brittle blessings of my life!
Add one thing more, and all thou fay'ft is true;
Thy want and wish of them is vanish'd too :
Which well confider'd were a quick relief
To all thy vain imginary grief.
For thou shalt fleep, and never wake again,
And, quitting life, fhalt quit thy living pain.
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