Your impudence, you blush at what is right!
Happy! did forrow feize on fuch alone.

Not prudence can defend, or virtue save;
Difeafe invades the chafteft temperance;

And punishment the guiltless; and alarm,
Thro' thickeft fhades, pursues the found of peace,
Man's caution often into danger turns,
And his guard falling, crushes him to death.
Not happiness itself 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 course of nature has its pains;
And trueft friends, thro' error, wound our rest.
Without misfortune, what calamities!

And what hoftilities, without a foe!

Nor are foes wanting to the best on earth.

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, ftings, 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 toss,
Loud forrows howl, invenom'd paffions bite.

Rav'nous

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, last lesson to mankind;
The selfish heart deferves the pain it feels.
More gen'rous forrow, while it finks, exalts;
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang.
Nor virtue, more than prudence, bids me give
Swoln thought a second 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 whofe 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 would'ft; thy pride demands it from me.
Let thy pride pardon, what thy nature needs,
The falutary cenfure of a friend.

Thou happy wretch! by blindness art thou bleft;

By dotage dandled to perpetual fmiles.

Know, smiler! 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 scourge of past prosperity,

To fting thee more, and double thy distress.

The

NIGHT THOUGHTS, by Dr. YOUNG.

NIGHT

FIRST.

IR'D nature's fweet restorer, balmy sleep!

He, like the world, his ready vifit pays

Where fortune fmiles; the wretched he forfakes:
Swift on his downy pinions flies from woe,
And lights on lids unfully'd with a tear.

From short (as usual) and disturb'd repose,
I wake: how happy they, who wake no more!
The day too fhort for my diftrefs! and night,
Ev'n in the zenith of her dark domain,
Is fun-fhine, to the colour of my fate.
Night, fable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now ftretches forth
Her leaden fceptre o'er a flumb'ring world.
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound!
Nor eye, nor lift'ning ear, an object finds;
Creation fleeps. "Tis, as the gen❜ral pulfe
Of life ftood ftill, and nature made a pause;
An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
And let her prophecy be foon fulfill'd;
Fate drop the curtain; I can lose no more.

;

O Thou! whofe word from folid darkness ftruck
That spark the fun; strike wisdom from
my foul
My foul, which flies to thee, her truft, her treasure,
As mifers to their gold, while others rest.

Thro

Thro' this opaque of nature, and of foul,
This double night, transmit one pitying ray,
To lighten, and to chear. O lead my mind,
(A mind that fain would wander from its woe)
Lead it thro' various fcenes of life, and death,
And from each scene the noblest truths inspire.
Nor lefs infpire my conduct, than my fong;
Teach my best reason, reafon; my best will
Teach rectitude; and fix my firm refolve
Wisdom to wed, and pay her long arrear:
Nor let the phial of thy vengeance, pour'd
On this devoted head, be pour'd in vain.

The beli ftrikes one.

But from its lofs.

Is wife in man.

We take no note of time,

To give it then a tongue,

As if an angel spoke,

I feel the folemn found. If heard aright,

It is the knell of my departed hours:

Where are they? With the years beyond the flood.

It is the fignal that demands dispatch;

How much is to be done? my hopes and fears
Start up

alarm'd, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down-on what? a fathomless abyss;
A dread eternity! how furely mine!
And can eternity belong to me,

Poor penfioner on the bounties of an hour?
How poor, how rich, how abject, how auguft,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!
How paffing wonder He, who made him fuch!

Who

Who centred in our make such strange extremes
From diff'rent natures marvelously mixt,
Connection exquifite of distant worlds!
Distinguish'd link in Being's endless chain!
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
A beam ethereal fully'd, and absorpt;
Tho' fully'd, and difhonour'd, ftill divine!
Dim miniature of greatness abfolute !
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust !
Helplefs immortal! infect infinite!

A worm! a god! I tremble at myself.
Our waking dreams are fatal. How I dreamt
Of joys perpetual in perpetual change!
Of ftable pleasures on the toffing wave!
Eternal funshine in the ftorms of life!
How richly were my noon-tide trances hung
With gorgeous tapestries of pictur'd joys!
Joy behind joy, in endless perspective!
Till at death's toll, whose restless iron tongue
Calls daily for his millions at a meal,
Starting I woke, and found myself undone.
Where now my phrenfy's pompous furniture ?
The cobweb'd cottage, with its ragged wall
Of mould'ring mud, is royalty to me!
The spider's most attenuated thread

Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie
On earthly blifs; it breaks at ev'ry breeze.

O ye blest scenes of permanent delight!

Full

"