Classic Poem

L ORENZO ! to recriminate is just.
Fondness for fame is avarice of air.
I grant, the man is vain who writes for praise:
Praise no man e'er deserved, who sought no more.
As just thy second charge. I grant the muse
Has often blush'd at her degenerate sons,
Retain'd by sense to plead her filthy cause;
To raise the low, to magnify the mean,
And subtilize the gross into refined:
As if to magic numbers' powerful charm
'Twas given, to make a civet of their song
Obscene, and sweeten ordure to perfume.
Wit, a true Pagan, deifies the brute,
And lifts the swine-enjoyments from the mire.
The fact notorious, nor obscure the cause.
We wear the chains of pleasure, and of pride
These share the man; and these distract him too;
Draw different ways, and clash in their commands.
Pride, like an eagle, builds among the stars;
But pleasure, lark-like, nests upon the ground.
Joys shared by brute-creation, pride resents;
Pleasure embraces: man would both enjoy,
And both at once: a point so hard how gain!
But what can't wit, when stung by strong desire?
Wit dares attempt this arduous enterprize.
Since joys of sense can't rise to reason's taste;
In subtle sophistry's laborious forge,
Wit hammers out a reason new, that stoops
To sordid scenes, and greets them with applause.
Wit calls the graces the chaste zone to loose;
Nor less than a plump god to fill the bowl:
A thousand phantoms, and a thousand spells,
A thousand opiates scatters, to delude,
To fascinate, inebriate, lay asleep,
And the fool'd mind delightfully confound.
Thus that which shock'd the judgment, shocks no more;
That which gave pride offence, no more offends.
Pleasure and pride, by nature mortal foes,
At war eternal, which in man shall reign,
By wit's address, patch up a fatal peace,
And hand in hand lead on the rank debauch,
From rank refined, to delicate and gay.
Art, cursed art! wipes off the indebted blush
From nature's cheek, and bronzes every shame.
Man smiles in ruin, glories in his guilt;
And infamy stands candidate for praise.
All writ by man in favour of the soul,
These sensual ethics far, in bulk, transcend.
The flowers of eloquence, profusely pour'd
O'er spotted vice, fill half the letter'd world.
Can powers of genius exercise their page,
And consecrate enormities with song?
But let not these inexpiable strains
Condemn the muse that knows her dignity;
Nor meanly stops at time, but holds the world
As 'tis, in nature's ample field, a point,
A point in her esteem; from whence to start,
And run the round of universal space,
To visit being universal there,
And being's Source, that utmost flight of mind!
Yet spite of this so vast circumference,
Well knows, but what is moral, nought is great.
Sing Syrens only? Do not angels sing?
There is in poesy a decent pride,
Which well becomes her when she speaks to prose,
Her younger sister; haply, not more wise.
Think'st thou, L ORENZO ! to find pastimes here?
No guilty passion blown into a flame,
No foible flatter'd, dignity disgraced,
No fairy field of fiction all on flower,
No rainbow colours, here, or silken tale;
But solemn counsels, images of awe,
Truths, which eternity lets fall on man
With double weight, through these revolving spheres,
This death-deep silence, and incumbent shade:
Thoughts such as shall re-visit your last hour;
Visit uncall'd, and live when life expires:
And thy dark pencil, midnight! darker still
In melancholy dipp'd, embrowns the whole.
Yet this, even this, my laughter-loving friends!
L ORENZO ! and thy brothers of the smile!
If, what imports you most, can most engage,
Shall steal your ear, and chain you to my song.
Or if you fail me, know, the wise shall taste
The truths I sing; the truths I sing shall feel;
And, feeling, give assent; and their assent
Is ample recompense, is more than praise:
But chiefly thine, O L ITCHFIELD ! nor mistake;
Think not unintroduced I force my way;
N ARCISSA , not unknown, not unallied,
By virtue or by blood, illustrious youth!
To thee, from blooming amaranthine bowers,
Where all the language harmony, descends
Uncall'd, and asks admittance for the muse;
A muse that will not pain thee with thy praise:
Thy praise she drops, by nobler still inspired.
O thou, bless'd Spirit: whether the supreme,
Great antemundane Father; in whose breast,
Embryo creation, unborn being, dwelt,
And all its various revolutions roll'd
Present, though future; prior to themselves;
Whose breath can blow it into nought again;
Or, from his throne some delegated power,
Who, studious of our peace, dost turn the thought
From vain and vile, to solid and sublime!
Unseen thou lead'st me to delicious draughts
Of inspiration, from a purer stream,
And fuller of the god, than that which burst
From famed Castalia: nor is yet allay'd
My sacred thirst; though long my soul has ranged
Through pleasing paths of moral, and divine,
By Thee sustain'd, and lighted by the stars.
By them best lighted are the paths of thought;
Nights are their days, their most illumined hours.
By day, the soul, o'erborne by life's career,
Stunn'd by the din, and giddy with the glare,
Reels far from reason, jostled by the throng.
By day the soul is passive, all her thoughts
Imposed, precarious, broken ere mature.
By night, from objects free, from passion cool,
Thoughts uncontroll'd, and unimpress'd, the births
Of pure election, arbitrary range,
Not to the limits of one world confined;
But from ethereal travels light on earth,
As voyagers drop anchor, for repose.
Let Indians, and the gay, like Indians, fond
Of feather'd fopperies, the sun adore:
Darkness has more divinity for me;
It strikes thought inward; it drives back the soul
To settle on herself, our point supreme!
There lies our theatre; there sits our judge.
Darkness the curtain drops o'er life's dull scene:
'Tis the kind hand of Providence stretch'd out
'Twixt man and vanity; 'tis reason's reign,
And virtue's too: these tutelary shades
Are man's asylum from the tainted throng.
Night is the good man's friend, and guardian too;
It no less rescues virtue, than inspires.
Virtue, for ever frail, as fair, below,
Her tender nature suffers in the crowd,
Nor touches on the world, without a stain:
The world's infectious; few bring back at eve,
Immaculate, the manners of the morn.
Something we thought, is blotted; we resolved,
Is shaken; we renounced, returns again.
Each salutation may slide in a sin
Unthought before, or fix a former flaw.
Nor is it strange: light, motion, concourse, noise,
All, scatter us abroad; thought, outward-bound,
Neglectful of her home affairs, flies off
In fume and dissipation, quits her charge,
And leaves the breast unguarded to the foe.
Present example gets within our guard,
And acts with double force, by few repell'd.
Ambition fires ambition; love of gain
Strikes, like a pestilence, from breast to breast:
Riot, pride, perfidy, blue vapours breathe;
And inhumanity is caught from man,
From smiling man. A slight, a single glance,
And shot at random, often has brought home
A sudden fever, to the throbbing heart,
Of envy, rancour, or impure desire.
We see, we hear, with peril; safety dwells
Remote from multitude; the world's a school
Of wrong, and what proficients swarm around
We must, or imitate, or disapprove;
Must list as their accomplices, or foes:
That stains our innocence; this wounds our peace.
From nature's birth, hence, wisdom has been smit
With sweet recess, and languish'd for the shade.
This sacred shade, and solitude, what is it?
'Tis the felt presence of the Deity.
Few are the faults we flatter when alone.
Vice sinks in her allurements, is ungilt,
And looks, like other objects, black by night.
By night, an atheist half-believes a God.
Night is fair virtue's immemorial friend:
The conscious moon, through every distant age,
Has held a lamp to wisdom, and let fall
On contemplation's eye, her purging ray,
The famed Athenian, he who woo'd from heaven
Philosophy the fair, to dwell with men,
And form their manners, not inflame their pride;
While o'er his head, as fearful to molest
His labouring mind, the stars in silence slide,
And seem all gazing on their future guest,
See him soliciting his ardent suit
In private audience: all the livelong night,
Rigid in thought, and motionless, he stands;
Nor quits his theme, or posture, till the sun
(Rude drunkard, rising rosy from the main!)
Disturbs his nobler intellectual beam,
And gives him to the tumult of the world.
Hail, precious moments! stolen from the black waste
Of murder'd time! auspicious midnight! hail!
The world excluded, every passion hush'd,
And open'd a calm intercourse with heaven,
Here the soul sits in council; ponders past,
Predestines future action; sees, not feels,
Tumultuous life, and reasons with the storm;
All her lies answers, and thinks down her charms.
What awful joy! what mental liberty!
I am not pent in darkness: rather say
(If not too bold,) in darkness I'm embower'd.
Delightful gloom! the clustering thoughts around
Spontaneous rise, and blossom in the shade;
But droop by day, and sicken in the sun.
Thought borrows light elsewhere; from that first fire,
Fountain of animation! whence descends
U RANIA , my celestial guest! who deigns
Nightly to visit me, so mean; and now,
Conscious how needful discipline to man,
From pleasing dalliance with the charms of night
My wandering thought recalls, to what excites
Far other beat of heart; N ARCISSA'S tomb!
Or is it feeble nature calls me back,
And breaks my spirit into grief again?
Is it a Stygian vapour in my blood?
A cold, slow puddle, creeping through my veins?
Or is it thus with all men?—Thus with all.
What are we? How unequal! Now we soar,
And now we sink; to be the same, transcends
Our present prowess. Dearly pays the soul
For lodging ill; too dearly rents her clay.
Reason, a baffled counsellor! but adds
The blush of weakness to the bane of woe.
The noblest spirit fighting her hard fate,
In this damp, dusky region, charged with storms,
But feebly flutters, yet untaught to fly;
Or, flying, short her flight, and sure her fall.
Our utmost strength, when down, to rise again;
And not to yield, though beaten, all our praise
'Tis vain to seek in men for more than man.
Though proud in promise, big in previous thought,
Experience damps our triumph. I, who late,
Emerging from the shadows of the grave,
Where grief detain'd me prisoner, mounting high,
Threw wide the gates of everlasting day,
And call'd mankind to glory, shook off pain,
Mortality shook off, in ether pure,
And struck the stars; now feel my spirits fail:
They drop me from the zenith; down I rush,
Like him whom fable fledged with waxen wings,
In sorrow drown'd—but not in sorrow lost.
How wretched is the man who never mourn'd!
I dive for precious pearl in sorrow's stream:
Not so the thoughtless man that only grieves;
Takes all the torment, and rejects the gain,
(Inestimable gain!) and gives Heaven leave
To make him but more wretched, not more wise
If wisdom is our lesson, (and what else
Ennobles man? what else have angels learn'd?)
Grief! more proficients in thy school are made,
Than genius, or proud learning, e'er could boast.
Voracious learning, often overfed,
Digests not into sense her motley meal.
This book-case, with dark booty almost burst,
This forager on others' wisdom, leaves
Her native farm, her reason, quite untill'd.
With mix'd manure she surfeits the rank soil,
Dung'd, but not dress'd; and, rich to beggary,
A pomp untameable of weeds prevails.
Her servant's wealth, encumber'd wisdom mourns.
And what says genius? “Let the dull be wise.”
Genius, too hard for right, can prove it wrong;
And loves to boast, where blush men less inspired.
It pleads exemption from the laws of sense;
Considers reason as a leveller;
And scorns to share a blessing with the crowd.
That wise it could be, thinks an ample claim
To glory, and to pleasure gives the rest.
C RASSUS but sleeps, A RDELIO is undone
Wisdom less shudders at a fool, than wit.
But wisdom smiles, when humbled mortals weep.
When sorrow wounds the breast, as ploughs the glebe,
And hearts obdurate feel her softening shower;
Her seed celestial, then, glad wisdom sows;
Her golden harvest triumphs in the soil.
If so, N ARCISSA ! welcome my relapse;
I'll raise a tax on my calamity,
And reap rich compensation from my pain.
I'll range the plenteous intellectual field;
And gather every thought of sovereign power
To chase the moral maladies of man;
Thoughts which may bear transplanting to the skies
Though natives of this coarse penurious soil;
Nor wholly wither there, where seraphs sing,
Refined, exalted, not annull'd, in heaven.
Reason, the sun that gives them birth, the same
In either clime, though more illustrious there.
These choicely cull'd, and elegantly ranged;
Shall form a garland for N ARCISSA'S tomb;
And, peradventure, of no fading flowers.
Say, on what themes shall puzzled choice descend?
“Th' importance of contemplating the tomb;
Why men decline it, suicide's foul birth;
The various kind of grief; the faults of age;
And death's dread character—invite my song.”
And first, th' importance of our end survey'd.
Friends counsel quick dismission of our grief:
Mistaken kindness! our hearts heal too soon.
Are they more kind than He, who struck the blow?
Who bid it do his errand in our hearts,
And banish peace, till nobler guests arrive,
And bring it back, a true, and endless peace?
Calamities are friends; as glaring day
Of these unnumber'd lustres robs our sight;
Prosperity puts out unnumber'd thoughts
Of import high, and light divine, to man.
The man how blest, who, sick of gaudy scenes,
(Scenes apt to thrust between us and ourselves!)
Is led by choice to take his favourite walk,
Beneath death's gloomy, silent, cypress shades,
Unpierced by vanity's fantastic ray;
To read his monuments, to weigh his dust,
Visit his vaults, and dwell among the tombs!
L ORENZO ! read with me N ARCISSA'S stone;
(N ARCISSA was thy favourite;) let us read
Her moral stone: few doctors preach so well;
Few orators so tenderly can touch
The feeling heart. What pathos in the date!
Apt words can strike: and yet in them we see
Faint images of what we, here, enjoy.
What cause have we to build on length of life?
Temptations seize, when fear is laid asleep;
And ill foreboded is our strongest guard.
See, from her tomb, as from an humble shrine,
Truth, radiant goddess! sallies on my soul,
And puts delusion's dusky train to flight;
Dispels the mists our sultry passions raise,
From objects low, terrestrial, and obscene;
And shows the real estimate of things;
Which no man, unafflicted, ever saw;
Pulls off the veil from virtue's rising charms;
Detects temptation in a thousand lies.
Truth bids me look on men, as autumn leaves;
And all they bleed for, as the summer's dust,
Driven by the whirlwind: lighted by her beams,
I widen my horizon, gain new powers,
See things invisible, feel things remote,
Am present with futurities; think nought
To man so foreign, as the joys possess'd;
Nought so much his, as those beyond the grave.
No folly keeps its colour in her sight:
Pale worldly wisdom loses all her charms;
In pompous promise from her schemes profound,
If future fate she plans, 'tis all in leaves,
Like Sibyl, unsubstantial, fleeting bliss!
At the first blast it vanishes in air.
Not so, celestial. Wouldst thou know, L ORENZO !
How differ worldly wisdom, and divine?
Just as the waning, and the waxing, moon.
More empty worldly wisdom every day;
And every day more fair her rival shines.
When later, there's less time to play the fool.
Soon our whole term for wisdom is expired
(Thou know'st she calls no council in the grave;)
And everlasting fool is writ in fire,
Or real wisdom wafts us to the skies.
As worldly schemes resemble Sibyl's leaves,
The good man's days to Sibyl's books compare
(In ancient story read, thou know'st the tale,)
In price still rising, as in number less,
Inestimable quite his final hour.
For that who thrones can offer, offer thrones.
Insolvent worlds the purchase cannot pay.
“Oh let me die his death!” all nature cries.
“Then live hi