Classic Poem

“When the cock crew, he wept;”—smote by that eye,
Which looks on me, on all: that Power, who bids
This midnight sentinel, with clarion shrill
(Emblem of that which shall awake the dead,)
Rouse souls from slumber into thoughts of Heaven.
Shall I too weep? Where then is fortitude?
And, fortitude abandon'd, where is man?
I know the terms on which he sees the light.
He that is born, is listed; life is war;
Eternal war with woe. Who bears it best,
Deserves it least.—On other themes I'll dwell.
L ORENZO ! let me turn my thoughts on thee;
And thine, on themes may profit: profit there,
Where most thy need: themes, too, the genuine growth
Of dear P HILANDER'S dust. He, thus, though dead,
May still befriend.—What themes? Time's wondrous price,
Death, friendship, and P HILANDER'S final scene.
So could I touch these themes, as might obtain
Thine ear, nor leave thy heart quite disengaged,
The good deed would delight me; half impress
On my dark cloud an Iris; and from grief
Call glory.—Dost thou mourn P HILANDER'S fate?
I know, thou say'st it: says thy life the same?
He mourns the dead, who lives as they desire.
Where is that thrift, that avarice of Time ,
(O glorious avarice!) thought of death inspires,
As rumour'd robberies endear our gold?
O time! than gold more sacred; more a load
Than lead to fools; and fools reputed wise.
What moment granted man without account?
What years are squander'd, wisdom's debt unpaid?
Our wealth in days, all due to that discharge.
Haste, haste, he lies in wait, he's at the door,
Insidious death! should his strong hand arrest,
No composition sets the prisoner free.
Eternity's inexorable chain
Fast binds; and vengeance claims the full arrear.
How late I shudder'd on the brink! how late
Life call'd for her last refuge in despair!
That time is mine, O M EAD ! to thee I owe;
Fain would I pay thee with eternity.
But ill my genius answers my desire;
My sickly song is mortal past thy cure.
Accept the will;—that dies not with my strain.
For what calls thy disease, L ORENZO ? not
For Esculapian, but for moral aid.
Thou think'st it folly, to be wise too soon.
Youth is not rich in time, it may be, poor;
Part with it as with money, sparing; pay
No moment, but in purchase of its worth;
And what its worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.
Part with it as with life, reluctant; big
With holy hope-of nobler time to come;
Time higher aim'd, still nearer the great mark
Of men and angels; virtue more divine.
Is this our duty, wisdom, glory, gain?
(These Heaven benign in vital union binds,)
And sport we like the natives of the bough,
When vernal suns inspire? Amusement reigns
Man's great demand; to trifle is to live:
And is it then a trifle, too, to die?
Thou say'st I preach, L ORENZO ! 'Tis confess'd
What if, for once, I preach thee quite awake!
Who wants amusement in the flame of battle?
Is it not treason to the soul immortal,
Her foes in arms, eternity the prize?
Will toys amuse, when medicines cannot cure?
When spirits ebb, when life's enchanting scenes
Their lustre lose, and lessen in our sight,
As lands, and cities with their glittering spires,
To the poor shatter'd bark, by sudden storm
Thrown off to sea, and soon to perish there?
Will toys amuse? No: thrones will then be toys,
And earth and skies seem dust upon the scale.
Redeem we time?—Its loss we dearly buy.
What pleads L ORENZO for his high-prized sports?
He pleads time's numerous blanks; he loudly pleads
The straw-like trifles on life's common stream.
From whom those blanks and trifles, but from thee?
No blank, no trifle, nature made, or meant.
Virtue, or purposed virtue, still be thine:
This cancels thy complaint at once; this leaves
In act no trifle, and no blank in time.
This greatens, fills, immortalizes, all;
This, the blest art of turning all to gold;
This, the good heart's prerogative, to raise
A royal tribute from the poorest hours:
Immense revenue! every moment pays.
If nothing more than purpose in thy power;
Thy purpose firm is equal to the deed:
Who does the best his circumstance allows,
Does well, acts nobly; angels could no more.
Our outward act, indeed, admits restraint;
'Tis not in things, o'er thought to domineer.
Guard well thy thought; our thoughts are heard in Heaven.
On all-important Time, through every age,
Though much, and warm, the wise have urged; the man
Is yet unborn, who duly weighs an hour.
“I've lost a day”——the prince who nobly cried,
Had been an emperor without his crown;
Of Rome? say, rather, lord of human race:
He spoke, as if deputed by mankind.
So should all speak: so reason speaks in all:
From the soft whispers of that God in man,
Why fly to folly, why to frenzy fly,
For rescue from the blessing we possess?
Time the supreme!—Time is eternity;
Pregnant with all eternity can give;
Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile.
Who murders time, he crushes in the birth
A power ethereal, only not adored.
Ah! how unjust to nature, and himself,
Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!
Like children babbling nonsense in their sports,
We censure nature for a span too short:
That span too short, we tax as tedious too;
Torture invention, all expedients tire,
To lash the lingering moments into speed,
And whirl us (happy riddance!) from ourselves.
Art, brainless art! our furious charioteer
(For nature's voice unstifled would recall,)
Drives headlong towards the precipice of death;
Death, most our dread; death, thus more dreadful made:
Oh what a riddle of absurdity!
Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot wheels:
How heavily we drag the load of life!
Blest leisure is our curse: like that of Cain,
It makes us wander; wander earth around
To fly that tyrant, thought. As Atlas groan'd
The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.
We cry for mercy to the next amusement:
The next amusement mortgages our fields;
Slight inconvenience! prisons hardly frown,
From hateful time if prisons set us free.
Yet when death kindly tenders us relief,
We call him cruel; years to moments shrink,
Ages to years. The telescope is turn'd.
To man's false optics (from his folly false)
Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings,
And seems to creep, decrepit with his age:
Behold him, when past by; what then is seen,
But his broad pinions swifter than the winds?
And all mankind, in contradiction strong,
Rueful, aghast! cry out on his career.
Leave to thy foes these errors, and these ills;
To nature just, their cause and cure explore.
Not short Heaven's bounty, boundless our expense:
No niggard, nature; men are prodigals.
We waste, not use, our time: we breathe, not live.
Time wasted is existence, used is life:
And bare existence, man, to live ordain'd,
Wrings, and oppresses with enormous weight.
And why? since time was given for use, not waste,
Enjoin'd to fly; with tempest, tide, and stars,
To keep his speed, nor ever wait for man.
Time's use was doom'd a pleasure: waste, a pain;
That man might feel his error, if unseen:
And, feeling, fly to labour for his cure;
Not, blundering, split on idleness for ease.
Life's cares are comforts; such by Heaven design'd:
He that has none, must make them, or be wretched.
Cares are employments; and without employ
The soul is on a rack; the rack of rest,
To souls most adverse; action all their joy.
Here then, the riddle, mark'd above, unfolds:
Then time turns torment, when man turns a fool
We rave, we wrestle with great nature's plan:
We thwart the Deity; and 'tis decreed,
Who thwart his will, shall contradict their own.
Hence our unnatural quarrels with ourselves;
Our thoughts at enmity; our bosom-broils:
We push time from us, and we wish him back;
Lavish of lustrums, and yet fond of life;
Life we think long, and short; death seek, and shun;
Body and soul, like peevish man and wife,
United jar, and yet are loth to part.
Oh the dark days of vanity! while here,
How tasteless! and how terrible, when gone!
Gone? they ne'er go; when past, they haunt us still:
The spirit walks of every day deceased;
And smiles an angel, or a fury frowns.
Nor death, nor life, delight us. If time past,
And time possess'd, both pain us, what can please?
That which the Deity to please ordain'd,
Time used. The man who consecrates his hours
By vigorous effort, and an honest aim,
At once he draws the sting of life and death:
He walks with nature; and her paths are peace.
Our error's cause and cure are seen: see next
Time's nature, origin, importance, speed;
And thy great gain from urging his career.—
All-sensual man, because untouch'd, unseen,
He looks on time as nothing.—Nothing else
Is truly man's; 'tis fortune's.—Time's a god.
Hast thou ne'er heard of time's omnipotence?
For, or against, what wonders can he do!
And will: to stand blank neuter he disdains.
Not on those terms was Time (heaven's stranger!) sent
On his important embassy to man.
L ORENZO ! no: on the long-destined hour,
From everlasting ages growing ripe,
That memorable hour of wondrous birth,
When the D READ S IRE , on emanation bent,
And big with nature, rising in his might,
Call'd forth creation (for then Time was born,)
By Godhead streaming through a thousand worlds;
Not on those terms, from the great days of heaven,
From old eternity's mysterious orb,
Was Time cut off, and cast beneath the skies:
The skies, which watch him in his new abode,
Measuring his motions by revolving spheres;
That horologe machinery divine.
Hours, days, and months, and years, his children, play,
Like numerous wings, around him as he flies:
Or rather, as unequal plumes, they shape
His ample pinions, swift as darted flame,
To gain his goal, to reach his ancient rest,
And join anew Eternity his sire;
In his immutability to nest,
When worlds, that count his circles now, unhinged
(Fate the loud signal sounding,) headlong rush
To timeless night and chaos, whence they rose.
Why spur the speedy? Why with levities
New-wing thy short, short day's too rapid flight
Know'st thou, or what thou dost, or what is done?
Man flies from time, and time from man; too soon
In sad divorce this double flight must end:
And then, where are we? where, L ORENZO ! then
Thy sports? thy pomps?——I grant thee, in a state
Not unambitious; in the ruffled shroud,
Thy Parian tomb's triumphant arch beneath.
Has death his fopperies? Then well may life
Put on her plume, and in her rainbow shine.
Ye well-array'd! ye lilies of our land!
Ye lilies male! who neither toil, nor spin,
(As sister lilies might;) if not so wise
As Solomon, more sumptuous to the sight!
Ye delicate! who nothing can support,
Yourselves most insupportable! for whom
The winter rose must blow, the sun put on
A brighter beam in Leo; silky-soft
Favonius breathe still softer, or be chid;
And other worlds send odours, sauce, and song,
And robes, and notions, framed in foreign looms
O ye L ORENZOS of our age! who deem
One moment unamused, a misery
Not made for feeble man! who call aloud
For every bauble drivel'd o'er by sense;
For rattles, and conceits of every cast,
For change of follies, and relays of joy,
To drag you patient through the tedious length
Of a short winter's day—say, sages! say,
Wit's oracles! say, dreamers of gay dreams!
How will you weather an eternal night,
Where such expedients fail?
O treacherous conscience! while she seems to sleep
On rose and myrtle, lull'd with Syren song;
While she seems, nodding o'er her charge, to drop
On headlong appetite the slacken'd rein,
And give us up to licence, unrecall'd,
Unmark'd;—see, from behind her secret stand,
The sly informer minutes every fault,
And her dread diary with horror fills.
Not the gross act alone employs her pen:
She reconnoitres fancy's airy band,
A watchful foe! the formidable spy,
Listening, o'erhears the whispers of our camp;
Our dawning purposes of heart explores,
And steals our embryos of iniquity.
As all-rapacious usurers conceal
Their doomsday-book from all-consuming heirs;
Thus, with indulgence most severe, she treats
Us spendthrifts of inestimable time;
Unnoted, notes each moment misapplied;
In leaves more durable than leaves of brass,
Writes our whole history: which death shall read
In every pale delinquent's private ear;
And judgment publish; publish to more worlds
Than this; and endless age in groans resound.
L ORENZO , such that sleeper in thy breast!
Such is her slumber; and her vengeance such,
For slighted counsel; such thy future peace!
And think'st thou still thou canst be wise too soon?
But why on Time so lavish is my song?
On this great theme kind Nature keeps a school,
To teach her sons herself: each night we die,
Each morn are born anew: each day, a life!
And shall we kill each day? If trifling kills,
Sure vice must butcher. Oh what heaps of slain
Cry out for vengeance on us! Time destroy'd
Is suicide, where more than blood is spilt.
Time flies, death urges, knells call, Heaven invites,
Hell threatens: all exerts; in effort, all;
More than creation labours! labours more?
And is there in creation, what amidst
This tumult universal, wing'd dispatch,
And ardent energy, supinely yawns?——
Man sleeps; and man alone; and man, whose fate,
Fate irreversible, entire, extreme,
Endless, hair-hung, breeze-shaken, o'er the gulf
A moment trembles; drops! and man, for whom
All else is in alarm! man, the sole cause
Of this surrounding storm! and yet he sleeps,
As the storm rock'd to rest.—Throw years away!
Throw empires, and be blameless. Moments seize
Heaven's on their wing: a moment we may wish,
When worlds want wealth to buy. Bid day stand still;
Bid him drive back his car, and re-import
This period past, re-give the given hour.
L ORENZO , more than miracles we want:
L ORENZO —Oh for yesterday to come?
Such is the language of the man awake;
His ardour such, for what oppresses thee.
And is his ardour vain, L ORENZO ? No;
That more than miracle the gods indulge:
To-day is yesterday return'd; return'd
Full power'd to cancel, expiate, raise, adorn,
And reinstate us on the rock of peace.
Let it not share its predecessor's fate;
Nor, like its elder sisters, die a fool.
Shall it evaporate in fume? fly off
Fuliginous, and stain us deeper still?
Shall we be poorer for the plenty pour'd?
More wretched for the clemencies of Heaven?
Where shall I find Him? Angels! tell me where
You know him; He is near you: point him out:
Shall I see glories beaming from his brow?
Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?
Your golden wings, now hovering o'er him, shed
Protection; now, are waving in applause
To that blest son of foresight! lord of fate!
That awful independent on To-morrow!
Whose work is done; who triumphs in the past;
Whose yesterdays look backwards with a smile
Nor, like the Parthian, wound him as they fly;
That common, but opprobrious lot! past hours,
If not by guilt, yet wound us by their flight,
If folly bounds our prospect by the grave,
All feeling of futurity benumb'd;
All god-like passion for eternals quench'd;
All relish of realities expired;
Renounced all correspondence with the skies;
Our freedom chain'd; quite wingless our desire;
In sense dark-prison'd all that ought to soar;
Prone to the centre; crawling in the dust;
Dismounted every great and glorious aim;
Embruted every faculty divine;
Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world.
The world, that gulf of souls, immortal souls,
Souls elevate, angelic, wing'd with fire
To reach the distant skies, and triumph there
On thrones, which shall not mourn their masters changed,
Though we from earth; ethereal, they that fell.
Such veneration due, O man, to man.
Who venerate themselves, the world despise.
For what, gay friend! is this escutcheon'd world,
Which hangs out D EATH in one eternal night!
A night, that glooms us in the noon-tide ray,
And wraps our thought, at banquets, in the shroud
Life's little stage is a small eminence,
Inch-high the grave above, that home of man,
Where dwells the multitude: we gaze around;
We read their monuments; we sigh; and while
We sigh, we sink; and are what we deplored;
Lamenting, or lamented, all our lot!
Is death at distance? No: he has been on thee;
And given