BIBLPUBL BASILEENSIS

PREFACE.

As the Occafion of this Poem was real, not fictitious; fo the method pursued in it, was rather impofed, by what fpontaneously arose in the author's mind, on that occafion, than meditated, or defigned. Which will appear very probable from the nature of it. For it differs from the common mode of Poetry, which is from long narrations to draw fhort morals. Here, on the contrary, the narrative is fhort, and the morality arifing from it makes the bulk of the Poem. The reafon of it is, That the facts mentioned did naturally pour thefe moral reflections on the thought. of the writer.

THE

COMPLAINT.

NIGHT the FIRST.

ΟΝ

Life, Death, and Immortality.

To the RIGHT HONOURABLE

ARTHUR

ONSLOW, Efq;

SPEAKER of the HOUSE of COMMONS.

IR'D Nature's fweet Reftorer, balmy Sleep!
He, like the World, his ready Vifit pays

TH

Where Fortune fmiles; the Wretched he forfakes;

Swift on his downy Pinion flies from Woe,
And lights on Lids unfully'd with a Tear.

From fhort (as ufual) and disturb'd Repose,
I wake: How happy they, who wake no more!
Yet that were vain, if Dreams infeft the Grave.
I wake, emerging from à Sea of Dreams

Tumultuous; where my wreck'd defponding Thought,
From Wave to Wave of fanfy'd Misery,

At random drove, her Helm of Reason loft.
Tho' now reftor'd, 'tis only Change of Pain,