See here thy pictured life; pass some few years,
Thy flowering Spring, thy Summer's ardent strength,
Thy sober Autumn fading into age,

And pale concluding Winter comes at last,

And shuts the scene. Ah! whither now are fled

Those dreams of greatness? those unsolid hopes
Of happiness? those longings after fame?
Those restless cares? those busy bustling days?
Those gay-spent, festive nights? those veering thoughts,
Lost between good and ill, that shared thy life?
All now are vanished! Virtue sole survives,
Immortal never-failing friend of man,

His guide to happiness on high. And see!
'Tis come, the glorious morn! the second birth
Of heaven and earth! awakening Nature hears
The new-creating word, and starts to life,
In every heightened form, from pain and death
For ever free. The great eternal scheme,
Involving all, and in a perfect whole
Uniting, as the prospect wider spreads,
To reason's eye refined, clears up apace.
Ye vainly wise! ye blind presumptuous! now,
Confounded in the dust, adore that Power
And Wisdom oft arraigned: see now the cause,
Why unassuming worth in secret lived,
And died, neglected: why the good man's share
In life was gall and bitterness of soul:
Why the lone widow and her orphans pined
In starving solitude; while Luxury,

In palaces, lay straining her low thought,

To form unreal wants: why heaven-born Truth,
And Moderation fair, wore the red marks
Of Superstition's scourge: why licensed Pain,
That cruel spoiler, that imbosomed foe,
Imbittered all our bliss. Ye good distressed!
Ye noble few! who here unbending stand
Beneath life's pressure, yet bear up a while,
And what your bounded view, which only saw
A little part, deemed evil, is no more:
The storms of wintry Time will quickly pass,
And one unbounded Spring encircle all.

FROM THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.

THE OPENING OF CANTO I.

O mortal man, who livest here by toil,
Do not complain of this thy hard estate :
That like an emmet thou must ever moil,
Is a sad sentence of an ancient date;
And, certes, there is for it reason great;
For, though sometimes it makes thee weep
And curse thy star, and early drudge and late,
Withouten that would come an heavier bale-
Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale.

In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,

and wail,

With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round,

A most enchanting wizard did abide,

Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.

It was,

I ween, a lovely spot of ground;

And there a season atween June and May,

labour

certainly

Half prankt with Spring, with Summer half imbrowned, adorned

A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,

No living wight could work, ne cared e'en for play.

Was nought around but images of rest :
Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between ;
And flowery beds that slumbrous influence kest,
From poppies breathed; and beds of pleasant green,
Where never yet was creeping creature seen,
Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets played,
And hurled everywhere their water's sheen;
That, as they bickered through the sunny glade,
Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made.

Joined to the prattle of the purling rills,
Were heard the lowing herds along the vale,
And flocks loud-bleating from the distant hills,
And vacant shepherds piping in the dale :
And now and then sweet Philomel1 would wail,

1 The nightingale.

nor

cast

Or stock-doves 'plain amid the forest deep,
That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale;
And still a coil the grasshopper did keep :
Yet all these sounds yblent inclined all to sleep.

Full in the passage of the vale, above,

A sable, silent, solemn forest stood;

Where nought but shadowy forms were seen to move,
As Idless fancied in her dreaming mood:

And

up the hills, on either side, a wood

Of blackening pines, aye waving to and fro,

Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood;

And where this valley winded out, below,

complain

The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow.

A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was,

Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
For ever flushing round a summer-sky:
There eke the soft delights, that witchingly
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,
And the calm pleasures always hovered nigh;
But whate'er smacked of noyance, or unrest,
Was far, far off expelled from this delicious nest.

The landskip such, inspiring perfect ease,
Where Indolence (for so the wizard hight)
Close-hid his castle mid embowering trees,
That half shut out the beams of Phœbus bright,
And made a kind of checkered day and night;
Meanwhile, unceasing at the massy gate,
Beneath a spacious palm, the wicked wight
Was placed; and to his lute of cruel fate

And labour harsh complained, lamenting man's estate.

blended

Idleness

called

EDWARD YOUNG: 1681-1765.

Edward Young, the son of an English clergyman, was educated at Winchester School and at All Souls' College, Oxford. In 1712 he commenced public life as a courtier and poet; and, when upwards of fifty, he entered the church, wrote a panegyric on the king, and was made one of his majesty's chaplains. Young's works are numerous; but the best of them are his Night Thoughts, a satire on The Universal Passion-The Love of Fame, and the tragedy of Revenge.

FROM THE NIGHT THOUGHTS.

APOSTROPHE TO NIGHT.

These thoughts, O night! are thine;
From thee they came, like lovers' secret sighs,
While others slept. So Cynthia poets feign
In shadows veiled, soft sliding from her sphere,
Her shepherd cheered; of her enamoured less,
Than I of thee.-And art thou still unsung,
Beneath whose brow, and by whose aid, I sing?
Immortal silence! where shall I begin?

Where end? Or how steal music from the spheres,
To soothe their goddess?

O majestic night!
Nature's great ancestor! day's elder-born!

And fated to survive the transient sun!

By mortals, and immortals, seen with awe!

A starry crown thy raven brow adorns,

An azure zone thy waist; clouds, in heaven's loom
Wrought through varieties of shape and shade,
In ample folds of drapery divine,

Thy flowing mantle form; and heaven throughout,
Voluminously pour thy pompous train.

Thy gloomy grandeurs (nature's most august,
Inspiring aspect !) claim a grateful verse;
And, like a sable curtain starred with gold,

Drawn o'er my labours past, shall close the scene.

THOUGHTS ON TIME.

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 squandered, 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.

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 it's 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 aimed, still nearer the great mark

Of men and angels, virtue more divine.

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 blessings we possess?
Time, the supreme !-Time is eternity;
Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile.
Who murders Time, he crushes in the birth
A power ethereal, only not adored.