NARCISSA.
From dreams, where thought in fancy’s maze runs mad,
To reason, that heaven-lighted lamp in man,
Once more I wake; and at the destined hour,
Punctual as lovers to the moment sworn,
I keep my assignation with my woe.
Oh! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought,
Lost to the noble sallies of the soul!
Who think it solitude to be alone.
Communion sweet! communion large and high!
Our reason, guardian angel, and our God! 10
Then nearest these, when others most remote;
And all, ere long, shall be remote, but these.
How dreadful, then, to meet them all alone,
A stranger! unacknowledged, unapproved!
Now woo them, wed them, bind them to thy breast;
To win thy wish, creation has no more.
Or if we wish a fourth, it is a friend—
But friends, how mortal! dangerous the desire.
Take Phœbus to yourselves, ye basking bards! 19
Inebriate at fair fortune’s fountain-head;
And reeling through the wilderness of joy;
Where sense runs savage, broke from reason’s chain,
And sings false peace, till smother’d by the pall.
My fortune is unlike; unlike my song;
Unlike the deity my song invokes.
I to Day’s soft-eyed sister pay my court
(Endymion’s rival!), and her aid implore;
Now first implored in succour to the Muse.
Thou, who didst lately borrow[11] Cynthia’s form,
And modestly forego thine own! O thou, 30
Who didst thyself at midnight hours inspire!
Say, why not Cynthia patroness of song?
As thou her crescent, she thy character
Assumes; still more a goddess by the change.
Are there demurring wits, who dare dispute
This revolution in the world inspired?
Ye train Pierian! to the lunar sphere,
In silent hour address your ardent call
For aid immortal; less her brother’s right.
She, with the spheres harmonious, nightly leads 40
The mazy dance, and hears their matchless strain;
A strain for gods, denied to mortal ear.
Transmit it heard, thou silver Queen of Heaven!
What title, or what name, endears thee most?
Cynthia! Cyllene! Phœbe!—or dost hear
With higher gust, fair P——d of the skies?
Is that the soft enchantment calls thee down,
More powerful than of old Circean charm?
Come; but from heavenly banquets with thee bring
The soul of song, and whisper in my ear 50
The theft divine; or in propitious dreams
(For dreams are thine) transfuse it through the breast 52
Of thy first votary—but not thy last;
If, like thy namesake, thou art ever kind.
And kind thou wilt be; kind on such a theme;
A theme so like thee, a quite lunar theme,
Soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair!
A theme that rose all pale, and told my soul,
’Twas Night; on her fond hopes perpetual night;
A night which struck a damp, a deadlier damp, 60
Than that which smote me from Philander’s tomb.
Narcissa[12] follows, ere his tomb is closed.
Woes cluster; rare are solitary woes;
They love a train, they tread each other’s heel;
Her death invades his mournful right, and claims
The grief that started from my lids for him:
Seizes the faithless, alienated tear,
Or shares it, ere it falls. So frequent Death,
Sorrow he more than causes, he confounds;
For human sighs his rival strokes contend, 70
And make distress, distraction. Oh, Philander!
What was thy fate? A double fate to me;
Portent, and pain! a menace, and a blow!
Like the black raven hovering o’er my peace,
Not less a bird of omen, than of prey.
It call’d Narcissa long before her hour;
It call’d her tender soul, by break of bliss,
From the first blossom, from the buds of joy;
Those few our noxious fate unblasted leaves
In this inclement clime of human life. 80
Sweet harmonist! and beautiful as sweet!
And young as beautiful! and soft as young!
And gay as soft! and innocent as gay!
And happy (if aught happy here) as good!
For fortune fond had built her nest on high. 85
Like birds quite exquisite of note and plume,
Transfix’d by fate (who loves a lofty mark),
How from the summit of the grove she fell,
And left it unharmonious! all its charms
Extinguish’d in the wonders of her song!
Her song still vibrates in my ravish’d ear,
Still melting there, and with voluptuous pain
(O to forget her!) thrilling through my heart! 93
Song, beauty, youth, love, virtue, joy! this group
Of bright ideas, flowers of paradise,
As yet unforfeit! in one blaze we bind,
Kneel, and present it to the skies; as all
We guess of heaven: and these were all her own.
And she was mine; and I was—was!—most blest!—
Gay title of the deepest misery! 100
As bodies grow more ponderous, robb’d of life;
Good lost weighs more in grief, than gain’d, in joy.
Like blossom’d trees o’erturn’d by vernal storm,
Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay;
And if in death still lovely, lovelier there;
Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.
And will not the severe excuse a sigh?
Scorn the proud man that is ashamed to weep;
Our tears indulged, indeed deserve our shame.
Ye that e’er lost an angel! pity me. 110
Soon as the lustre languish’d in her eye,
Dawning a dimmer day on human sight;
And on her cheek, the residence of spring,
Pale omen sat; and scatter’d fears around
On all that saw; (and who would cease to gaze,
That once had seen?) with haste, parental haste,
I flew, I snatch’d her from the rigid north,
Her native bed, on which bleak Boreas blew,
And bore her nearer to the sun;[13] the sun 119
(As if the sun could envy) check’d his beam,
Denied his wonted succour; nor with more
Regret beheld her drooping, than the bells
Of lilies; fairest lilies, not so fair!
Queen lilies! and ye painted populace!
Who dwell in fields, and lead ambrosial lives;
In morn and evening dew your beauties bathe,
And drink the sun; which gives your cheeks to glow,
And out-blush (mine excepted) every fair;
You gladlier grew, ambitious of her hand,
Which often cropp’d your odours, incense meet 130
To thought so pure! Ye lovely fugitives!
Coeval race with man! for man you smile;
Why not smile at him too? You share indeed
His sudden pass; but not his constant pain.
So man is made, nought ministers delight,
By what his glowing passions can engage;
And glowing passions, bent on aught below,
Must, soon or late, with anguish turn the scale;
And anguish, after rapture, how severe!
Rapture? Bold man! who tempts the wrath divine, 140
By plucking fruit denied to mortal taste,
While here, presuming on the rights of heaven.
For transport dost thou call on every hour,
Lorenzo? At thy friend’s expense be wise;
Lean not on earth; ’twill pierce thee to the heart;
A broken reed, at best; but, oft, a spear;
On its sharp point peace bleeds, and hope expires.
Turn, hopeless thought! turn from her:—thought repell’d
Resenting rallies, and wakes every woe.
Snatch’d ere thy prime! and in thy bridal hour! 150
And when kind fortune, with thy lover, smiled! 151
And when high flavour’d thy fresh opening joys!
And when blind man pronounced thy bliss complete!
And on a foreign shore; where strangers wept!
Strangers to thee; and, more surprising still,
Strangers to kindness, wept: their eyes let fall
Inhuman tears: strange tears! that trickled down
From marble hearts! obdurate tenderness!
A tenderness that call’d them more severe;
In spite of nature’s soft persuasion, steel’d; 160
While nature melted, superstition raved;
That mourn’d the dead; and this denied a grave.
Their sighs incensed; sighs foreign to the will!
Their will the tiger suck’d, outraged the storm.
For oh! the cursed ungodliness of zeal!
While sinful flesh relented, spirit nursed
In blind infallibility’s embrace,
The sainted spirit petrified the breast;
Denied the charity of dust, to spread
O’er dust! a charity their dogs enjoy. 170
What could I do? what succour? what resource?
With pious sacrilege, a grave I stole;
With impious piety, that grave I wrong’d;
Short in my duty; coward in my grief!
More like her murderer, than friend, I crept,
With soft-suspended step, and muffled deep
In midnight darkness, whisper’d my last sigh.
I whisper’d what should echo through their realms;
Nor writ her name, whose tomb should pierce the skies.
Presumptuous fear! How durst I dread her foes, 180
While nature’s loudest dictates I obey’d?
Pardon necessity, bless’d shade! of grief
And indignation rival bursts I pour’d;
Half execration mingled with my prayer;
Kindled at man, while I his God adored; 185
Sore grudged the savage land her sacred dust;
Stamp’d the cursed soil; and with humanity
(Denied Narcissa) wish’d them all a grave.
Glows my resentment into guilt? What guilt
Can equal violations of the dead?
The dead how sacred! Sacred is the dust
Of this heaven-labour’d form, erect, divine! 192
This heaven-assumed majestic robe of earth,
He deign’d to wear, who hung the vast expanse
With azure bright, and clothed the sun in gold.
When every passion sleeps that can offend;
When strikes us every motive that can melt;
When man can wreak his rancour uncontroll’d,
That strongest curb on insult and ill-will;
Then, spleen to dust? the dust of innocence? 200
An angel’s dust?—This Lucifer transcends;
When he contended for the patriarch’s bones,
’Twas not the strife of malice, but of pride;
The strife of pontiff pride, not pontiff gall.
Far less than this is shocking in a race
Most wretched, but from streams of mutual love;
And uncreated, but for love divine;
And, but for love divine, this moment, lost,
By fate resorb’d, and sunk in endless night.
Man hard of heart to man! of horrid things 210
Most horrid! ’mid stupendous, highly strange!
Yet oft his courtesies are smoother wrongs;
Pride brandishes the favours He confers,
And contumelious his humanity:
What then his vengeance? Hear it not, ye stars!
And thou, pale moon! turn paler at the sound;
Man is to man the sorest, surest ill.
A previous blast foretells the rising storm;
O’erwhelming turrets threaten ere they fall; 219
Volcanos bellow ere they disembogue;
Earth trembles ere her yawning jaws devour;
And smoke betrays the wide-consuming fire:
Ruin from man is most conceal’d when near,
And sends the dreadful tidings in the blow.
Is this the flight of fancy? Would it were!
Heaven’s Sovereign saves all beings, but himself,
That hideous sight, a naked human heart.
Fired is the Muse? And let the Muse be fired:
Who not inflamed, when what he speaks, he feels,
And in the nerve most tender, in his friends? 230
Shame to mankind! Philander had his foes;
He felt the truths I sing, and I in him.
But he, nor I, feel more: past ills, Narcissa!
Are sunk in thee, thou recent wound of heart!
Which bleeds with other cares, with other pangs;
Pangs numerous, as the numerous ills that swarm’d
O’er thy distinguish’d fate, and, clustering there
Thick as the locusts on the land of Nile,
Made death more deadly, and more dark the grave.
Reflect (if not forgot my touching tale) 240
How was each circumstance with aspics arm’d?
An aspic, each! and all, a hydra woe:
What strong Herculean virtue could suffice?—
Or is it virtue to be conquer’d here?
This hoary cheek a train of tears bedews;
And each tear mourns its own distinct distress;
And each distress, distinctly mourn’d, demands
Of grief still more, as heighten’d by the whole.
A grief like this proprietors excludes:
Not friends alone such obsequies deplore; 250
They make mankind the mourner; carry sighs
Far as the fatal fame can wing her way;
And turn the gayest thought of gayest age, 253
Down their right channel, through the vale of death.
The vale of death! that hush’d Cimmerian vale,
Where darkness, brooding o’er unfinish’d fates
With raven wing incumbent, waits the day
(Dread day!) that interdicts all future change!
That subterranean world, that land of ruin!
Fit walk, Lorenzo, for proud human thought!
There let my thought expatiate, and explore 261
Balsamic truths, and healing sentiments,
Of all most wanted, and most welcome, here.
For gay Lorenzo’s sake, and for thy own,
My soul! “the fruits of dying friends survey;
Expose the vain of life; weigh life and death;
Give death his eulogy; thy fear subdue;
And labour that first palm of noble minds,
A manly scorn of terror from the tomb.”
This harvest reap from thy Narcissa’s grave. 270
As poets feign’d from Ajax’ streaming blood
Arose, with grief inscribed, a mournful flower;
Let wisdom blossom from my mortal wound.
And first, of dying friends; what fruit from these?
It brings us more than triple aid; an aid
To chase our thoughtlessness, fear, pride, and guilt.
Our dying friends come o’er us like a cloud,
To damp our brainless ardours; and abate
That glare of life, which often blinds the wise.
Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth 280
Our rugged pass to death; to break those bars
Of terror, and abhorrence, nature throws
Cross our obstructed way; and, thus to make
Welcome, as safe, our port from every storm.
Each friend by fate snatch’d from us, is a plume
Pluck’d from the wing of human vanity,
Which makes us stoop from our aërial heights, 287
And, damp’d with omen of our own decease,
On drooping pinions of ambition lower’d,
Just skim earth’s surface, ere we break it up,
O’er putrid earth to scratch a little dust,
And save the world a nuisance. Smitten friends
Are angels sent on errands full of love;
For us they languish, and for us they die:
And shall they languish, shall they die, in vain?
Ungrateful, shall we grieve their hovering shades,
Which wait the revolution in our hearts?
Shall we disdain their silent soft address;
Their posthumous advice, and pious prayer?
Senseless, as herds that graze their hallow’d graves, 300
Tread under foot their agonies and groans;
Frustrate their anguish, and destroy their deaths?
Lorenzo! no; the thought of death indulge;
Give it its wholesome empire! let it reign,
That kind chastiser of thy soul in joy!
Its reign will spread thy glorious conquests far,
And still the tumults of thy ruffled breast:
Auspicious era! golden days, begin!
The thought of death shall, like a god, inspire.
And why not think on death? Is life the theme 310
Of every thought? and wish of every hour?
And song of every joy? Surprising truth!
The beaten spaniel’s fondness not so strange.
To wave the numerous ills that seize on life
As their own property, their lawful prey;
Ere man has measured half his weary stage,
His luxuries have left him no reserve,
No maiden relishes, unbroach’d delights;
On cold served repetitions he subsists,
And in the tasteless present chews the past; 320
Disgusted chews, and scarce can swallow down. 321
Like lavish ancestors, his earlier years
Have disinherited his future hours,
Which starve on orts, and glean their former field.
Live ever here, Lorenzo?—shocking thought!
So shocking, they who wish, disown it too;
Disown from shame what they from folly crave.
Live ever in the womb, nor see the light?
For what live ever here?—With labouring step
To tread our former footsteps? pace the round 330
Eternal? to climb life’s worn, heavy wheel,
Which draws up nothing new? to beat, and beat
The beaten track? to bid each wretched day
The former mock? to surfeit on the same,
And yawn our joys? or thank a misery
For change, though sad? to see what we have seen?
Hear, till unheard, the same old slabber’d tale?
To taste the tasted, and at each return
Less tasteful? o’er our palates to decant
Another vintage? strain a flatter year, 340
Through loaded vessels, and a laxer tone?
Crazy machines to grind earth’s wasted fruits!
Ill-ground, and worse concocted! load, not life!
The rational foul kennels of excess!
Still-streaming thoroughfares of dull debauch!
Trembling each gulp, lest death should snatch the bowl.
Such of our fine ones is the wish refined!
So would they have it: elegant desire!
Why not invite the bellowing stalls, and wilds?
But such examples might their riot awe. 350
Through want of virtue, that is, want of thought
(Though on bright thought they father all their flights),
To what are they reduced? To love, and hate,
The same vain world; to censure, and espouse,
This painted shrew of life, who calls them fool 355
Each moment of each day; to flatter bad
Through dread of worse; to cling to this rude rock,
Barren, to them, of good, and sharp with ills,
And hourly blacken’d with impending storms,
And infamous for wrecks of human hope—
Scared at the gloomy gulf, that yawns beneath,
Such are their triumphs! such their pangs of joy! 362
’Tis time, high time, to shift this dismal scene.
This hugg’d, this hideous state, what art can cure?
One only; but that one, what all may reach;
Virtue—she, wonder-working goddess! charms
That rock to bloom; and tames the painted shrew;
And what will more surprise, Lorenzo! gives
To life’s sick, nauseous iteration, change;
And straightens nature’s circle to a line. 370
Believest thou this, Lorenzo? lend an ear,
A patient ear, thou’lt blush to disbelieve.
A languid, leaden iteration reigns,
And ever must, o’er those, whose joys are joys
Of sight, smell, taste: the cuckoo-seasons sing
The same dull note to such as nothing prize,
But what those seasons, from the teeming earth,
To doating sense indulge. But nobler minds,
Which relish fruits unripen’d by the sun,
Make their days various; various as the dyes 380
On the dove’s neck, which wanton in his rays.
On minds of dove-like innocence possess’d,
On lighten’d minds, that bask in virtue’s beams,
Nothing hangs tedious, nothing old revolves
In that for which they long, for which they live.
Their glorious efforts, wing’d with heavenly hope,
Each rising morning sees still higher rise;
Each bounteous dawn its novelty presents
To worth maturing, new strength, lustre, fame; 389
While nature’s circle, like a chariot-wheel
Rolling beneath their elevated aims,
Makes their fair prospect fairer every hour;
Advancing virtue, in a line to bliss;
Virtue, which Christian motives best inspire!
And bliss, which Christian schemes alone ensure!
And shall we then, for virtue’s sake, commence
Apostates, and turn infidels for joy?
A truth it is, few doubt, but fewer trust,
“He sins against this life, who slights the next.”
What is this life? How few their favourite know! 400
Fond in the dark, and blind in our embrace,
By passionately loving life, we make
Loved life unlovely; hugging her to death.
We give to time eternity’s regard;
And, dreaming, take our passage for our port.
Life has no value as an end, but means;
An end deplorable! a means divine!
When ’tis our all, ’tis nothing; worse than nought;
A nest of pains: when held as nothing, much:
Like some fair humorists, life is most enjoy’d, 410
When courted least; most worth, when disesteem’d;
Then ’tis the seat of comfort, rich in peace;
In prospect richer far; important! awful!
Not to be mention’d, but with shouts of praise!
Not to be thought on, but with tides of joy!
The mighty basis of eternal bliss!
Where now the barren rock? the painted shrew?
Where now, Lorenzo! life’s eternal round?
Have I not made my triple promise good?
Vain is the world; but only to the vain. 420
To what compare we then this varying scene,
Whose worth ambiguous rises, and declines?
Waxes, and wanes? (In all propitious, night 423
Assists me here) compare it to the moon;
Dark in herself, and indigent; but rich
In borrow’d lustre from a higher sphere.
When gross guilt interposes, labouring earth,
O’ershadow’d, mourns a deep eclipse of joy;
Her joys, at brightest, pallid, to that font
Of full effulgent glory, whence they flow. 430
Nor is that glory distant: Oh, Lorenzo!
A good man, and an angel! these between
How thin the barrier! What divides their fate?
Perhaps a moment, or perhaps a year:
Or, if an age, it is a moment still;
A moment, or eternity’s forgot.
Then be, what once they were, who now are gods;
Be what Philander was, and claim the skies.
Starts timid nature at the gloomy pass?
The soft transition call it; and be cheer’d: 440
Such it is often, and why not to thee?
To hope the best, is pious, brave, and wise;
And may itself procure, what it presumes.
Life is much flatter’d, death is much traduced;
Compare the rivals, and the kinder crown.
“Strange competition!”—True, Lorenzo! strange!
So little life can cast into the scale.
Life makes the soul dependent on the dust;
Death gives her wings to mount above the spheres.
Through chinks, styled organs, dim life peeps at light;
Death bursts th’ involving cloud, and all is day; 451
All eye, all ear, the disembodied power.
Death has feign’d evils, nature shall not feel;
Life, ills substantial, wisdom cannot shun.
Is not the mighty mind, that son of heaven!
By tyrant life dethroned, imprison’d, pain’d?
By death enlarged, ennobled, deified? 457
Death but entombs the body; life the soul.
“Is Death then guiltless? How he marks his way
With dreadful waste of what deserves to shine!
Art, genius, fortune, elevated power!
With various lustres these light up the world,
Which Death puts out, and darkens human race.” 463
I grant, Lorenzo! this indictment just:
The sage, peer, potentate, king, conqueror!
Death humbles these; more barbarous life, the man.
Life is the triumph of our mouldering clay;
Death, of the spirit infinite! divine!
Death has no dread, but what frail life imparts;
Nor life true joy, but what kind death improves. 470
No bliss has life to boast, till death can give
Far greater; life’s a debtor to the grave,
Dark lattice! letting in eternal day.
Lorenzo! blush at fondness for a life,
Which sends celestial souls on errands vile,
To cater for the sense; and serve at boards,
Where every ranger of the wilds, perhaps
Each reptile, justly claims our upper hand.
Luxurious feast! a soul, a soul immortal,
In all the dainties of a brute bemired! 480
Lorenzo! blush at terror for a death,
Which gives thee to repose in festive bowers,
Where nectars sparkle, angels minister,
And more than angels share, and raise, and crown,
And eternize, the birth, bloom, bursts of bliss.
What need I more? O Death, the palm is thine.
Then welcome, Death! thy dreaded harbingers,
Age and disease; disease, though long my guest;
That plucks my nerves, those tender strings of life;
Which, pluck’d a little more, will toll the bell, 490
That calls my few friends to my funeral; 491
Where feeble nature drops, perhaps, a tear,
While reason and religion, better taught,
Congratulate the dead, and crown his tomb
With wreath triumphant. Death is victory;
It binds in chains the raging ills of life:
Lust and ambition, wrath and avarice,
Dragg’d at his chariot-wheel, applaud his power.
That ills corrosive, cares importunate,
Are not immortal too, O Death! is thine. 500
Our day of dissolution!—name it right;
’Tis our great pay-day; ’tis our harvest, rich
And ripe: what though the sickle, sometimes keen,
Just scars us as we reap the golden grain?
More than thy balm, O Gilead! heals the wound.
Birth’s feeble cry, and death’s deep dismal groan,
Are slender tributes low-tax’d nature pays
For mighty gain: the gain of each, a life!
But O! the last the former so transcends,
Life dies, compared; life lives beyond the grave. 510
And feel I, Death! no joy from thought of thee?
Death, the great counsellor, who man inspires
With every nobler thought, and fairer deed!
Death, the deliverer, who rescues man!
Death, the rewarder, who the rescued crowns!
Death, that absolves my birth; a curse without it!
Rich death, that realises all my cares,
Toils, virtues, hopes; without it a chimera!
Death, of all pain the period, not of joy;
Joy’s source, and subject, still subsist unhurt; 520
One, in my soul; and one, in her great Sire;
Though the four winds were warring for my dust.
Yes, and from winds, and waves, and central night,
Though prison’d there, my dust too I reclaim
(To dust when drop proud nature’s proudest spheres),
And live entire. Death is the crown of life: 526
Were death denied, poor man would live in vain;
Were death denied, to live would not be life;
Were death denied, even fools would wish to die.
Death wounds to cure: we fall; we rise; we reign!
Spring from our fetters; fasten in the skies;
Where blooming Eden withers in our sight:
Death gives us more than was in Eden lost.
This king of terrors is the prince of peace.
When shall I die to vanity, pain, death?
When shall I die?—When shall I live for ever? 536
THE
CHRISTIAN TRIUMPH:
CONTAINING
OUR ONLY CURE FOR THE FEAR OF DEATH;
AND
PROPER SENTIMENTS OF HEART ON THAT
INESTIMABLE BLESSING.
TO THE
HONOURABLE MR YORKE.
NIGHT FOURTH.