ANTICIPATION.
Man’s restless spirit, always on the wing,
Insatiate, ever striving to be blest,
With eager grasp lays hold on time to come,
And fondly, with the future moment joins
Some fancied pleasure, some expected bliss.
In vain experience shews the grand mistake,
And melts our air-built castles into nought;
Hope beckons on, and man obsequious runs
The same wild race, and with the same result;
While tasteless creeps the present tiresome hour.—
—Say, Moralist, with philosophic eye,
From hence what useful lesson may be learn’d,
And what inferr’d to cheer the hopeless heart;
Has not th’ all-wise Director of events
Implanted deep within the human breast
A hope of happiness, not here attain’d,
To lead us on to seek some greater good,
The bliss of Heav’n, the gift of Love divine?—
And will he disappoint this ardent hope?
VIATOR.
New-York, Aug. 19, 1796.
For the New-York Weekly Magazine.