“Man’s grief is but his grandeur in disguise;
And discontent is immortality.”
Finally, his genius, with all its compass and daring, was reverent and religious. He gloried in the universe; he swam, as it were, and circled like a strong swimmer, in that starry sea; but he bent before the Cross, and, instead of looking up, looked down, and cried out, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
We commend his masterpiece to readers, partly, indeed, for its power,—a power that has hitherto rather been felt than acknowledged, rather admired in silence than analysed; but principally because, like “The Temple” of Herbert, it is holy ground. The author, amid his elaborate ingenuities, and wilful though minor perversities, never ceases to love and to honour truth; in pursuit of renown, he is never afraid to glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; and if his flights of fancy be at times too wild, and if his thoughts be often set to the tune of the tempest, it is a tempest on whose wings, to use his own simple but immortal words, “The Lord is abroad.”
THE COMPLAINT:
OR,
NIGHT THOUGHTS.
PREFACE.
As the occasion of this Poem was real, not fictitious; so the method pursued in it was rather imposed by what spontaneously arose in the Author’s mind on that occasion, than meditated or designed. 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 short morals. Here, on the contrary, the narrative is short, and the morality arising from it makes the bulk of the Poem. The reason of it is, that the facts mentioned did naturally pour these moral reflections on the thought of the Writer.
NIGHT FIRST.
ON LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
ARTHUR ONSLOW, ESQ.,
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.