Must human souls be generated then?——
My water ebbs; behold a rock is nigh:
If nature’s work produce the souls of men,
Man’s soul is mortal—all that’s born must die.
What shall we then conclude! what sunshine will
Disperse this gloomy cloud? till then, be still
My vainly striving thoughts; lie down my puzzled quill.
Hieroglyph. 2.
The closeness of the reasoning, and the freedom of the verses cannot be enough admired. I believe it would be difficult if not impossible to reason so shortly and yet so clearly in prose. Pope says the thoughts in his Essay on Man are in less compass for their being in verse. The poetical language admits of elisions and other varieties we cannot have in prose. This poem is followed by another, before which is a design of the winds blowing the flame of the taper, with this motto, “The wind passeth over it, and it is gone!”
No sooner is this lighted Taper set