Complete Works of Edward Young, page 14
Find we Lorenzo wiser in his wealth? 410
What if thy rental I reform? and draw
An inventory new, to set thee right?
Where thy true treasure? Gold says, “Not in me:”
And, “Not in me,” the diamond. Gold is poor;
India’s insolvent: seek it in thyself,
Seek in thy naked self, and find it there;
In being, so descended, form’d, endow’d;
Sky-born, sky-guided, sky-returning race!
Erect, immortal, rational, divine!
In senses, which inherit earth, and heavens; 420
Enjoy the various riches Nature yields;
Far nobler! give the riches they enjoy;
Give taste to fruits; and harmony to groves;
Their radiant beams to gold, and gold’s bright fire; 424
Take in, at once, the landscape of the world,
At a small inlet, which a grain might close,
And half create the wondrous world they see.
Our senses, as our reason, are divine.
But for the magic organ’s powerful charm,
Earth were a rude, uncolour’d chaos still.
Objects are but th’ occasion; ours th’ exploit;
Ours is the cloth,30 the pencil, and the paint, 432
Which nature’s admirable picture draws;
And beautifies creation’s ample dome.
Like Milton’s Eve, when gazing on the lake,
Man makes the matchless image man admires.
Say then, shall man, his thoughts all sent abroad,
Superior wonders in himself forgot,
His admiration waste on objects round,
When Heaven makes him the soul of all he sees? 440
Absurd! not rare! so great, so mean, is man.
What wealth in senses such as these! What wealth
In Fancy, fired to form a fairer scene
Than Sense surveys! In memory’s firm record,
Which, should it perish, could this world recall
From the dark shadows of o’erwhelming years!
In colours fresh, originally bright,
Preserve its portrait, and report its fate!
What wealth in Intellect, that sovereign power!
Which Sense and Fancy summons to the bar; 450
Interrogates, approves, or reprehends;
And from the mass those underlings import,
From their materials sifted, and refined,
And in Truth’s balance accurately weigh’d,
Forms art, and science, government, and law;
The solid basis, and the beauteous frame, 456
The vitals, and the grace of civil life!
And manners (sad exception!) set aside,
Strikes out, with master hand, a copy fair
Of His idea, whose indulgent thought
Long, long, ere chaos teem’d, plann’d human bliss.
What wealth in souls that soar, dive, range around,
Disdaining limit, or from place, or time; 463
And hear at once, in thought extensive, hear
Th’ Almighty fiat, and the trumpet’s sound!
Bold, on creation’s outside walk, and view
What was, and is, and more than e’er shall be;
Commanding, with omnipotence of thought,
Creations new in fancy’s field to rise!
Souls, that can grasp whate’er th’ Almighty made, 470
And wander wild through things impossible!
What wealth, in faculties of endless growth,
In quenchless passions violent to crave,
In liberty to choose, in power to reach,
And in duration (how thy riches rise!)
Duration to perpetuate — boundless bliss!
Ask you, what power resides in feeble man
That bliss to gain? Is Virtue’s, then, unknown?
Virtue, our present peace, our future prize.
Man’s unprecarious, natural estate, 480
Improveable at will, in virtue lies;
Its tenure sure; its income is divine.
High-built abundance, heap on heap! for what?
To breed new wants, and beggar us the more;
Then make a richer scramble for the throng?
Soon as this feeble pulse, which leaps so long
Almost by miracle, is tired with play,
Like rubbish from disploding engines thrown,
Our magazines of hoarded trifles fly;
Fly diverse; fly to foreigners, to foes; 490
New masters court, and call the former fools
(How justly!), for dependence on their stay.
Wide scatter, first, our playthings; then, our dust.
Dost court abundance for the sake of peace?
Learn, and lament thy self-defeated scheme:
Riches enable to be richer still;
And, richer still, what mortal can resist?
Thus wealth (a cruel taskmaster!) enjoins
New toils, succeeding toils, an endless train!
And murders peace, which taught it first to shine. 500
The poor are half as wretched as the rich;
Whose proud and painful privilege it is
At once, to bear a double load of woe;
To feel the stings of envy, and of want,
Outrageous want! both Indies cannot cure.
A competence is vital to content.
Much wealth is corpulence, if not disease;
Sick, or encumber’d, is our happiness,
A competence is all we can enjoy.
Oh, be content, where Heaven can give no more! 510
More, like a flash of water from a lock,
Quickens our spirits’ movement for an hour;
But soon its force is spent, nor rise our joys
Above our native temper’s common stream.
Hence disappointment lurks in every prize,
As bees in flowers; and stings us with success.
The rich man, who denies it, proudly feigns;
Nor knows the wise are privy to the lie.
Much learning shows how little mortals know;
Much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy: 520
At best, it babies us with endless toys,
And keeps us children till we drop to dust.
As monkeys at a mirror stand amazed,
They fail to find what they so plainly see; 524
Thus men, in shining riches, see the face
Of happiness, nor know it is a shade;
But gaze, and touch, and peep, and peep again,
And wish, and wonder it is absent still.
How few can rescue opulence from want!
Who lives to Nature, rarely can be poor;
Who lives to Fancy, never can be rich.
Poor is the man in debt; the man of gold, 532
In debt to Fortune, trembles at her power.
The man of reason smiles at her, and Death.
Oh! what a patrimony this! a being
Of such inherent strength and majesty,
Not worlds possess’d can raise it; worlds destroy’d
Can’t injure; which holds on its glorious course,
When thine, O Nature! ends; too blest to mourn
Creation’s obsequies. What treasure, this! 540
The monarch is a beggar to the man.
Immortal! Ages past, yet nothing gone!
Morn without eve! a race without a goal!
Unshorten’d by progression infinite!
Futurity for ever future! Life
Beginning still where computation ends!
’Tis the description of a deity!
’Tis the description of the meanest slave:
The meanest slave dares then Lorenzo scorn?
The meanest slave thy sovereign glory shares. 550
Proud youth! fastidious of the lower world!
Man’s lawful pride includes humility;
Stoops to the lowest; is too great to find
Inferiors; all immortal! brothers all!
Proprietors eternal of thy love.
Immortal! What can strike the sense so strong,
As this the soul? It thunders to the thought;
Reason amazes; gratitude o’erwhelms; 558
No more we slumber on the brink of fate;
Roused at the sound, th’ exulting soul ascends,
And breathes her native air; an air that feeds
Ambitions high, and fans ethereal fires;
Quick kindles all that is divine within us;
Nor leaves one loitering thought beneath the stars.
Has not Lorenzo’s bosom caught the flame?
Immortal! Were but one immortal, how
Would others envy! how would thrones adore!
Because ’tis common, is the blessing lost?
How this ties up the bounteous hand of Heaven! 569
Oh, vain, vain, vain, all else! Eternity!
A glorious and a needful refuge, that,
From vile imprisonment, in abject views.
’Tis immortality, ’tis that alone,
Amid life’s pains, abasements, emptiness,
The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill.
That only, and that amply, this performs;
Lifts us above life’s pains, her joys above;
Their terror those, and these their lustre lose;
Eternity depending covers all;
Eternity depending all achieves; 580
Sets earth at distance; casts her into shades;
Blends her distinctions; abrogates her powers;
The low, the lofty, joyous, and severe,
Fortune’s dread frowns, and fascinating smiles,
Make one promiscuous and neglected heap,
The man beneath; if I may call him man,
Whom immortality’s full force inspires.
Nothing terrestrial touches his high thought;
Suns shine unseen, and thunders roll unheard,
By minds quite conscious of their high descent, 590
Their present province, and their future prize;
Divinely darting upward every wish, 592
Warm on the wing, in glorious absence lost!
Doubt you this truth? Why labours your belief?
If earth’s whole orb by some due distanced eye
Were seen at once, her towering Alps would sink,
And levell’d Atlas leave an even sphere.
Thus earth, and all that earthly minds admire,
Is swallow’d in eternity’s vast round.
To that stupendous view, when souls awake, 600
So large of late, so mountainous to man,
Time’s toys subside; and equal all below.
Enthusiastic, this? Then all are weak,
But rank enthusiasts. To this godlike height
Some souls have soar’d; or martyrs ne’er had bled,
And all may do, what has by man been done.
Who, beaten by these sublunary storms,
Boundless, interminable joys can weigh,
Unraptured, unexalted, uninflamed?
What slave unblest, who from to-morrow’s dawn 610
Expects an empire? He forgets his chain,
And, throned in thought, his absent sceptre waves.
And what a sceptre waits us! what a throne!
Her own immense appointments to compute,
Or comprehend her high prerogatives,
In this her dark minority, how toils,
How vainly pants, the human soul divine!
Too great the bounty seems for earthly joy;
What heart but trembles at so strange a bliss?
In spite of all the truths the Muse has sung, 620
Ne’er to be prized enough! enough revolved!
Are there who wrap the world so close about them,
They see no farther than the clouds; and dance
On heedless vanity’s fantastic toe,
Till, stumbling at a straw, in their career,
Headlong they plunge, where end both dance and song?
Are there, Lorenzo? is it possible? 627
Are there on earth (let me not call them men)
Who lodge a soul immortal in their breasts;
Unconscious as the mountain of its ore;
Or rock of its inestimable gem?
When rocks shall melt, and mountains vanish, these
Shall know their treasure; treasure, then, no more. 633
Are there (still more amazing!) who resist
The rising thought? who smother, in its birth,
The glorious truth? who struggle to be brutes?
Who through this bosom-barrier burst their way,
And, with reversed ambition, strive to sink?
Who labour downwards through th’ opposing powers
Of instinct, reason, and the world against them, 640
To dismal hopes, and shelter in the shock
Of endless night; night darker than the grave’s?
Who fight the proofs of immortality?
With horrid zeal, and execrable arts,
Work all their engines, level their black fires,
To blot from man this attribute divine
(Than vital blood far dearer to the wise),
Blasphemers, and rank atheists to themselves?
To contradict them, see all nature rise!
What object, what event, the moon beneath, 650
But argues, or endears, an after-scene?
To reason proves, or weds it to desire?
All things proclaim it needful; some advance
One precious step beyond, and prove it sure.
A thousand arguments swarm round my pen,
From heaven, and earth, and man. Indulge a few,
By Nature, as her common habit, worn;
So pressing Providence a truth to teach,
Which truth untaught, all other truths were vain.
Thou! whose all-providential eye surveys, 660
Whose hand directs, whose Spirit fills and warms
Creation, and holds empire far beyond!
Eternity’s inhabitant august!
Of two eternities amazing Lord!
One past, ere man’s, or angel’s, had begun
Aid! while I rescue from the foe’s assault
Thy glorious immortality in man:
A theme for ever, and for all, of weight,
Of moment infinite! but relish’d most
By those who love Thee most, who most adore. 670
Nature, thy daughter, ever-changing birth
Of Thee the Great Immutable, to man
Speaks wisdom, is his oracle supreme;
And he who most consults her, is most wise.
Lorenzo, to this heavenly Delphos haste;
And come back all-immortal, all-divine:
Look nature through, ’tis revolution all;
All change; no death. Day follows night; and night
The dying day; stars rise, and set, and rise;
Earth takes th’ example. See, the summer gay, 680
With her green chaplet, and ambrosial flowers,
Droops into pallid autumn: winter grey,
Horrid with frost, and turbulent with storm,
Blows autumn, and his golden fruits, away:
Then melts into the spring: soft spring, with breath
Favonian, from warm chambers of the south,
Recalls the first. All, to re-flourish, fades;
As in a wheel, all sinks, to re-ascend.
Emblems of man, who passes, not expires.
With this minute distinction, emblems just, 690
Nature revolves, but man advances; both
Eternal, that a circle, this a line.
That gravitates, this soars. Th’ aspiring soul,
Ardent, and tremulous, like flame, ascends, 694
Zeal and humility her wings, to heaven.
The world of matter, with its various forms,
All dies into new life. Life born from death
Rolls the vast mass, and shall for ever roll.
No single atom, once in being, lost,
With change of counsel charges the Most High.
What hence infers Lorenzo? Can it be?
Matter immortal? And shall Spirit die? 702
Above the nobler, shall less noble rise?
Shall Man alone, for whom all else revives,
No resurrection know? Shall Man alone,
Imperial Man! be sown in barren ground,
Less privileged than grain, on which he feeds?
Is Man, in whom alone is power to prize
The bliss of being, or with previous pain
Deplore its period, by the spleen of fate, 710
Severely doom’d Death’s single unredeem’d?
If Nature’s revolution speaks aloud,
In her gradation, hear her louder still.
Look nature through, ’tis neat gradation all.
By what minute degrees her scale ascends!
Each middle nature join’d at each extreme,
To that above it join’d, to that beneath.
Parts, into parts reciprocally shot,
Abhor divorce: what love of union reigns!
Here, dormant matter waits a call to life; 720
Half life, half death, join there; here, life and sense;
There, sense from reason steals a glimmering ray;
Reason shines out in man. But how preserved
The chain unbroken upward, to the realms
Of incorporeal life? those realms of bliss,
Where Death hath no dominion? Grant a make
Half mortal, half immortal; earthy, part,
And part ethereal; grant the soul of man 728
Eternal; or in man the series ends.
Wide yawns the gap; connexion is no more;
Check’d Reason halts; her next step wants support;
Striving to climb, she tumbles from her scheme;
A scheme, analogy pronounced so true;
Analogy, man’s surest guide below. 734
Thus far, all nature calls on thy belief.
And will Lorenzo, careless of the call,
False attestation on all nature charge,
Rather than violate his league with Death?
Renounce his reason, rather than renounce
The dust beloved, and run the risk of heaven? 740
Oh, what indignity to deathless souls!
What treason to the majesty of man!
Of man immortal! Hear the lofty style:
“If so decreed, th’ Almighty Will be done.
Let earth dissolve, yon ponderous orbs descend,
And grind us into dust. The soul is safe;
The man emerges; mounts above the wreck,
As towering flame31 from Nature’s funeral pyre;
O’er devastation, as a gainer, smiles;
His charter, his inviolable rights, 750
