Complete Works of Edward Young, page 25
All deities, like summer’s swarms, on wing!
All basking in the full meridian blaze!
I see the Judge enthroned! the flaming guard!
The volume open’d! open’d every heart!
A sunbeam pointing out each secret thought! 270
No patron! intercessor none! now past
The sweet, the clement, mediatorial hour!
For guilt no plea! to pain, no pause! no bound!
Inexorable, all! and all, extreme!
Nor man alone; the Foe of God and man,
From his dark den, blaspheming, drags his chain,
And rears his brazen front, with thunder scarr’d:
Receives his sentence, and begins his hell.
All vengeance past, now, seems abundant grace:
Like meteors in a stormy sky, how roll 280
His baleful eyes! he curses whom he dreads;
And deems it the first moment of his fall.
’Tis present to my thought! — and yet where is it?
Angels can’t tell me; angels cannot guess
The period; from created beings lock’d
In darkness. But the process, and the place,
Are less obscure; for these may man inquire.
Say, thou great close of human hopes and fears!
Great key of hearts! great finisher of fates!
Great end! and great beginning! say, Where art thou?
Art thou in time, or in eternity? 291
Nor in eternity, nor time, I find thee.
These, as two monarchs, on their borders meet,
(Monarchs of all elapsed, or unarrived!)
As in debate, how best their powers allied,
May swell the grandeur, or discharge the wrath,
Of Him, whom both their monarchies obey.
Time, this vast fabric for him built (and doom’d
With him to fall), now bursting o’er his head;
His lamp, the sun, extinguish’d; from beneath 300
The frown of hideous darkness, calls his sons
From their long slumber; from earth’s heaving womb,
To second birth! contemporary throng!
Roused at one call, upstarted from one bed,
Press’d in one crowd, appall’d with one amaze,
He turns them o’er, Eternity! to thee.
Then (as a king deposed disdains to live)
He falls on his own scythe; nor falls alone:
His greatest foe falls with him; Time, and he
Who murder’d all Time’s offspring, Death, expire. 310
Time was! Eternity now reigns alone:
Awful eternity! offended queen!
And her resentment to mankind, how just!
With kind intent, soliciting access,
How often has she knock’d at human hearts!
Rich to repay their hospitality;
How often call’d! and with the voice of God!
Yet bore repulse, excluded as a cheat!
A dream! while foulest foes found welcome there!
A dream, a cheat, now, all things, but her smile. 320
For, lo! her twice ten thousand gates thrown wide,
As thrice from Indus to the frozen pole,
With banners streaming as the comet’s blaze,
And clarions, louder than the deep in storms,
Sonorous as immortal breath can blow, 325
Pour forth their myriads, potentates, and powers,
Of light, of darkness; in a middle field,
Wide, as creation! populous, as wide!
A neutral region! there to mark th’ event
Of that great drama, whose preceding scenes
Detain’d them close spectators, through a length
Of ages, ripening to this grand result; 332
Ages, as yet unnumber’d, but by God;
Who now, pronouncing sentence, vindicates
The rights of Virtue, and his own renown.
Eternity, the various sentence past,
Assigns the sever’d throng distinct abodes,
Sulphureous, or ambrosial. What ensues?
The deed predominant! the deed of deeds!
Which makes a hell of hell, a heaven of heaven. 340
The goddess, with determined aspect, turns
Her adamantine key’s enormous size
Through destiny’s inextricable wards,
Deep driving every bolt, on both their fates.
Then, from the crystal battlements of heaven,
Down, down, she hurls it through the dark profound,
Ten thousand thousand fathom; there to rust,
And ne’er unlock her resolution more.
The deep resounds; and hell, through all her glooms,
Returns, in groans, the melancholy roar. 350
O how unlike the chorus of the skies!
O how unlike those shouts of joy, that shake
The whole ethereal! how the concave rings!
Nor strange! when deities their voice exalt;
And louder far, than when creation rose,
To see creation’s godlike aim, and end,
So well accomplish’d! so divinely closed!
To see the mighty dramatist’s last act,
(As meet), in glory rising o’er the rest. 359
No fancied god, a God indeed, descends,
To solve all knots; to strike the moral home;
To throw full day on darkest scenes of time;
To clear, commend, exalt, and crown the whole.
Hence, in one peal of loud, eternal praise,
The charm’d spectators thunder their applause;
And the vast void beyond, applause resounds.
What then am I? —
Amidst applauding worlds,
And worlds celestial, is there found on earth,
A peevish, dissonant, rebellious string, 370
Which jars in the grand chorus, and complains?
Censure on thee, Lorenzo! I suspend,
And turn it on myself; how greatly due!
All, all is right; by God ordain’d or done;
And who, but God, resumed the friends He gave?
And have I been complaining, then, so long?
Complaining of his favours; pain, and death?
Who, without Pain’s advice, would e’er be good?
Who, without Death, but would be good in vain?
Pain is to save from pain; all punishment, 380
To make for peace; and death, to save from Death;
And second death, to guard immortal life;
To rouse the careless, the presumptuous awe,
And turn the tide of souls another way;
By the same tenderness divine ordain’d,
That planted Eden, and high bloom’d for man,
A fairer Eden, endless, in the skies.
Heaven gives us friends to bless the present scene;
Resumes them, to prepare us for the next.
All evils natural are moral goods; 390
All discipline, indulgence, on the whole.
None are unhappy: all have cause to smile,
But such as to themselves that cause deny. 393
Our faults are at the bottom of our pains;
Error, in act, or judgment, is the source
Of endless sighs: we sin, or we mistake;
And Nature tax, when false opinion stings.
Let impious grief be banish’d, joy indulged;
But chiefly then, when Grief puts in her claim.
Joy from the joyous, frequently betrays, 400
Oft lives in vanity, and dies in woe.
Joy, amidst ills, corroborates, exalts;
’Tis joy and conquest; joy, and virtue too.
A noble fortitude in ills, delights
Heaven, earth, ourselves; ’tis duty, glory, peace.
Affliction is the good man’s shining scene;
Prosperity conceals his brightest ray;
As night to stars, woe lustre gives to man.
Heroes in battle, pilots in the storm,
And virtue in calamities, admire. 410
The crown of manhood is a winter-joy;
An evergreen, that stands the northern blast,
And blossoms in the rigour of our fate.
’Tis a prime part of happiness, to know
How much unhappiness must prove our lot;
A part which few possess! I’ll pay life’s tax,
Without one rebel murmur, from this hour,
Nor think it misery to be a man;
Who thinks it is, shall never be a god.
Some ills we wish for, when we wish to live. 420
What spoke proud Passion?— “Wish my being lost?”53
Presumptuous! blasphemous! absurd! and false!
The triumph of my soul is, — that I am;
And therefore that I may be — what? Lorenzo!
Look inward, and look deep; and deeper still;
Unfathomably deep our treasure runs 426
In golden veins, through all eternity!
Ages, and ages, and succeeding still
New ages, where the phantom of an hour,
Which courts each night, dull slumber, for repair,
Shall wake, and wonder, and exult, and praise,
And fly through infinite, and all unlock;
And (if deserved) by Heaven’s redundant love, 433
Made half adorable itself, adore;
And find, in adoration, endless joy!
Where thou, not master of a moment here,
Frail as the flower, and fleeting as the gale,
May’st boast a whole eternity, enrich’d
With all a kind Omnipotence can pour.
Since Adam fell, no mortal, uninspired, 440
Has ever yet conceived, or ever shall,
How kind is God, how great (if good) is Man.
No man too largely from Heaven’s love can hope,
If what is hoped he labours to secure.
Ills? — there are none: All-gracious! none from thee;
From man full many! numerous is the race
Of blackest ills, and those immortal too,
Begot by Madness, on fair Liberty;
Heaven’s daughter, hell-debauch’d! her hand alone
Unlocks destruction to the sons of men, 450
First barr’d by thine: high-wall’d with adamant,
Guarded with terrors reaching to this world,
And cover’d with the thunders of thy law;
Whose threats are mercies, whose injunctions, guides,
Assisting, not restraining, Reason’s choice;
Whose sanctions, unavoidable results
From nature’s course, indulgently reveal’d;
If unreveal’d, more dangerous, nor less sure.
Thus, an indulgent father warns his sons,
“Do this; fly that” — nor always tells the cause; 460
Pleased to reward, as duty to his will,
A conduct needful to their own repose.
Great God of wonders! (if, thy love survey’d,
Aught else the name of wonderful retains),
What rocks are these, on which to build our trust!
Thy ways admit no blemish; none I find;
Or this alone— “That none is to be found.”
Not one, to soften Censure’s hardy crime;
Not one, to palliate peevish Grief’s Complaint,
Who, like a demon, murmuring from the dust, 470
Dares into judgment call her Judge. — Supreme!
For all I bless thee; most, for the severe;
Her54 death — my own at hand — the fiery gulf,
That flaming bound of wrath omnipotent!
It thunders; — but it thunders to preserve;
It strengthens what it strikes; its wholesome dread
Averts the dreaded pain; its hideous groans
Join heaven’s sweet hallelujahs in thy praise,
Great Source of good alone! how kind in all!
In vengeance kind! Pain, Death, Gehenna, save. 480
Thus, in thy world material, Mighty Mind!
Not that alone which solaces, and shines,
The rough and gloomy, challenges our praise.
The winter is as needful as the spring;
The thunder, as the sun; a stagnate mass
Of vapours breeds a pestilential air:
Nor more propitious the Favonian55 breeze
To nature’s health, than purifying storms;
The dread volcano ministers to good.
Its smother’d flames might undermine the world. 490
Loud Etnas fulminate in love to man;
Comets good omens are, when duly scann’d; 492
And, in their use, eclipses learn to shine.
Man is responsible for ills received;
Those we call wretched are a chosen band,
Compell’d to refuge in the right, for peace.
Amid my list of blessings infinite,
Stands this the foremost, “That my heart has bled.”
’Tis Heaven’s last effort of good-will to man;
When Pain can’t bless, Heaven quits us in despair. 500
Who fails to grieve, when just occasion calls,
Or grieves too much, deserves not to be blest;
Inhuman, or effeminate, his heart;
Reason absolves the grief, which reason ends.
May Heaven ne’er trust my friend with happiness,
Till it has taught him how to bear it well,
By previous pain; and made it safe to smile!
Such smiles are mine, and such may they remain;
Nor hazard their extinction, from excess.
My change of heart a change of style demands; 510
The Consolation cancels the Complaint,
And makes a convert of my guilty song.
As when o’er-labour’d, and inclined to breathe,
A panting traveller, some rising ground,
Some small ascent, has gain’d, he turns him round,
And measures with his eye the various vales,
The fields, woods, meads, and rivers, he has pass’d;
And, satiate of his journey, thinks of home,
Endear’d by distance, nor affects more toil;
Thus I, though small, indeed, is that ascent 520
The Muse has gain’d, review the paths she trod;
Various, extensive, beaten but by view;
And, conscious of her prudence in repose,
Pause; and with pleasure meditate an end,
Though still remote; so fruitful is my theme.
Through many a field of moral, and divine, 526
The Muse has stray’d; and much of sorrow seen
In human ways; and much of false and vain;
Which none, who travel this bad road, can miss.
O’er friends deceased full heartily she wept;
Of love divine the wonders she display’d;
Proved man immortal; show’d the source of joy
The grand tribunal raised; assign’d the bounds
Of human grief: in few, to close the whole,
The moral Muse has shadow’d out a sketch,
Though not in form, nor with a Raphael-stroke,
Of most our weakness needs believe, or do,
In this our land of travel, and of hope,
For peace on earth, or prospect of the skies. 539
What then remains? much! much! a mighty debt
To be discharged: these thoughts, O Night! are thine;
From thee they came, like lovers’ secret sighs,
While others slept. So, Cynthia (poets feign),
In shadows veil’d, soft-sliding from her sphere,
Her shepherd cheer’d; of her enamour’d less,
Than I of thee. — And art thou still unsung,
Beneath whose brow, and by whose aid, I sing?
Immortal silence! where shall I begin?
Where end? or how steal music from the spheres,
To soothe their goddess? 550
O majestic Night!
Nature’s great ancestor! Day’s elder-born!
And fated to survive the transient sun!
By mortals, and immortals, seen with awe!
A starry crown thy raven brow adorns,
An azure zone thy waist; clouds, in heaven’s loom
Wrought through varieties of shape and shade,
In ample folds of drapery divine,
Thy flowing mantle form; and, heaven throughout,
Voluminously pour thy pompous train. 560
Thy gloomy grandeurs (nature’s most august,
Inspiring aspect!) claim a grateful verse;
And, like a sable curtain starr’d with gold,
Drawn o’er my labours past, shall close the scene.
And what, O man! so worthy to be sung?
What more prepares us for the songs of heaven?
Creation, of archangels is the theme!
What, to be sung, so needful? What so well
Celestial joys prepare us to sustain?
The soul of man, His face design’d to see, 570
Who gave these wonders to be seen by man,
Has here a previous scene of objects great,
On which to dwell; to stretch to that expanse
Of thought, to rise to that exalted height
Of admiration, to contract that awe,
And give her whole capacities that strength,
Which best may qualify for final joy.
The more our spirits are enlarged on earth,
The deeper draught shall they receive of heaven.
Heaven’s King! whose face unveil’d consummates bliss;
Redundant bliss! which fills that mighty void, 581
The whole creation leaves in human hearts!
Thou, who didst touch the lip of Jesse’s son,
Rapt in sweet contemplation of these fires,
And set his harp in concert with the spheres;
While of thy works material the supreme
I dare attempt, assist my daring song.
Loose me from earth’s enclosure, from the sun’s
Contracted circle set my heart at large;
Eliminate my spirit, give it range 590
Through provinces of thought yet unexplored;
Teach me, by this stupendous scaffolding,
Creation’s golden steps, to climb to Thee.
Teach me with Art great Nature to control, 594
And spread a lustre o’er the shades of Night.
Feel I thy kind assent? and shall the sun
Be seen at midnight, rising in my song?
Lorenzo! come, and warm thee: thou, whose heart,
Whose little heart, is moor’d within a nook
Of this obscure terrestrial, anchor weigh.
Another ocean calls, a nobler port;
I am thy pilot, I thy prosperous gale. 602
