(For 't is not peace that temple's gate does bind) Oh! let my life, if thou so many deaths a-coming find, With thine old year its voyage take,

9

Borne down that ftream of time which no return can

II.

Alas! what need I thus to pray?

Th' old avaricious year,

Whether I would or no, will bear

[make.

At least a part of me away:

14

His well-hors'd troops, the months, and days, and

Tho' never any where they stay,

Make in their paffage all their prey:

[hours,

The months, days, hours, that march i' th' rear, can Nought of value left behind:

[find

All the good wine of life our drunken youth devours;

Sournefs and lees, which to the bottom fink,

Remain for latter years to drink,

Until fome one, offended with the taste,

21

The veffel breaks, and out the wretched relicks run

III.

If then, young Year! thou needs must come

[at laft.

25

(For in Time's fruitful womb

The birth beyond its time can never tarry,

Nor ever can miscarry)

Chufe thy attendants well; for 't is not thee
We fear, but 't is thy company.

30

Let neither lofs of friends, or fame, or liberty,
Nor pining fickness, nor tormenting pain,

Nor fadness, nor uncleanly poverty,

Be feen among thy train;

Nor let thy livery be,

Either black Sin or gaudy Vanity:
Nay, if thou lov'ft me, gentle Year!

Let not fo much as Love be there :

Vain fruitless Love, I mean; for, gentle Year!

Altho' I fear

There's of this caution little need,

Yet, gentle Year! take heed

How thou doft make

Such a mistake:

Such love I mean alone

As by thy cruel predeceffors has been shown;
For tho' I'ave too much cause to doubt it,

I fain would try for once if life can live without it.

IV.

Into the future times why do we pry,

And feek to antedate our misery?

35

40

45

30

Like jealous men, why are we longing ftill

To fee the thing which only feeing makes an ill? 'Tis well the face is veil'd; for 't were a fight,

That would even happiest men affright,

And something still they'd spy that would destroy The past and present joy:

In whatsoever character
The book of Fate is writ,

'Tis well we understand not it;

56

We fhould grow mad with little learning there: 60 Upon the brink of every ill we did foresee,

Undecently and foolishly

We should stand shivering, and but slowly venture

The fatal flood to enter:

Since willing or unwilling we must do it,

65

They feel leaft cold and painwho plunge at once into it.

LIFE.

Nafcentes morimur.

I.

MANIL.

We're ill by these grammarians us'd;
We are abus'd by words, grossly abus'd;
From the maternal tomb

To the grave's fruitful womb

We call here Life; but Life's a name

That nothing here can truly claim:

This wretched inn, where we scarce stay to bait,
We call our Dwelling-place;

We call one step a Race:

But angels in their full-enlighten'd state,
Angels who live, and know what 't is to be,
Who all the nonfenfe of our language fee,

10

Who fpeak things, and our words their ill-drawn picWhen we by a foolish figure fay,

Behold an old man dead! then they

[ture fcorn.

15

Speak properly, and cry, Behoid a manchild born.

Volume II.

T

II.

My eyes are open'd, and I fee

Thro' the tranfparent fallacy :

Because we feem wifely to talk

Like men of business, and for business walk

From place to place,

And mighty voyages we take,

And mighty journies feem to make

20

O'er fea and land, the little point that has no space: Because we fight, and battles gain,

Some captives call, and say the rest are flain:

Because we heap up yellow earth, and fo

Rich, valiant, wife, and virtuous, feem to grow:

Because we draw a long nobility,

25

From hieroglyphick proofs of heraldry,

30

And impudently talk of a pofterity;

And, like Egyptian chroniclers,
Who write of twenty thousand years,

With maravedies make th' account,

That fingle time might to a fum amount;

35

We grow at laft by cuftom to believe

That really we live;

Whilft all these fhadows that for things we take,

Are but the empty dreams which in death's fleep we

III.

But these fantastick errours of our dream

Lead us to folid wrong;

[make.

40

We pray God our friends' torments to prolong,

And wish uncharitably for them

To be as long a-dying as Methusalem.

The ripen'd foul longs from his pris'n to come, 45
But we would feal and few up, if we could, the womb.
We feek to close and plafter up by art

The cracks and breaches of the extended shell,
And in that narrow cell

Would rudely force to dwell

The noble vigorous bird already wing'd to part. I

CHAP. XXXIV, OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH.

I.

AWAKE, and with attention hear,

Thou drowsy World! for it concerns thee near;
Awake, I fay, and liften well,

To what from God, I his loud prophet, tell.
Bid both the poles fupprefs their formy noise,
And hid the roaring fea contain its voice.
Be ftill thou Sea! be ftill thou Air and Earth!
Still as old Chaos before Motion's birth;
A dreadful hoft of judgments is gone out,
In ftrength and number more

Than e'er was rais'd by God before,

5

10

To fcourge the rebel world, and march it round about.

II.

I fee the fword of God brandish'd above,

And from it streams a difmal ray;

I fee the fcabbard caft away:

How red, anon, with flaughter will it prove!

15