to reason is admitted, it must for ever be indisputable. And of consequence no man can be betrayed into a dispute of that nature by vanity, which has a principal share in animating our modern combatants against other articles of our belief.
THE NATURE, PROOF, AND IMPORTANCE OF IMMORTALITY.
SHE (for I know not yet her name in Heav’n)
Not early, like NARCISSA, left the scene;
Nor sudden, like PHILANDER. What avails?
This seeming mitigation but inflames;
This fancy'd med'cine heightens the disease.
The longer known, the closer still she grew:
And gradual parting is a gradual death.
'Tis the grim tyrant's engine, which extorts By tardy pressure's still-increasing weight, From hardest hearts, confession of distress.
O the long, dark approach, through years of pain,
Death's gall'ry! (might I dare to call it so,)
With dismal Doubt, and sable Terror, hung;
Sick Hope's pale lamp, its only glimm'ring ray:
There Fate my melancholy walk ordain'd,
Forbid self-love itself to flatter there.
How oft I gaz'd, prophetically sad!
How oft I saw her dead, while yet in smiles!
In smiles she sunk her grief, to lessen mine.
She spoke me comfort, and increas'd my pain.
Like pow'rful armies trenching at a town,
By slow, and silent, but resistless sap,
In his pale progress gently gaining ground,
Death urg'd his deadly siege in spite of art,
Of all the balmy blessings Nature lends
To succour frail humanity. Ye stars!
(Not now first made familiar to my sight,)
And thou, O MOON! bear witness; many a night
He tore the pillow from beneath
Ty'd down my sore attention to the shock,
By ceaseless depredations on a life
Dearer than that he left me. Dreadful post
Of observation! darker ev'ry hour!
Less dread the day that drove me to the brink,
And pointed out eternity below;
When my soul shudder'd at futurity;
When, on a moment's point, th' important die
Of life and death, spun doubtful ere it fell,
And turn'd up Life; my title to more woe.
But why more woe? More comfort let it be.
Nothing is dead, but that which wish'd to die;
Nothing is dead, but Wretchedness and Pain;
Nothing is dead, but what incumber'd, gall'd,
Block'd up the pass, and barr'd from real life.
Where dwells that wish most ardent of the wise?
Too dark the sun to see it; highest stars,
Too low to reach it; Death, great Death alone,
O'er stars and sun, triumphant, lands us there.
Nor dreadful our transition; though the mind,
An artist at creating self-alarms,
Rich in expedients for inquietude,
Is prone to paint it dreadful. Who can take
Death's portrait true? The tyrant never sat.
Our sketch all random strokes, conjecture all;
Close shuts the grave, nor tells one single talc.
Death, and his image, rising in the brain,
Bear faint resemblance; never are alike;
Fear shakes the pencil; Fancy loves excess;
Dark Ignorance is lavish of her shades:
And these the formidable picture draw.
But grant the worst-'tis past-new prospects rise-
And drop a veil eternal o'er her tomb.
Far other views our contemplation claim,
Views that o'erpay the rigours of our life;
Views that suspend our agonies in death:
Wrapt in the thought of Immortality,
Wrapt in the single, the triumphant thought!
Long life might lapse, age unperceiv'd come on;
And find the soul unsated with her theme.
Its nature, proof, importance, fire my song.
O that my song could emulate my soul!
Like her, immortal. No!-the soul disdains
A mark so mean; far nobler hope inflames;
If endless ages can outweigh an hour,
Let not the laurel, but the palm, inspire.
Thy nature, Immortality! who knows?
And yet who knows it not? It is but life
In stronger thread of brighter colour spun,
And spun for ever; dipt by cruel Fate
In Stygian dye, how black, how brittle here!
How short our correspondence with the sun!
And while it lasts, inglorious! Our best deeds,
How wanting in their weight! Our highest joys,
Small cordials to support us in our pain,
And give us strength to suffer. But how
To mingle int'rests, converse, amities,
With all the sons of Reason, scatter'd wide
Through habitable space, wherever born,
Howe'er endow'd! to live free citizens
of universal Nature; to lay hold
By more than feeble Faith on the SUPREME!
To call Heav'n's rich unfathomable mines
(Mines, which support archangels in their state)
Our own! to rise in science, as in bliss,
Initiate in the secrets of the skies!
To read creation; read its mighty plan
In the bare bosom of the Deity!
The plan, and execution, to collate!
see, before each glance of piercing thought, All cloud, all shadow, blown remote; and leave 100 No mystery-but that of love divine,
Which lifts us on the seraph's flaming wing,
From earth's Akeldama, this field of blood,
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