Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NIGHT THOUGHTS; THE COMPLAINT: 1. LIFE, DEATH & IMMORTALITY, by EDWARD YOUNG (1683-1765)


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NIGHT THOUGHTS; THE COMPLAINT: 1. LIFE, DEATH & IMMORTALITY, by             Poem Explanation     Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!
Last Line: How had it blest mankind, and rescued me!
Subject(s): Death; Funerals; Grief; Immortality; Life; Mankind; Night; Dead, The; Burials; Sorrow; Sadness; Human Race; Bedtime


TIRED Nature's sweet restorer, balmy Sleep!
He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where Fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes:
Swift on his downy pinions flies from woe,
And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.
From short (as usual) and disturb'd repose
I wake: how happy they who wake no more!
Yet that were vain, if dreams infest the grave.
I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams
Tumultuous; where my wreck'd desponding thought
From wave to wave of fancied misery
At random drove, her helm of reason lost;
Though now restored, 'tis only change of pain,
(A bitter change!) severer for severe.
The day too short for my distress; and night,
E'en in the zenith of her dark domain,
Is sunshine to the colour of my fate.

THE REIGN OF NIGHT.

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world.
Silence how dead! and darkness how profound!
Nor eye nor list'ning ear an object finds;
Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the gen'ral pulse
Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause;
An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
And let her prophecy be soon fulfill'd:
Fate! drop the curtain; I can lose no more.
Silence and Darkness! solemn sisters! twins
From ancient Night, who nurse the tender thought
To reason, and on reason build resolve,
(That column of true majesty in man)
Assist me: I will thank you in the grave;
The grave, your kingdom. There this frame shall fall
A victim sacred to your dreary shrine.
But what are ye?

ADDRESS TO THE AUTHOR OF LIGHT.

Thou, who didst put to flight
Primeval Silence, when the morning stars,
Exulting, shouted o'er the rising ball;
O Thou, whose word from solid darkness struck
That spark, the sun; strike wisdom from my soul;
My soul, which flies to thee, her trust, her treasure,
As misers to their gold, while others rest.
Through this opaque of nature and of soul,
This double night, transmit one pitying ray,
To lighten and to cheer. Oh, lead my mind
(A mind that fain would wander from its woe),
Lead it through various scenes of life and death,
And from each scene the noblest truths inspire.
Nor less inspire my conduct than my song;
Teach my best reason, reason; my best will
Teach rectitude; and fix my firm resolve
Wisdom to wed, and pay her long arrear:
Nor let the phial of thy vengeance, pour'd
On this devoted head, be pour'd in vain.

MY DEPARTED HOURS.

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
But from its loss: to give it then a tongue
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,
I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright,
It is the knell of my departed hours.
Where are they? With the years beyond the flood.
It is the signal that demands despatch:
How much is to be done! My hopes and fears
Start up alarm'd, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down -- on what? A fathomless abyss;
A dread eternity! how surely mine!
And can eternity belong to me,
Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?

CONTRASTS IN MAN.

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful is man!
How passing wonder HE who made him such!
Who centred in our make such strange extremes!
From diff'rent natures, marvellously mix'd,
Connection exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguish'd link in being's endless chain!
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
A beam ethereal, sullied and absorpt!
Though sullied and dishonour'd, still divine!
Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal! insect infinite!
A worm! a god! -- I tremble at myself,
And in myself am lost. At home, a stranger,
Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
And wond'ring at her own. How reason reels!
O what a miracle to man is man,
Triumphantly distress'd! what joy! what dread!
Alternately transported and alarm'd!
What can preserve my life? or what destroy?
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave;
Legions of angels can't confine me there.

NIGHT PROCLAIMS THE SOUL IMMORTAL.

'Tis past conjecture: all things rise in proof.
While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spreads,
What though my soul fantastic measures trod
O'er fairy fields, or mourn'd along the gloom
Of pathless woods, or, down the craggy steep
Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool,
Or scaled the cliff, or danced on hollow winds
With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain?
Her ceaseless flight, tho' devious, speaks her nature
Of subtler essence than the trodden clod,
Active, aerial, towering, unconfined,
Unfetter'd with her gross companion's fall.
E'en silent night proclaims my soul immortal:
E'en silent night proclaims eternal day.
For human weal Heav'n husbands all events:
Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain.

THE BURIED LIVE.

Why then their loss deplore that are not lost?
Why wanders wretched thought their tombs around
In infidel distress? Are angels there?
Slumbers, raked up in dust, ethereal fire?
They live, they greatly live a life on earth
Unkindled, unconceived; and from an eye
Of tenderness let heav'nly pity fall
On me, more justly number'd with the dead.
This is the desert, this the solitude:
How populous, how vital is the grave!
This is creation's melancholy vault,
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom,
The land of apparitions, empty shades!
All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond
Is substance; the reverse is folly's creed:
How solid all where change shall be no more!

THIS LIFE, ONLY THE COMMENCEMENT OF BEING.

This is the bud of being, the dim dawn,
The twilight of our day, the vestibule.
Life's theatre as yet is shut, and Death,
Strong Death, alone can heave the massy bar,
This gross impediment of clay remove,
And make us embryos of existence free.
From real life, but little more remote
Is he, not yet a candidate for light,
The future embryo, slumb'ring in his sire.
Embryos we must be till we burst the shell,
Yon ambient azure shell, and spring to life,
The life of Gods (O transport!) and of man.

THE BURIAL OF CELESTIAL HOPES.

Yet man, fool man, here buries all his thoughts;
Inters celestial hopes without one sight:
Pris'ner of earth, and pent beneath the moon,
Here pinions all his wishes, wing'd by Heav'n
To fly at infinite, and reach it there,
Where seraphs gather immortality,
On life's fair tree, fast by the throne of God.
What golden joys ambrosial clust'ring glow
In his full beam, and ripen for the just,
Where momentary ages are no more!
Where Time, and Pain, and Chance, and Death expire!
And is it in the flight of threescore years
To push eternity from human thought,
And smother souls immortal in the dust?
A soul immortal, spending all her fires,
Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness,
Thrown into tumult, raptured or alarm'd
At aught this scene can threaten or indulge,
Resembles ocean into tempest wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.
Where falls this censure? It o'erwhelms myself.
How was my heart incrusted by the world!
O how self-fetter'd was my grov'ling soul!
How, like a worm, was I wrapt round and round
In silken thought, which reptile Fancy spun,
Till darken'd reason lay quite clouded o'er
With soft conceit of endless comfort here,
Nor yet put forth her wings to reach the skies!

WAKING DREAMS FATAL.

Night visions may befriend (as sung above:)
Our waking dreams are fatal. How I dreamt
Of things impossible! (could sleep do more?)
Of joys perpetual in perpetual change!
Of stable pleasures on the tossing wave!
Eternal sunshine in the storms of life!
How richly were my noontide trances hung
With gorgeous tapestries of pictured joys!
Joy behind joy, in endless perspective!
Till at Death's toll, whose restless iron tongue
Calls daily for his millions at a meal,
Starting I woke, and found myself undone.
Where now my frenzy's pompous furniture?
The cobwebb'd cottage, with its ragged wall
Of mould'ring mud, is royalty to me!
The spider's most attenuated thread
Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie
On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze.

PERPETUITY ESSENTIAL TO BLISS.

O ye blest scenes of permanent delight!
Full above measure! lasting beyond bound!
A perpetuity of bliss is bliss.
Could you, so rich in rapture, fear an end,
That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy,
And quite unparadise the realms of light.
Safe are you lodged above these rolling spheres;
The baleful influence of whose giddy dance
Sheds sad vicissitude on all beneath.
Here teems with revolutions every hour,
And rarely for the better; or the best,
More mortal than the common births of Fate.
Each moment has its sickle, emulous
Of Time's enormous sithe, whose ample sweep
Strikes empires from the root: each moment plays
His little weapon in the narrower sphere
Of sweet domestic comfort and cuts down
The fairest bloom of sublunary bliss.
Bliss! sublunary bliss! -- proud words, and vain!
Implicit treason to divine decree!
A bold invasion of the rights of Heav'n!
I clasp'd the phantoms, and I found them air.
O had I weigh'd it ere my fond embrace!
What darts of agony had miss'd my heart!

DOMESTIC GRIEFS.

Death! great proprietor of all! 'tis thine
To tread out empire, and to quench the stars.
The sun himself by thy permission shines,
And, one day, thou shalt pluck him from his sphere.
Amidst such mighty plunder, why exhaust
Thy partial quiver on a mark so mean?
Why thy peculiar rancour wreak'd on me?
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain;
And thrice, ere thrice you moon had fill'd her horn.
O Cynthia! why so pale? dost thou lament
Thy wretched neighbour? grieve to see thy wheel
Of ceaseless change outwhirl'd in human life!
How wanes my borrow'd bliss! from Fortune's smile,
Precarious courtesy! not virtue's sure,
Self-given, solar ray of sound delight.

THE PAST CONTRASTED WITH THE PRESENT.

In ev'ry varied posture, place, and hour,
How widow'd ev'ry thought of ev'ry joy!
Thought, busy thought! too busy for my peace!
Through the dark postern of time long elapsed,
Led softly, by the stillness of the night,
Led, like a murderer, (and such it proves!)
Strays (wretched rover!) o'er the pleasing past:
In quest of wretchedness perversely strays,
And finds all desert now; and meets the ghosts
Of my departed joys, a num'rous train!
I rue the riches of my former fate;
Sweet Comfort's blasted clusters I lament;
I tremble at the blessings once so dear,
And ev'ry pleasure pains me to the heart.
Yet why complain? or why complain for one?
Hangs out the sun his lustre but for me,
The single man? are angels all beside?
I mourn for millions; 'tis the common lot:
In this shape or in that has Fate entail'd
The mother's throes on all of woman born,
Not more the children than sure heirs of pain.

EVILS THAT BESIEGE MANKIND.

War, Famine, Pest, Volcano, Storm, and Fire,
Intestine broils, Oppression, with her heart
Wrapt up in triple brass, besiege mankind.
God's image, disinherited of day,
Here, plunged in mines, forgets a sun was made;
There, beings, deathless as their haughty lord,
Are hammer'd to the galling oar for life;
And plough the winter's wave and reap despair.
Some for hard masters, broken under arms,
In battle lopp'd away with half their limbs,
Beg bitter bread through realms their valour saved,
If so the tyrant or his minion doom.
Want and incurable disease, (fell pair!)
On hopeless multitudes remorseless seize
At once, and make a refuge of the grave.
How groaning hospitals eject their dead!
What numbers groan for sad admission there!
What numbers, once in Fortune's lap high-fed,
Solicit the cold hand of charity!
To shock us more, solicit it in vain!
Ye silken sons of Pleasure! since in pains
You rue more modish visits, visit here,
And breathe from your debauch; give, and reduce
Surfeit's dominion o'er you. But so great
Your impudence, you blush at what is right.

DISEASE AND DEATH ARE UNDISCRIMINATING.

Happy! did sorrow seize on such alone:
Not prudence can defend, or virtue save;
Disease invades the chastest temperance,
And punishment the guiltless; and alarm,
Through thickest shades, pursues the fond of peace.
Man's caution often into danger turns,
And, his guard falling, crushes him to death.
Not happiness herself makes good her name;
Our very wishes give us not our wish.
How distant oft the thing we doat on most
From that for which we doat, felicity!
The smoothest course of Nature has its pains,
And truest friends. through error, wound our rest.
Without misfortune what calamities!
And what hostilities without a foe!
Nor are foes wanting to the best on earth.
But endless is the list of human ills,
And sighs might sooner fail than cause to sigh.

THE MAP OF EARTH, A TRUE MAP OF MAN.

A part how small of the terraqueous globe
Is tenanted by man! the rest a waste,
Rocks, deserts, frozen seas, and burning sands!
Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings, and death.
Such is earth's melancholy map! but far
More sad! this earth is a true map of man:
So bounded are its haughty lord's delights
To woe's wide empire, where deep troubles toss,
Loud sorrows howl, envenom'd passions bite,
Rav'nous calamities our vitals seize,
And threat'ning Fate wide opens to devour.

HUMAN HAPPINESS EVANESCENT.

What then am I, who sorrow for myself?
In age, in infancy, from others' aid
Is all our hope; to teach us to be kind --
That Nature's first, last lesson to mankind:
The selfish heart deserves the pain it feels:
More gen'rous sorrow, while it sinks, exalts;
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang.
Nor virtue more than prudence bids me give
Swoln thought a second channel; who divide,
They weaken, too, the torrent of their grief.
Take, then, O world! thy much indebted tear;
How sad a sight is human happiness
To those whose thought can pierce beyond an hour!
O thou! whate'er thou art, whose heart exults!
Would thou I should congratulate thy fate?
I know thou wouldst; thy pride demands it from me.
Let thy pride pardon what thy nature needs,
The salutary censure of a friend.
Thou happy wretch! by blindness thou art blest;
By dotage dandled to perpetual smiles.
Know, smiler! at thy peril art thou pleased;
Thy pleasure is the promise of thy pain.
Misfortune, like a creditor severe,
But rises in demand of her delay;
She makes a scourge of past prosperity,
To sting thee more, and double thy distress.

THE FAVOURS OF FORTUNE MAY JUSTLY CAUSE ALARM.

Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to thee:
Thy fond heart dances while the syren sings.
Dear is thy welfare; think me not unkind;
I would not damp, but to secure, thy joys.
Think not that fear is sacred to the storm,
Stand on thy guard against the smiles of Fate.
Is Heav'n tremendous in its frowns? most sure;
And in its favours formidable too:
Its favours here are trials, not rewards;
A call to duty, not discharge from care;
And should alarm us full as much as woes;
Awake us to their cause and consequence,
And make us tremble, weigh'd with our desert;
Awe Nature's tumult, and chastise her joys,
Lest, while we clasp, we kill them; nay, invert
To worse than simple misery their charms.
Revolted joys, like foes in civil war,
Like bosom friendships to resentment sour'd,
With rage envenom'd rise against our peace.
Beware what earth calls happiness; beware
All joys but joys that never can expire.
Who builds on less than an immortal base,
Fond as he seems, condemns his joys to death.

DEATH OF PHILANDER.

Mine died with thee, Philander! thy last sigh
Dissolved the charm; the disenchanted earth
Lost all her lustre. Where her glitt'ring towers?
Her golden mountains where? all darken'd down
To naked waste; a dreary vale of tears:
The great magician's dead! Thou poor pale piece
Of outcast earth, in darkness! what a change
From yesterday! Thy darling hope so near,
(Long labour'd prize!) O how ambition flush'd
Thy glowing cheek! ambition, truly great,
Of virtuous praise. Death's subtle seed within,
(Sly, treach'rous miner!) working in the dark,
Smiled at thy well-concerted scheme, and beckon'd
The worm to riot on that rose so red,
Unfaded ere it fell; one moment's prey!
Man's foresight is conditionally wise;
Lorenzo! wisdom into folly turns
Oft the first instant its idea fair
To labouring thought is born. How dim our eye!
The present moment terminates our sight;
Clouds, thick as those on dommsday, drown the next;
We penetrate, we prophesy in vain.
Time is dealt out by particles, and each,
Ere mingled with the streaming sands of life,
By Fate's inviolable oath is sworn
Deep silence, "Where eternity begins."

DANGER OF PROCRASTINATION.

By Nature's law, what may be, may be now;
There's no prerogative in human hours.
In human hearts what bolder thought can rise
Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn?
Where is to-morrow? In another world.
For numbers this is certain; the reverse
Is sure to none; and yet on this Perhaps,
This Peradventure, infamous for lies,
As on a rock of adamant we build
Our mountain-hopes, spin out eternal schemes,
As we the Fatal Sisters could outspin,
And, big with life's futurities, expire.
Not e'en Philander had bespoke his shroud,
Nor had he cause; a warning was denied:
How many fall as sudden, not as safe;
As sudden, though for years admonish'd home!
Of human ills the last extreme beware;
Beware, Lorenzo! a slow sudden death.
How dreadful that deliberate surprise!
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer:
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.

DELUSIVE PROMISES OF REFORMATION.

Of man's miraculous mistakes this bears
The palm, "That all men are about to live,"
For ever on the brink of being born.
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel, and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise;
At least their own; their future selves applauds:
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead!
Time lodged in their own hands is Folly's vails;
That lodged in Fate's, to wisdom they consign;
The thing they can't but purpose they postpone:
'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool;
And scarce in human wisdom to do more.
All promise is poor dilatory man,
And that through ev'ry stage; when young, indeed,
In full content we sometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves, and only wish,
As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
At thirty, man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.

ALL MEN ARE THOUGHT MORTAL BUT OURSELVES.

And why? because he thinks himself immortal.
All men think all men mortal but themselves:
Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate
Strikes thro' their wounded hearts the sudden dread;
But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,
Soon close; where passed the shaft no trace is found.
As from the wing no scar the sky retains,
The parted wave no furrow from the keel,
So dies in human hearts the thought of death.
E'en with the tender tear, which nature sheds
O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave.
Can I forget Philander? that were strange!
O my full heart! -- But should I give it vent,
The longest night, though longer far, would fail,
And the lark listen to my midnight song.

THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE POETS.

The sprightly lark's shrill matin wakes the morn;
Grief's sharpest thorn hard pressing on my breast,
I strive, with wakeful melody, to cheer
The sullen gloom, sweet Philomel! like thee,
And call the stars to listen; ev'ry star
Is deaf to mine, enamour'd of thy lay,
Yet be not vain; there are who thine excel,
And charm through distant ages. Wrapt in shade,
Pris'ner of darkness! to the silent hours
How often I repeat their rage divine,
To lull my griefs, and steal my heart from woe!
I roll their raptures, but not catch their fire.
Dark, though not blind, like thee, Maeonides!
Or, Milton, thee! ah, could I reach your strain!
Or his who made Maeonides our own.
Man, too, he sung; immortal man I sing.
Oft bursts my song beyond the bounds of life;
What now but immortality can please?
O had he press'd his theme, pursued the track
Which opens out of darkness into day!
O had he, mounted on his wing of fire,
Soar'd where I sink, and sung immortal man,
How had it blest mankind, and rescued me!





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