Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SOLOMON ON THE VANITY OF THE WORLD: BOOK 3. POWER, by MATTHEW PRIOR


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SOLOMON ON THE VANITY OF THE WORLD: BOOK 3. POWER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Come then, my soul, I call thee by that name
Last Line: And in my act may thy great will be done!
Subject(s): Adam & Eve; Bible; Death; Life; Mankind; Pain; Solomon (10th Century B.c.); Dead, The; Human Race; Suffering; Misery


THE ARGUMENT.

COME then, my soul, I call thee by that name,
Thou busy thing, from whence I know I am:
For, knowing what I am, I know thou art;
Since that must needs exist, which can impart.
But how cam'st thou to be, or whence thy spring,
For various of thee priests and poets sing.
Hear'st thou submissive; but a lowly birth,
Some separate particles of finer earth,
A plain effect which nature must beget,
As motion orders, and as atoms meet;
Companion of the body's good or ill,
From force of instinct more than choice of will;
Conscious of fear or valour, joy or pain,
As the wild courses of the blood ordain;
Who as degrees of heat and cold prevail,
In youth dost flourish, and with age shalt fail;
Till, mingled with thy partner's latest breath,
Thou flyst dissolved in air, and lost in death.
Or if thy great existence would aspire
To causes more sublime; of heavenly fire
Wert thou a spark struck off, a separate ray,
Ordained to mingle with terrestrial clay;
With it condemned for certain years to dwell,
To grieve its frailties, and its pains to feel;
To teach it good and ill, disgrace or fame,
Pale it with rage, or redden it with shame;
To guide its actions with informing care,
In peace to judge, to conquer in the war;
Render it agile, witty, valiant, sage,
As fits the various course of human age;
Till, as the earthly part decays and falls,
The captive breaks her prison's mouldering walls;
Hovers a while upon the sad remains,
Which now the pile, or sepulchre contains;
And thence with liberty unbounded flies,
Impatient to regain her native skies.
Whate'er thou art, where'er ordained to go
(Points which we rather may dispute than know),
Come on, thou little inmate of this breast,
Which for thy sake from passions I divest;
For these, thou sayst, raise all the stormy strife,
Which hinder thy repose, and trouble life.
Be the fair level of thy actions laid,
As temperance wills, and prudence may persuade;
Be thy affections undisturbed and clear,
Guided to what may great or good appear;
And try if life be worth the liver's care.
Amassed in man, there justly is beheld
What through the whole creation has excelled;
The life and growth of plants, of beasts the sense,
The angel's forecast and intelligence;
Say from these glorious seeds what harvest flows,
Recount our blessings, and compare our woes.
In its true light let clearest reason see
The man dragged out to act, and forced to be;
Helpless and naked on a woman's knees
To be exposed or reared as she may please;
Feel her neglect, and pine from her disease.
His tender eye by too direct a ray
Wounded, and flying from unpractised day,
His heart assaulted by invading air,
And beating fervent to the vital war;
To his young sense how various forms appear,
That strike his wonder, and excite his fear.
By his distortions he reveals his pains;
He by his tears, and by his sighs complains;
Till time and use assist the infant wretch,
By broken words, and rudiments of speech,
His wants in plainer characters to show,
And paint more perfect figures of his woe;
Condemned to sacrifice his childish years
To babbling ignorance, and to empty fears;
To pass the riper period of his age,
Acting his part upon a crowded stage;
To lasting toils exposed, and endless cares,
To open dangers, and to secret snares;
To malice which the vengeful foe intends,
And the more dangerous love of seeming friends.
His deeds examined by the people's will,
Prone to forget the good, and blame the ill;
Or sadly censured in their cursed debate,
Who, in the scorner's, or the judge's seat
Dare to condemn the virtue which they hate.
Or would he rather leave this frantic scene,
And trees and beasts prefer to courts and men;
In the remotest wood and lonely grot
Certain to meet that worst of evils, thought;
Different ideas to his memory brought;
Some intricate, as are the pathless woods,
Impetuous some, as the descending floods;
With anxious doubts, with raging passions torn,
No sweet companion near, with whom to mourn;
He hears the echoing rock return his sighs,
And from himself the frighted hermit flies.
Thus, through what path soe'er of life we rove,
Rage companies our hate, and grief our love;
Vexed with the present moment's heavy gloom,
Why seek we brightness from the years to come!
Disturbed and broken like a sick man's sleep,
Our troubled thoughts to distant prospects leap;
Desirous still what flies us to o'ertake,
For hope is but the dream of those that wake.
But, looking back, we see the dreadful train
Of woes anew, which were we to sustain,
We should refuse to tread the path again.
Still adding grief, still counting from the first,
Judging the latest evils still the worst;
And, sadly finding each progressive hour
Heighten their number, and augment their power.
Till, by one countless sum of woes oppressed,
Hoary with cares, and ignorant of rest,
We find the vital springs relaxed and worn:
Compelled our common impotence to mourn,
Thus, through the round of age, to childhood we return;
Reflecting find, that naked from the womb
We yesterday came forth; that in the tomb
Naked again we must to-morrow lie,
Born to lament, to labour, and to die.
Pass we the ills, which each man feels or dreads,
The weight or fallen, or hanging o'er our heads;
The bear, the lion, terrors of the plain,
The sheepfold scattered, and the shepherd slain;
The frequent errors of the pathless wood,
The giddy precipice, and dangerous flood;
The noisome pestilence, that in open war
Terrible, marches through the midday air,
And scatters death; the arrow that by night
Cuts the dank mist, and fatal wings its flight;
The billowing snow, and violence of the shower,
That from the hills disperse their dreadful store;
And o'er the vales collected ruin pour;
The worm that gnaws the ripening fruit, sad guest,
Canker or locust hurtful to infest
The blade; while husks elude the tiller's care,
And eminence of want distinguishes the years.
Pass we the slow disease, and subtle pain,
Which our weak frame is destined to sustain;
The cruel stone, with congregated war
Tearing his bloody way; the cold catarrh,
With frequent impulse, and continued strife,
Weakening the wasted seats of irksome life;
The gout's fierce rack, the burning fever's rage,
The sad experience of decay; and age,
Herself the sorest ill; while death, and ease,
Oft and in vain invoked, or to appease,
Or end the grief, with hasty wings recede
From the vexed patient, and the sickly bed.
Nought shall it profit, that the charming fair,
Angelic, softest work of Heaven, draws near
To the cold shaking paralytic hand,
Senseless of beauty's touch, or love's command,
Nor longer apt, or able to fulfil
The dictates of its feeble master's will.
Nought shall the psaltry, and the harp avail,
The pleasing song, or well repeated tale;
When the quick spirits their warm march forbear;
And numbing coldness has unbraced the ear.
The verdant rising of the flowery hill,
The vale enamelled, and the crystal rill,
The ocean rolling, and the shelly shore,
Beautiful objects, shall delight no more;
When the laxed sinews of the weakened eye
In watery damps, or dim suffusion lie.
Day follows night, the clouds return again
After the falling of the latter rain;
But to the aged blind shall ne'er return
Grateful vicissitude; he still must mourn
The sun, and moon, and every starry light
Eclipsed to him, and lost in everlasting night.
Behold where age's wretched victim lies;
See his head trembling, and his half-closed eyes:
Frequent for breath his panting bosom heaves;
to broken sleep his remnant sense he gives,
And only by his pains, awaking, finds he lives.
Loosed by devouring time the silver cord
Dissevered lies; unhonoured from the board
The crystal urn, when broken, is thrown by,
And apter utensils their place supply.
These things and thou must share one equal lot:
Die, and be lost, corrupt, and be forgot;
While still another, and another race
Shall now supply, and now give up the place;
From earth all came, to earth must all return,
Frail as the cord, and brittle as the urn.
But be the terror of these ills suppressed:
And view we man with health and vigour blessed,
Home he returns with the declining sun,
His destined task of labour hardly done;
Goes forth again with the ascending ray,
Again his travel for his bread to pay,
And find the ill sufficient to the day.
Haply at night he does with horror shun
A widowed daughter, or a dying son;
His neighbour's offspring he to-morrow sees,
And doubly feels his want in their increase;
The next day, and the next he must attend
His foe triumphant, or his buried friend.
In every act and turn of life he feels
Public calamities, or household ills;
The due reward to just desert refused,
The trust betrayed, the nuptial bed abused:
The judge corrupt, the long depending cause,
And doubtful issue of misconstrued laws,
The crafty turns of a dishonest state,
And violent will of the wrong-doing great;
The venomed tongue injurious to his fame,
Which nor can wisdom shun, nor fair advice reclaim.
Esteem we these, my friends, event and chance,
Produced as atoms form their fluttering dance;
Or higher yet their essence may we draw
From destined order, and eternal law!
Again, my muse, the cruel doubt repeat;
Spring they, I say, from accident or fate;
Yet such, we find they are, as can control
The servile actions of our wavering soul;
Can fright, can alter, or can chain the will;
Their ills all built on life, that fundamental ill.
O fatal search! in which the labouring mind,
Still pressed with weight of woe, still hopes to find
A shadow of delight, a dream of peace,
From years of pain, one moment of release;
Hoping at least she may herself deceive,
Against experience willing to believe,
Desirous to rejoice, condemned to grieve.
Happy the mortal man, who now at last
Has through this doleful vale of misery passed;
Who to his destined stage has carried on
The tedious load, and laid his burden down;
Whom the cut brass, or wounded marble shows
Victor o'er life, and all her train of woes.
He happier yet, who, privileged by fate
To shorter labour, and a lighter weight,
Received but yesterday the gift of breath,
Ordered to-morrow to return to death.
But O! beyond description happiest he,
Who ne'er must roll on life's tumultuous sea;
Who with blessed freedom from the general doom
Exempt, must never force the teeming womb,
Nor see the sun, nor sink into the tomb.
Who breathes, must suffer, and who thinks, must mourn;
And he alone is blessed, who ne'er was born.
'Yet in thy turn, thou frowning preacher, hear:
Are not these general maxims too severe.
Say, cannot power secure its owner's bliss,
And is not wealth the potent sire of peace!
Are victors blessed with fame, or kings with ease?'
I tell thee, life is but one common care;
And man was born to suffer, and to fear.
'But is no rank, no station, no degree
From this contagious taint of sorrow free?'
None, mortal, none; yet in a bolder strain
Let me this melancholy truth maintain;
But hence, ye worldly, and profane, retire:
For I adapt my voice, and raise my lyre
To notions not by vulgar ear received:
Ye still must covet life, and be deceived:
Your very fear of death shall make ye try
To catch the shade of immortality;
Wishing on earth to linger, and to save
Part of its prey from the devouring grave;
To those who may survive ye, to bequeath
Something entire, in spite of time and death;
A fancied kind of being to retrieve,
And in a book, or from a building live.
False hope, vain labour, let some ages fly;
The dome shall moulder and the volume die.
Wretches, still taught, still will ye think it strange,
That all the parts of this great fabric change,
Quit their old station, and primeval frame,
And lose their shape, their essence, and their name!
Reduce the song: our hopes, our joys are vain:
Our lot is sorrow, and our portion pain.
What pause from woe, what hopes of comfort bring
The name of wise or great, of judge or king.
What is a king? A man condemned to bear
The public burden of the nation's care;
Now crowned some angry faction to appease;
Now falls a victim to the people's ease;
From the first blooming of his ill-taught youth,
Nourished in flattery, and estranged from truth:
At home surrounded by a servile crowd,
Prompt to abuse, and in detraction loud.
Abroad begirt with men, and swords, and spears;
His very state acknowledging his fears;
Marching amidst a thousand guards, he shows
His secret terror of a thousand foes;
In war, however prudent, great, or brave,
To blind events, and fickle chance a slave;
Seeking to settle what for ever flies,
Sure of the toil, uncertain of the prize.
But he returns with conquest on his brow,
Brings up the triumph, and absolves the vow;
The captive generals to his car are tied;
The joyful citizens' tumultuous tide
Echoing his glory, gratify his pride.
What is this triumph? Madness, shouts, and noise,
One great collection of the people's voice.
The wretches he brings back in chains, relate
What may to-morrow be the victor's fate.
The spoils and trophies borne before him, show
National loss, and epidemic woe,
Various distress, which he and his may know.
Does he not mourn the valiant thousands slain,
The heroes, once the glory of the plain,
Left in the conflict of the fatal day,
Or the wolf's portion, or the vulture's prey.
Does he not weep the laurel, which he wears,
Wet with the soldier's blood, and widow's tears!
See, where he comes, the darling of the war;
See millions crowding round the gilded car!
In the vast joys of this ecstatic hour,
And full fruition of successful power,
One moment and one thought might let him scan
The various turns of life, and fickle state of man.
Are the dire images of sad distrust,
And popular change obscured amid the dust,
That rises from the victor's rapid wheel;
Can the loud clarion, or shrill fife repel
The inward cries of care! Can Nature's voice
Plaintive be drowned, or lessened in the noise;
Though shouts as thunder loud afflict the air,
Stun the birds now released, and shake the ivory chair!
Yon crowd (he might reflect), you joyful crowd,
Pleased with my honours, in my praises loud,
(Should fleeting victory to the vanquished go;
Should she depress my arms, and raise the foe)
Would for that foe with equal ardour wait
At the high palace, or the crowded gate;
With restless rage would pull my statues down,
And cast the brass anew to his renown.
O impotent desire of worldly sway!
That I, who make the triumph of to-day,
May of to-morrow's pomp one part appear
Ghastly with wounds, and lifeless on the bier!
Then, vileness of mankind, then of all these,
Whom my dilated eye with labour sees,
Would one, alas, repeat me good, or great,
Wash my pale body, or bewail my fate!
Or, marched I chained behind the hostile car,
The victor's pastime, and the sport of war,
Would one, would one his pitying sorrow lend,
Or be so poor, to own he was my friend?
Avails it then, O reason, to be wise,
To see this cruel scene with quicker eyes;
To know with more distinction to complain,
And have superior sense in feeling pain!
Let us revolve that roll with strictest eye,
Where safe from time distinguished actions lie;
And judge if greatness be exempt from pain,
Or pleasure ever may with power remain.
Adam, great type, for whom the world was made,
The fairest blessing to his arms conveyed,
A charming wife, and air, and sea, and land,
And all that move therein to his command
Rendered obedient, say, my pensive muse,
What did these golden promises produce!
Scarce tasting life, he was of joy bereaved:
One day, I think, in Paradise he lived;
Destined the next his journey to pursue,
Where wounding thorns, and cursed thistles grew.
Ere yet he earns his bread, adown his brow,
Inclined to earth, his labouring sweat must flow;
His limbs must ache, with daily toils oppressed
Ere long-wished night brings necessary rest.
Still viewing with regret his darling Eve,
He for her follies, and his own must grieve.
Bewailing still afresh their hapless choice,
His ear oft frighted with the imaged voice
Of Heaven, when first it thundered; oft his view
Aghast, as when the infant lightning flew;
And the stern cherub stopped the fatal road,
Armed with the flames of an avenging God.
His younger son on the polluted ground,
First fruit of death, lies plaintive of a wound
Given by a brother's hand; his eldest birth
Flies, marked by Heaven, a fugitive o'er earth.
Yet why these sorrows heaped upon the sire,
Becomes not man nor angel to inquire.
Each age sinned on; and guilt advanced with time:
The son still added to the father's crime;
Till God arose, and great in anger said,
Lo! it repenteth me that man was made,
Withdraw thy light, thou sun, be dark, ye skies,
And from your deep abyss, ye waters, rise!
The frighted angels heard the Almighty Lord;
And o'er the earth from wrathful vials poured
Tempests and storms, obedient to his word.
Meantime, his Providence to Noah gave
The guard of all, that he designed to save.
Exempt from general doom the patriarch stood,
Contemned the waves, and triumphed o'er the flood.
The winds fall silent, and the waves decrease;
The dove brings quiet, and the olive peace;
Yet still his heart does inward sorrow feel,
Which faith alone forbids him to reveal.
If on the backward world his views are cast:
'Tis death diffused and universal waste.
Present, sad prospect, can he ought descry,
But (what affects his melancholy eye)
The beauties of the ancient fabric lost,
In chains of craggy hill, or lengths of dreary coast;
While to high Heaven his pious breathings turned,
Weeping he hoped, and sacrificing mourned;
When of God's image only eight he found
Snatched from the watery grave, and saved from nations drowned;
And of three sons, the future hopes of earth,
The seed, whence empires must receive their birth,
One he foresees excluded heavenly grace,
And marked with curses, fatal to his race.
Abraham, potent prince, the friend of God,
Of human ills must bear the destined load;
By blood and battles must his power maintain,
And slay the monarchs, ere he rules the plain;
Must deal just portions of a servile life
To a proud handmaid, and a peevish wife;
Must with the mother leave the weeping son,
In want to wander, and in wilds to groan;
Must take his other child, his age's hope,
To trembling Moriam's melancholy top,
Ordered to drench his knife in filial blood;
Destroy his heir, or disobey his God.
Moses beheld that God; but how beheld?
The Deity in radiant beams concealed,
And clouded in a deep abyss of light;
While present, too severe for human sight,
Nor staying longer than one swift-winged night.
The following days, and months, and years decreed
To fierce encounter, and to toilsome deed.
His youth with want and hardships must engage;
Plots and rebellions must disturb his age.
Some Corah still arose, some rebel slave,
Prompter to sink the state, than he to save;
And Israel did his rage so far provoke,
That what the Godhead wrote, the prophet broke.
His voice scarce heard, his dictates scarce believed,
In camps, in arms, in pilgrimage, he lived;
And died obedient to severest law,
Forbid to tread the promised land he saw.
My father's life was one long line of care,
A scene of danger, and a state of war.
Alarmed, exposed, his childhood must engage
The bear's rough gripe, and foaming lion's rage.
By various turns his threatened youth must fear
Goliah's lifted sword, and Saul's emitted spear.
Forlorn he must, and persecuted fly,
Climb the steep mountain, in the cavern lie,
And often ask, and be refused, to die.
For ever, from his manly toils, are known
The weight of power, and anguish of a crown.
What tongue can speak the restless monarch's woes,
What God and Nathan were declared his foes?
When every object his offence reviled,
The husband murdered, and the wife defiled,
The parent's sins impressed upon the dying child?
What heart can think the grief which he sustained;
When the king's crime brought vengeance on the land;
And the inexorable prophet's voice
Gave famine, plague, or war, and bid him fix his choice?
He died; and oh! may no reflection shed
Its poisonous venom on the royal dead;
Yet the unwilling truth must be expressed;
Which long has laboured in this pensive breast;
Dying he added to my weight of care,
He made me to his crimes undoubted heir;
Left his unfinished murder to his son,
And Joab's blood entailed on Judah's crown.
Young as I was, I hasted to fulfil
The cruel dictates of my parent's will.
Of his fair deeds a distant view I took,
But turned the tube upon his faults to look;
Forgot his youth, spent in his country's cause,
His care of right, his reverence to the laws;
But could with joy his years of folly trace,
Broken and old in Bathsheba's embrace;
Could follow him where'er he strayed from good,
And cite his sad example; whilst I trod
Paths open to deceit, and tracked with blood.
Soon docile to the secret acts of ill,
With smiles I could betray, with temper kill;
Soon in a brother could a rival view;
Watch all his acts, and all his ways pursue.
In vain for life he to the altar fled;
Ambition and revenge have certain speed.
Even there, my soul, even there he should have fell;
But that my interest did my rage conceal.
Doubling my crime, I promise, and deceive;
Purpose to slay, whilst swearing to forgive.
Treaties, persuasions, sighs, and tears are vain;
With a mean lie cursed vengeance I sustain;
Join fraud to force, and policy to power;
Till of the destined fugitive secure,
In solemn state to parricide I rise;
And, as God lives, this day my brother dies.
Be witness to my tears, celestial Muse,
In vain I would forget, in vain excuse
Fraternal blood by my direction spilt;
In vain on Joab's head transfer the guilt;
The deed was acted by the subject's hand;
The sword was pointed by the king's command;
Mine was the murder, it was mine alone;
Years of contrition must the crime atone:
Nor can my guilty soul expect relief,
But from a long sincerity of grief!
With an imperfect hand, and trembling heart,
Her love of truth superior to her art,
Already the reflecting muse has traced
The mournful figures of my actions passed.
The pensive goddess has already taught,
How vain is hope, and how vexatious thought;
From growing childhood to declining age,
How tedious every step, how gloomy every stage.
This course of vanity almost complete,
Tired in the field of life, I hope retreat
In the still shades of death; for dread and pain,
And griefs will find their shafts elanced in vain,
And their points broke, retorted from the head,
Safe in the grave, and free among the dead.
Yet tell me, frighted reason, what is death;
Blood only stopped, and interrupted breath;
The utmost limit of a narrow span,
And end of motion which with life began,
As smoke that rises from the kindling fires
Is seen this moment, and the next expires;
As empty clouds by rising winds are tossed,
Their fleeting forms scarce sooner found than lost;
So vanishes our state, so pass our days;
So life but opens now, and now decays;
The cradle and the tomb, alas! so nigh,
To live is scarce distinguished from to die.
Cure of the miser's wish, and coward's fear,
Death only shows us, what we knew was near.
With courage therefore view th' appointed hour;
Dread not death's anger, but expect his power;
Nor nature's law with fruitless sorrow mourn,
But die, O mortal man, for thou wast born!
Cautious through doubt; by want of courage, wise,
To such advice the reasoner still replies.
Yet measuring all the long continued space,
Every successive day's repeated race,
Since time first started from his pristine goal,
Till he had reached that hour wherein my soul
Joined to my body swelled the womb; I was,
At least I think so, nothing; must I pass
Again to nothing, when this vital breath
Ceasing, consigns me o'er, to rest, and death;
Must the whole man, amazing thought, return
To the cold marble, or contracted urn;
And never shall those particles agree,
That were in life this individual he;
But severed, must they join the general mass
Through other forms, and shapes ordained to pass;
Nor thought nor image kept of what he was!
Does the great word that gave him sense, ordain,
That life shall never wake that sense again;
And will no power his sinking spirits save
From the dark caves of death and chambers of the grave!
Each evening I behold the setting sun
With downward speed into the ocean run;
Yet the same light, pass but some fleeting hours,
Exerts his vigour, and renews his powers;
Starts the bright race again, his constant flame
Rises and sets, returning still the same.
I mark the various fury of the winds;
These neither seasons guide, nor order binds;
They now dilate, and now contract their force,
Various their speed, but endless is their course.
From his first fountain and beginning ouze,
Down to the sea each brook and torrent flows;
Though sundry drops or leave, or swell the stream,
The whole still runs, with equal pace, the same.
Still other waves supply the rising urns,
And the eternal flood no want of water mourns.
Why then must man obey the sad decree,
Which subjects neither sun, nor wind, nor sea?
A flower, that does with opening morn arise,
And flourishing the day, at evening dies;
A winged eastern blast, just skimming o'er
The ocean's brow, and sinking on the shore;
A fire, whose flames through crackling stubble fly;
A meteor shooting from the summer sky;
A bowl adown the bending mountain rolled;
A bubble breaking, and a fable told;
A noontide shadow, and a midnight dream;
Are emblems, which with semblance apt proclaim
Our earthly course; but, O my soul! so fast
Must life run off, and death for ever last!
This dark opinion, sure, is too confined;
Else whence this hope, and terror of the mind;
Does something still, and somewhere yet remain,
Reward or punishment, delight or pain;
Say: shall our relics second birth receive;
Sleep we to wake, and only die to live!
When the sad wife has closed her husband's eyes,
And pierced the echoing vault with doleful cries;
Lies the pale corpse not yet entirely dead,
The spirit only from the body fled,
The grosser part of heart and motion void,
To be by fire, or worm, or time destroyed;
The soul, immortal substance, to remain,
Conscious of joy, and capable of pain!
And if her acts have been directed well,
While with her friendly clay she deigned to dwell;
Shall she with safety reach her pristine seat,
Find her rest endless, and her bliss complete;
And while the buried man we idly mourn,
Do angels joy to see his better half return?
But if she has deformed this earthly life
With murderous rapine, and seditious strife,
Amazed, repulsed, and by those angels driven
From the ethereal seat, and blissful Heaven,
In everlasting darkness must she lie,
Still more unhappy, that she cannot die!
Amid two seas on one small point of land
Wearied, uncertain, and amazed we stand;
On either side our thoughts incessant turn,
Forward we dread; and looking back we mourn.
Losing the present in this dubious haste,
And lost ourselves betwixt the future and the past.
These cruel doubts contending in my breast,
My reason staggering, and my hopes oppressed,
Once more I said: once more I will inquire,
What is this little, agile, pervious fire,
This fluttering motion, which we call the mind;
How does she act, and where is she confined!
Have we the power to guide her, as we please;
Whence then those evils, that obstruct our ease!
We happiness pursue, we fly from pain,
Yet the pursuit, and yet the flight is vain;
And, while poor nature labours to be blessed,
By day with pleasure, and by night with rest;
Some stronger power eludes our sickly will;
Dashes our rising hope with certain ill;
And makes us with reflective trouble see,
That all is destined, which we fancy free.
That power superior then, which rules our mind,
Is his decree by human prayer inclined?
Will he for sacrifice our sorrows ease,
And can our tears reverse his firm decrees!
Then let religion aid, where reason fails;
Throw loads of incense in, to turn the scales;
And let the silent sanctuary show,
What from the babbling schools we may not know,
How man may shun, or bear his destined part of woe.
What shall amend, or what absolve our fate?
Anxious we hover in a mediate state,
Betwixt infinity and nothing; bounds,
Or boundless terms, whose doubtful sense confounds.
Unequal thought, whilst all we apprehend,
Is, that our hopes must rise, our sorrows end;
As our Creator deigns to be our friend.
I said; -- and instant bade the priests prepare
The ritual sacrifice, and solemn prayer.
Select from vulgar herds, with garlands gay,
A hundred bulls ascend the sacred way.
The artful youth proceed to form the choir,
They breathe the flute, or strike the vocal wire.
The maids in comely order next advance,
They beat the timbrel, and instruct the dance.
Follows the chosen tribe from Levi sprung,
Chanting by just return the holy song.
Along the choir in solemn state they passed,
The anxious king came last.
The sacred hymn performed, my promised vow
I paid; and bowing at the altar low,
Father of Heaven! I said, and judge of earth!
Whose word called out this universe to birth;
By whose kind power and influencing care
The various creatures move, and live, and are;
But, ceasing once that care, withdrawn that power,
They move, alas, and live, and are no more:
Omniscient Master, omnipresent King,
To thee, to thee, my last distress I bring.
Thou, that canst still the raging of the seas,
Chain up the winds, and bid the tempests cease;
Redeem my shipwrecked soul from raging gusts
Of cruel passion, and deceitful lusts;
From storms of rage, and dangerous rocks of pride,
Let thy strong hand this little vessel guide
(It was thy hand that made it) through the tide
Impetuous of this life; let thy command
Direct my course, and bring me safe to land.
If, while this wearied flesh draws fleeting breath,
Not satisfied with life, afraid of death,
It haply be thy will, that I should know
Glimpse of delight, or pause from anxious woe;
From now, from instant now, great Sire! dispel
The clouds that press my soul; from now reveal
A gracious beam of light; from now inspire
My tongue to sing, my hand to touch the lyre;
My opened thought to joyous prospects raise;
And, for thy mercy, let me sing thy praise.
Or, if thy will ordains, I still shall wait
Some new hereafter, and a future state;
Permit me strength, my weight of woe to bear,
And raise my mind superior to my care.
Let me, howe'er unable to explain
The secret labyrinths of thy ways to man,
With humble zeal confess thy awful power;
Still weeping hope, and wondering still adore.
So in my conquest be thy might declared:
And, for thy justice, be thy name revered.
My prayer scarce ended, a stupendous gloom
Darkens the air, loud thunder shakes the dome;
To the beginning miracle succeed
An awful silence, and religious dread.
Sudden breaks forth a more than common day:
The sacred wood, which on the altar lay,
Untouched, unlighted, glows.
Ambrosial odour, such as never flows
From Arab's gum, or the Sabaean rose,
Does round the air revolving scents diffuse;
The holy ground is wet with heavenly dews;
Celestial music (such Jessides' lyre,
Such Miriam's timbrel would in vain require)
Strikes to my thought through my admiring ear,
With ecstasy too fine, and pleasure hard to bear:
And lo! what sees my ravished eye; what feels
My wondering soul; an opening cloud reveals
A heavenly form embodied, and arrayed
With robes of light. I heard: the angel said,
Cease, man of woman born, to hope relief,
From daily trouble, and continued grief.
Thy hope of joy deliver to the wind;
Suppress thy passions, and prepare thy mind.
Free and familiar with misfortune grow,
Be used to sorrow, and inured to woe.
By weakening toil, and hoary age o'ercome,
See thy decrease, and hasten to thy tomb.
Leave to thy children tumult, strife, and war,
Portions of toil, and legacies of care.
Send the successive ills through ages down;
And let each weeping father tell his son,
That, deeper struck, and more distinctly grieved,
He must augment the sorrows he received.
The child to whose success thy hope is bound,
Ere thou art scarce interred, or he is crowned;
To lust of arbitrary sway inclined
(That cursed poison to the prince's mind!)
Shall from thy dictate, and his duty rove,
And lose his great defence, his people's love.
Ill counselled, vanquished, fugitive, disgraced,
Shall mourn the fame of Jacob's strength effaced.
Shall sigh the king diminished, and the crown
With lessened rays descending to his son;
Shall see the wreaths, his grandsire knew to reap
By active toil and military sweat,
Pining incline their sickly leaves, and shed
Their falling honours from his giddy head.
By arms, or prayer unable to assuage
Domestic horror, and intestine rage,
Shall from the victor and the vanquished fear,
From Israel's arrow, and from Judah's spear;
Shall cast his wearied limbs on Jordan's flood,
By brother's arms disturbed, and stained with kindred blood.
Hence labouring years shall weep their destined race,
Charged with ill omens, sullied with disgrace.
Time, by necessity compelled, shall go
Through scenes of war, and epochas of woe.
The empire lessened in a parted stream,
Shall lose its course-------
Indulge thy tears; the heathen shall blaspheme;
Judah shall fall, oppressed by grief and shame;
And men shall from her ruins know her fame.
New Egypts yet, and second bonds remain,
A harsher Pharaoh, and a heavier chain.
Again, obedient to a dire command,
Thy captive sons shall leave the promised land.
Their name more low, their servitude more vile,
Shall on Euphrates' bank renew the grief of Nile.
These pointed spires that would the ambient sky,
Inglorious change, shall in destruction lie
Low, levelled with the dust; their heights unknown,
Or measured by their ruin. Yonder throne
For lasting glory built, designed the seat
Of kings for ever blessed, for ever great,
Removed by the invader's barbarous hand,
Shall grace his triumph in a foreign land.
The tyrant shall demand yon sacred load
Of gold and vessels set apart to God.
Then by vile hands to common use debased,
Shall send them flowing round his drunken feast,
With sacrilegious taunt, and impious jest.
Twice fourteen ages shall their way complete:
Empires by various turns shall rise and set;
While thy abandoned tribes shall only know
A different master, and a change of woe;
With downcast eyelids, and with looks aghast,
Shall dread the future, or bewail the past.
Afflicted Israel shall sit weeping down,
Fast by the streams, where Babel's waters run;
Their harps upon the neighbouring willows hung,
Nor joyous hymn encouraging their tongue,
Nor cheerful dance their feet; with toil oppressed,
Their wearied limbs aspiring but to rest.
In the reflective stream the sighing bride,
Viewing her charms impaired, abashed shall hide
Her pensive head; and in her languid face
The bridegroom shall foresee his sickly race;
While ponderous fetters vex their close embrace.
With irksome anguish then your priests shall mourn
Their long neglected feasts' despaired return.
And sad oblivion of their solemn days;
Thenceforth their voices they shall only raise,
Louder to weep. By day your frighted seers
Shall call for fountains to express their tears;
And wish their eyes were floods. By night from dreams
Of opening gulfs, black storms, and raging flames,
Starting amazed, shall to the people show
Emblems of heavenly wrath, and mystic types of woe.
The captives, as their tyrant shall require,
That they should breathe the song, and touch the lyre,
Shall say: can Jacob's servile race rejoice,
Untuned the music, and disused the voice?
What can we play (they shall discourse), how sing
In foreign lands, and to a barbarous king!
We and our fathers from our childhood bred
To watch the cruel victor's eye, to dread
The arbitrary lash, to bend, to grieve
(Out cast of mortal race), can we conceive
Image of aught delightful, soft or gay?
Alas! when we have toiled the longsome day;
The fullest bliss our hearts aspire to know,
Is but some interval from active woe;
In broken rest, and startling sleep to mourn,
Till morn, the tyrant, and the scourge, return.
Bred up in grief, can pleasure be our theme;
Our endless anguish does not nature claim;
Reason and sorrow are to us the same!
Alas! with wild amazement we require,
If idle folly was not pleasure's sire;
Madness, we fancy, gave an ill-timed birth
To grinning laughter, and to frantic mirth.
This is the series of perpetual woe,
Which thou, alas! and thine are born to know.
Illustrious wretch! repine not, nor reply:
View not, what Heaven ordains, with reason's eye;
Too bright the object is: the distance is too high.
The man who would resolve the work of fate,
May limit number, and make crooked straight;
Stop thy inquiry then, and curb thy sense;
Nor let dust argue with Omnipotence.
'Tis God who must dispose, and man sustain,
Born to endure, forbidden to complain.
Thy sum of life must his decrees fulfil;
What derogates from his command, is ill;
And that alone is good, which centres in his will.
Yet that thy labouring senses may not droop,
Lost to delight, and destitute of hope:
Remark what I, God's messenger, aver
From him, who neither can deceive, nor err.
The land at length redeemed, shall cease to mourn;
Shall from her sad captivity return.
Sion shall raise her long dejected head;
And in her courts the law again be read.
Again the glorious temple shall arise,
And with new lustre pierce the neighbouring skies.
The promised seat of empire shall again
Cover the mountain, and command the plain;
And from thy race distinguished, One shall spring,
Greater in act than victor, more than king
In dignity and power, sent down from Heaven,
To succour earth. To Him, to Him, 'tis given,
Passion, and care, and anguish to destroy.
Through Him soft peace, and plenitude of joy
Perpetual o'er the world redeemed shall flow,
No more may man enquire, nor angel know!
Now, Solomon, remembering who thou art,
Act through thy remnant life the decent part.
Go forth; be strong; with patience, and with care
Perform, and suffer; to thyself severe,
Gracious to others, thy desires suppressed,
Diffused thy virtues, first of men, be best!
Thy sum of duty let two words contain;
(O may they graven in thy heart remain!)
Be humble, and be just. The angel said: --
With upward speed his agile wings he spread;
Whilst on the holy ground I prostrate lay,
By various doubts impelled, or to obey,
Or to object; at length (my mournful look
Heavenward erect) determined, thus I spoke:
Supreme, all wise, eternal Potentate!
Sole author, sole disposer of our fate!
Enthroned in light, and immortality!
Whom no man fully sees, and none can see!
Original of beings, power divine!
Since that I live, and that I think, is thine;
Benign Creator, let thy plastic hand
Dispose its own effect! Let thy command
Restore, great Father, thy instructed son;
And in my act may thy great will be done!





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