Nor will the raging fever's fire abate,
With golden canopies and beds of state:
But the poor patient will as foon be found
On the hard mattress, or the mother ground.
Then fince our bodies are not eas'd the more
By birth, or power, or fortune's wealthy ftore,
"Tis plain, these useless toys of every kind
As little can relieve the labouring mind:
Unless we could suppose the dreadful fight
Of marshal'd legions moving to the fight,
Could, with their found and terrible array,
Expel our fears, and drive the thoughts of
death away.
But, fince the fuppofition vain appears,
Since clinging cares, and trains of inbred fears,
Are not with founds to be affrighted thence,
But in the midst of pomp purfue the prince,
Not aw'd by arms, but in the presence bold,
Without respect to purple, or to gold;
Why should not we these pageantries despise;
Whofe worth but in our want of reafon lies?
For life is all in wandring errors led;
And just as children are furpris'd with dread,
And tremble in the dark, fo riper years
E'en in broad day-light are poffefs'd with
And fhake at fhadows fanciful and vain,
As those which in the breasts of children reign.
These bugbears of the mind, this inward hell, No rays of outward funfhine can difpel;
But nature and right reafon must display
Their beams abroad, and bring the darkfome foul to-day.
If fouls can die, as well as bodies can?
For, as before our birth we felt no pain,
When Punic arms infested land and main,
When heaven and earth were in confufion hurl'd,
For the debated empire of the world,
Which aw'd with dreadful expectation lay,
Sure to be flaves, uncertain who should sway:
So, when our mortal flame fhall be disjoin'd,
The lifeless lump uncoupled from the mind, 10
From sense of grief and pain we shall be free;
We shall not feel, because we shall not be.
Though earth in feas, and feas in heaven were
loft,
We should not move, we only fhould be toft.
Nay, e'en fuppofe when we have fuffer'd fate, 15
The foul could feel in her divided state,
What's that to us? for we are only we
While fouls and bodies in one frame agree. Nay, though our atoms fhould revolve by chance,
And matter leap into the former dance ;
Though time our life and motion could restore,
And make our bodies what they were before,
What gain to us would all this bustle bring?
The new-made man would be another thing.
When once an interrupting paufe is made,
That individual being is decay'd.
We, who are dead and gone, fhall bear no part
In all the pleasures, nor shall feel the smart,
Which to that other mortal fhall accrue,
Whom of our matter time fhall mould anew.
For backward if you look on that long space
Of ages paft, and view the changing face
Of matter, toft and variously combin'd
In fundry fhapes, 'tis eafy for the mind
From thence to infer, that feeds of things have
In the fame order as they now are seen: Which yet our dark remembrance cannot trace, Because a pause of life, a gaping space,
Has come betwixt, where memory lies dead, And all the wandring motions from the fenfe
For whofoe'er shall in misfortunes live,
Muft be, when thofe misfortunes fhall arrive;
And fince the man who is not, feels not woe,
(For death exempts him, and wards off the blow,
Which we, the living, only feel and bear)
What is there left for us in death to fear?
When once that pause of life has come between,
'Tis juft the fame as we had never been.
And therefore if a man bemoan his lot,
That after death his mouldring limbs shall rot, 50
Or flames, or jaws of beafts devour his mass,
Know, he's an unfincere, unthinking ass.
A fecret fting remains within his mind;
The fool is to his own caft offals kind.
He boasts no fenfe can after death remain ; 55
Yet makes himself a part of life again;
As if fome other He could feel the pain.
If, while we live, this thought moleft his head,
What wolf or vulture fhall devour me dead?
He waftes his days in idle grief, nor can
Diftinguish 'twixt the body and the man ;
But thinks himself can ftill himself furvive ;
And, what when dead he feels not, feels alive.
Then he repines that he was born to die,
Nor knows in death there is no other He,
No living He remains his grief to vent,
And o'er his fenfelefs carcafe to lament.
If after death 'tis painful to be torn
By birds, and beafts, then why not so to burn,
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