Young's Night Thoughts Part 18

"Has virtue, then, no joys?"--Yes, joys dear-bought.

Talk ne'er so long, in this imperfect state, Virtue and vice are at eternal war, Virtue's a combat; and who fights for nought?

Or for precarious, or for small reward?

Who virtue's self-reward so loud resound, 243 Would take degrees angelic here below, And virtue, while they compliment, betray, By feeble motives, and unfaithful guards.

The crown, th' unfading crown, her soul inspires: 'Tis that, and that alone, can countervail The body's treacheries, and the world's a.s.saults: On earth's poor pay our famish'd virtue dies. 250 Truth incontestible! in spite of all A Bayle has preach'd, or a Voltaire believed.

In man the more we dive, the more we see Heaven's signet stamping an immortal make.

Dive to the bottom of his soul, the base Sustaining all; what find we? knowledge, love.

As light and heat, essential to the sun, These to the soul. And why, if souls expire?

How little lovely here? how little known?

Small knowledge we dig up with endless toil; 260 And love unfeign'd may purchase perfect hate.

Why starved, on earth, our angel appet.i.tes; While brutal are indulged their fulsome fill?

Were then capacities divine conferr'd, As a mock-diadem, in savage sport, Rank insult of our pompous poverty, Which reaps but pain, from seeming claims so fair?

In future age lies no redress? and shuts Eternity the door on our complaint?

If so, for what strange ends were mortals made! 270 The worst to wallow, and the best to weep; The man who merits most, must most complain: Can we conceive a disregard in heaven, What the worst perpetrate, or best endure?

This cannot be. To love, and know, in man Is boundless appet.i.te, and boundless power; And these demonstrate boundless objects too.

Objects, powers, appet.i.tes, Heaven suits in all; Nor, nature through, e'er violates this sweet, Eternal concord, on her tuneful string. 280 Is Man the sole exception from her laws?

Eternity struck off from human hope (I speak with truth, but veneration too), Man is a monster, the reproach of Heaven, A stain, a dark impenetrable cloud On Nature's beauteous aspect; and deforms (Amazing blot!), deforms her with her lord.

If such is man's allotment, what is heaven?

Or own the soul immortal, or blaspheme.

Or own the soul immortal, or invert 290 All order. Go, mock-majesty! go, man!

And bow to thy superiors of the stall; Through every scene of sense superior far: They graze the turf untill'd; they drink the stream Unbrew'd, and ever full, and unembitter'd With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despairs; Mankind's peculiar! reason's precious dower!

No foreign clime they ransack for their robes; Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar; Their good is good entire, unmix'd, unmarr'd; 300 They find a paradise in every field, On boughs forbidden where no curses hang: Their ill no more than strikes the sense; unstretch'd By previous dread, or murmur in the rear: 304 When the worst comes, it comes unfear'd; one stroke Begins, and ends, their woe: they die but once; Bless'd, incommunicable privilege! for which Proud man, who rules the globe, and reads the stars, Philosopher, or hero, sighs in vain.

Account for this prerogative in brutes.

No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot, But what beams on it from eternity. 312 O sole and sweet solution! that unties The difficult, and softens the severe; The cloud on nature's beauteous face dispels; Restores bright order; casts the brute beneath; And re-enthrones us in supremacy Of joy, even here: admit immortal life, And virtue is knight-errantry no more; Each virtue brings in hand a golden dower, 320 Far richer in reversion: Hope exults; And though much bitter in our cup is thrown, Predominates, and gives the taste of heaven.

O wherefore is the Deity so kind?

Astonis.h.i.+ng beyond astonishment!

Heaven our reward--for heaven enjoy'd below.

Still unsubdued thy stubborn heart?--for there The traitor lurks who doubts the truth I sing.

Reason is guiltless; will alone rebels.

What, in that stubborn heart, if I should find 330 New, unexpected witnesses against thee?

Ambition, pleasure, and the love of gain!

Canst thou suspect that these, which make the soul The slave of earth, should own her heir of heaven?

Canst thou suspect what makes us disbelieve Our immortality, should prove it sure?

First, then, Ambition summon to the bar.

Ambition's shame, extravagance, disgust 338 And inextinguishable nature, speak.

Each much deposes; hear them in their turn.

Thy soul, how pa.s.sionately fond of fame!

How anxious, that fond pa.s.sion to conceal!

We blush, detected in designs on praise, Though for best deeds, and from the best of men: And why? Because immortal. Art divine Has made the body tutor to the soul; Heaven kindly gives our blood a moral flow; Bids it ascend the glowing cheek, and there Upbraid that little heart's inglorious aim, Which stoops to court a character from man; 350 While o'er us, in tremendous judgment sit Far more than man, with endless praise, and blame.

Ambition's boundless appet.i.te outspeaks The verdict of its shame. When souls take fire At high presumptions of their own desert, One age is poor applause; the mighty shout, The thunder by the living few begun, Late time must echo; worlds unborn resound.

We wish our names eternally to live: Wild dream! which ne'er had haunted human thought, Had not our natures been eternal too. 361 Instinct points out an interest in hereafter; But our blind reason sees not where it lies; Or, seeing, gives the substance for the shade.

Fame is the shade of immortality, And in itself a shadow. Soon as caught, Contemn'd; it shrinks to nothing in the grasp.

Consult th' ambitious, 'tis ambition's cure.

"And is this all?" cried Caesar at his height, Disgusted. This third proof Ambition brings 370 Of immortality. The first in fame.

Observe him near, your envy will abate: 372 Shamed at the disproportion vast, between The pa.s.sion and the purchase, he will sigh At such success, and blush at his renown.

And why? Because far richer prize invites His heart; far more ill.u.s.trious glory calls: It calls in whispers, yet the deafest hear.

And can Ambition a fourth proof supply?

It can, and stronger than the former three; 380 Yet quite o'erlook'd by some reputed wise.

Though disappointments in ambition pain, And though success disgusts; yet still, Lorenzo!

In vain we strive to pluck it from our hearts; By Nature planted for the n.o.blest ends.

Absurd the famed advice to Pyrrhus[34] given, More praised, than ponder'd; specious, but unsound; Sooner that hero's sword the world had quell'd, Than Reason, his ambition. Man must soar.

An obstinate activity within, 390 An insuppressive spring, will toss him up In spite of Fortune's load. Not kings alone, Each villager has his ambition too; No Sultan prouder than his fetter'd slave: Slaves build their little Babylons of straw, Echo the proud a.s.syrian, in their hearts, And cry,--"Behold the wonders of my might!"

And why? Because immortal as their lord; And souls immortal must for ever heave At something great; the glitter, or the gold; 400 The praise of mortals, or the praise of Heaven.

Nor absolutely vain is human praise, When human is supported by divine.

I'll introduce Lorenzo to himself; 404 Pleasure and Pride (bad masters!) share our hearts.

As love of pleasure is ordain'd to guard And feed our bodies, and extend our race; The love of praise is planted to protect, And propagate the glories of the mind.

What is it, but the love of praise, inspires, Matures, refines, embellishes, exalts, Earth's happiness? From that, the delicate, 412 The grand, the marvellous, of civil life, Want and convenience, underworkers, lay The basis, on which love of glory builds.

Nor is thy life, O Virtue! less in debt To praise, thy secret stimulating friend.

Were men not proud, what merit should we miss!

Pride made the virtues of the Pagan world.

Praise is the salt that seasons right to man, 420 And whets his appet.i.te for moral good.

Thirst of applause is Virtue's second guard; Reason, her first; but reason wants an aid; Our private reason is a flatterer; Thirst of applause calls public judgment in, To poise our own, to keep an even scale, And give endanger'd Virtue fairer play.

Here a fifth proof arises, stronger still: Why this so nice construction of our hearts?

These delicate moralities of sense; 430 This const.i.tutional reserve of aid To succour virtue, when our reason fails; If virtue, kept alive by care and toil, And oft, the mark of injuries on earth, When labour'd to maturity (its bill Of disciplines, and pains, unpaid), must die?

Why freighted rich, to dash against a rock?

Were man to perish when most fit to live, 438 O how misspent were all these stratagems, By skill divine inwoven in our frame!

Where are Heaven's holiness and mercy fled?

Laughs Heaven, at once, at Virtue, and at Man?

If not, why that discouraged, this destroy'd?

Thus far Ambition. What says Avarice?

This her chief maxim, which has long been thine: "The wise and wealthy are the same,"--I grant it.

To store up treasure with incessant toil, This is man's province, this his highest praise.

To this great end keen Instinct stings him on.

To guide that instinct, Reason! is thy charge; 450 'Tis thine to tell us where true treasure lies: But, Reason failing to discharge her trust, Or to the deaf discharging it in vain, A blunder follows; and blind Industry, Gall'd by the spur, but stranger to the course (The course where stakes of more than gold are won), O'erloading, with the cares of distant age, The jaded spirits of the present hour, Provides for an eternity below.

"Thou shalt not covet," is a wise command; 460 But bounded to the wealth the sun surveys: Look farther, the command stands quite reversed, And avarice is a virtue most divine.

Is faith a refuge for our happiness?

Most sure: and is it not for reason too?

Nothing this world unriddles, but the next.

Whence inextinguishable thirst of gain?

From inextinguishable life in man.

Man, if not meant, by worth, to reach the skies, Had wanted wing to fly so far in guilt. 470 Sour grapes, I grant, ambition, avarice, Yet still their root is immortality: 472 These its wild growths so bitter, and so base, (Pain and reproach!) Religion can reclaim, Refine, exalt, throw down their poisonous lee, And make them sparkle in the bowl of bliss.

See, the third witness laughs at bliss remote, And falsely promises an Eden here: Truth she shall speak for once, though p.r.o.ne to lie, A common cheat, and Pleasure is her name. 480 To Pleasure never was Lorenzo deaf; Then hear her now, now first thy real friend.

Since Nature made us not more fond than proud Of happiness (whence hypocrites in joy!

Makers of mirth! artificers of smiles!), Why should the joy most poignant sense affords, Burn us with blushes, and rebuke our pride?-- Those heaven-born blushes tell us man descends, Even in the zenith of his earthly bliss: Should Reason take her infidel repose, 490 This honest instinct speaks our lineage high; This instinct calls on darkness to conceal Our rapturous relation to the stalls.

Our glory covers us with n.o.ble shame, And he that's unconfounded, is unmann'd.

The man that blushes, is not quite a brute.

Thus far with thee, Lorenzo, will I close: Pleasure is good, and man for pleasure made; But pleasure full of glory, as of joy; Pleasure, which neither blushes, nor expires. 500 The witnesses are heard; the cause is o'er; Let Conscience file the sentence in her court, Dearer than deeds that half a realm convey; Thus seal'd by Truth, th' authentic record runs: "Know all; know, infidels,--unapt to know!

'Tis immortality your nature solves; 506 'Tis immortality deciphers man, And opens all the mysteries of his make.

Without it, half his instincts are a riddle; Without it, all his virtues are a dream.

His very crimes attest his dignity; His sateless thirst of pleasure, gold, and fame, Declares him born for blessings infinite: 513 What less than infinite makes unabsurd Pa.s.sions, which all on earth but more inflames?

Fierce pa.s.sions, so mismeasured to this scene, Stretch'd out, like eagles' wings, beyond our nest, Far, far beyond the worth of all below, For earth too large, presage a n.o.bler flight, And evidence our t.i.tle to the skies." 520 Ye gentle theologues, of calmer kind!

Whose const.i.tution dictates to your pen, Who, cold yourselves, think ardour comes from h.e.l.l!

Think not our pa.s.sions from Corruption sprung, Though to Corruption now they lend their wings; That is their mistress, not their mother. All (And justly) Reason deem divine: I see, I feel a grandeur in the pa.s.sions too, Which speaks their high descent, and glorious end; Which speaks them rays of an eternal fire. 530 In Paradise itself they burn'd as strong, Ere Adam fell; though wiser in their aim.

Like the proud Eastern,[35] struck by Providence, What though our pa.s.sions are run mad, and stoop With low, terrestrial appet.i.te, to graze On trash, on toys, dethroned from high desire?

Yet still, through their disgrace, no feeble ray Of greatness s.h.i.+nes, and tells us whence they fell: But these (like that fallen monarch when reclaim'd), 539 When Reason moderates the rein aright, Shall reascend, remount their former sphere, Where once they soar'd ill.u.s.trious; ere seduced By wanton Eve's debauch, to stroll on earth, And set the sublunary world on fire.

But grant their phrensy lasts; their phrensy fails To disappoint one providential end, For which Heaven blew up ardour in our hearts: Were Reason silent, boundless Pa.s.sion speaks A future scene of boundless objects too, And brings glad tidings of eternal day. 550 Eternal day! 'tis that enlightens all; And all, by that enlighten'd, proves it sure.

Consider man as an immortal being, Intelligible all; and all is great; A crystalline transparency prevails, And strikes full l.u.s.tre through the human sphere: Consider man as mortal, all is dark, And wretched; Reason weeps at the survey.

The learn'd Lorenzo cries, "And let her weep, Weak, modern Reason: ancient times were wise. 560 Authority, that venerable guide, Stands on my part; the famed Athenian porch (And who for wisdom so renown'd as they?) Denied this immortality to man."

I grant it; but affirm, they proved it too.

A riddle this!--have patience; I'll explain.