rop proud nature's proudest spheres),
And live entire. Death is the crown of life: 526
Were death denied, poor man would live in vain;
Were death denied, to live would not be life;
Were death denied, even fools would wish to die.
Death wounds to cure: we fall; we rise; we reign!
Spring from our fetters; fasten in the skies;
Where blooming Eden withers in our sight:
Death gives us more than was in Eden lost.
This king of terrors is the prince of peace.
When shall I die to vanity, pain, death?
When shall I die?--When shall I live for ever? 536

THE
CHRISTIAN TRIUMPH:
CONTAINING
OUR ONLY CURE FOR THE FEAR OF DEATH;
AND
PROPER SENTIMENTS OF HEART ON THAT
INESTIMABLE BLESSING.

TO THE
HONOURABLE MR YORKE.

NIGHT FOURTH.

THE CHRISTIAN TRIUMPH.

A much-indebted muse, O Yorke! intrudes.
Amid the smiles of fortune, and of youth,
Thine ear is patient of a serious song.
How deep implanted in the breast of man
The dread of death! I sing its sovereign cure.
Why start at Death? Where is he? Death arrived,
Is past; not come, or gone, he's never here.
Ere hope, sensation fails; black-boding man
Receives, not suffers, Death's tremendous blow.
The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave; 10
The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm;
These are the bugbears of a winter's eve,
The terrors of the living, not the dead.
Imagination's fool, and error's wretch,
Man makes a death, which nature never made;
Then on the point of his own fancy falls;
And feels a thousand deaths, in fearing one.
But were death frightful, what has age to fear?
If prudent, age should meet the friendly foe,
And shelter in his hospitable gloom. 20
I scarce can meet a monument, but holds
My younger; every date cries--"Come away."
And what recalls me? Look the world around,
And tell me what: the wisest cannot tell.
Should any born of woman give his thought
Full range, on just dislike's unbounded field;
Of things, the vanity; of men, the flaws;
Flaws in the best; t