to rot.
"But not on equal terms with other brutes:
Their revels a more poignant relish yield,
And safer too; they never poisons choose.
Instinct, than reason, makes more wholesome meals,
And sends all-marring murmur far away.
For sensual life they best philosophize; 740
Theirs, that serene, the sages sought in vain: 741
'Tis man alone expostulates with Heaven;
His all the power, and all the cause, to mourn.
Shall human eyes alone dissolve in tears?
And bleed, in anguish, none but human hearts?
The wide-stretch'd realm of intellectual woe,
Surpassing sensual far, is all our own.
In life so fatally distinguish'd, why
Cast in one lot, confounded, lump'd, in death?
"Ere yet in being, was mankind in guilt? 750
Why thunder'd this peculiar clause against us,
All-mortal, and all-wretched!--Have the skies
Reasons of state, their subjects may not scan,
Nor humbly reason, when they sorely sigh?
All-mortal, and all-wretched!--'Tis too much:
Unparallell'd in nature: 'tis too much
On being unrequested at thy hands,
Omnipotent! for I see nought but power.
"And why see that? Why thought? To toil, and eat,
Then make our bed in darkness, needs no thought. 760
What superfluities are reasoning souls!
Oh give eternity! or thought destroy.
But without thought our curse were half unfelt;
Its blunted edge would spare the throbbing heart;
And, therefore, 'tis bestow'd, I thank thee, Reason!
For aiding life's too small calamities,
And giving being to the dread of Death.
Such are thy bounties!--was it then too much
For me, to trespass on the brutal rights?
Too much for Heaven to make one emmet more? 770
Too much for chaos to permit my mass
A longer stay with essences unwrought,
Unfashion'd, untormented into man?
Wretched preferment to this round of pains!
Wretched capacity of phrensy, thought! 775
Wretched capacity of dying, life!
Life, thought, worth, wisdom, all (O foul revolt!)
Once friends to peace, gone over to the foe.
"Death, then, has changed his nature too: O Death!
Come to my bosom, thou best gift of Heaven!
Best friend of man! since man is man no more.
Why in this thorny wilderness so long,
Since there's no promised land's ambrosial bower, 783
To pay me with its h