n mass
Of matter, never dignified with life,
Here lie proud rationals; the sons of heaven!
The lords of earth! the property of worms!
Beings of yesterday, and no to-morrow!
Who lived in terror, and in pangs expired! 840
All gone to rot in chaos; or to make
Their happy transit into blocks or brutes, 842
Nor longer sully their Creator's name.

Lorenzo! hear, pause, ponder, and pronounce.
Just is this history? If such is man,
Mankind's historian, though divine, might weep.
And dares Lorenzo smile!--I know thee proud;
For once let Pride befriend thee; Pride looks pale
At such a scene, and sighs for something more.
Amid thy boasts, presumptions, and displays, 850
And art thou then a shadow? less than shade?
A nothing? less than nothing? To have been,
And not to be, is lower than unborn.
Art thou ambitious? Why then make the worm
Thine equal? Runs thy taste of pleasure high?
Why patronise sure death of every joy?
Charm riches? Why choose beggary in the grave,
Of every hope a bankrupt! and for ever?
Ambition, pleasure, avarice, persuade thee
To make that world of glory, rapture, wealth, 860
They lately proved,[37] the soul's supreme desire.
What art thou made of? Rather, how unmade?
Great Nature's master-appetite destroy'd!
Is endless life, and happiness, despised?
Or both wish'd, here, where neither can be found?
Such man's perverse, eternal war with Heaven!
Darest thou persist? And is there nought on earth
But a long train of transitory forms,
Rising, and breaking, millions in an hour?
Bubbles of a fantastic deity, blown up 870
In sport, and then in cruelty destroy'd?
Oh! for what crime, unmerciful Lorenzo!
Destroys thy scheme the whole of human race?
Kind is fell Lucifer, compared to thee: 874
Oh! spare this waste of being half divine;
And vindicate th' economy of Heaven.
Heaven is all love; all joy in giving joy:
It never had created, but to bless:
And shall it, then, strike off the list of life,
A being bless'd, or worthy so to be?
Heaven starts at an annihilating God.
Is that, all Nature starts at, thy desire? 882
Art such a clod to wish thyself all clay?
What is that dreadful wish?--The dying groan
Of Nature, murder'd by th