e blackest guilt.
What deadly poison has thy nature drank?
To Nature undebauch'd no shock so great;
Nature's first wish is endless happiness;
Annihilation is an after-thought,
A monstrous wish, unborn till virtue dies. 890
And, oh! what depth of horror lies enclosed!
For non-existence no man ever wish'd,
But, first, he wish'd the Deity destroy'd.
If so; what words are dark enough to draw
Thy picture true? The darkest are too fair.
Beneath what baleful planet, in what hour
Of desperation, by what fury's aid,
In what infernal posture of the soul,
All hell invited, and all hell in joy
At such a birth, a birth so near of kin, 900
Did thy foul fancy whelp so black a scheme
Of hopes abortive, faculties half-blown,
And deities begun, reduced to dust?
There's nought (thou say'st) but one eternal flux
Of feeble essences, tumultuous driven
Through Time's rough billows into Night's abyss.
Say, in this rapid tide of human ruin,
Is there no rock, on which man's tossing thought 908
Can rest from terror, dare his fate survey,
And boldly think it something to be born?
Amid such hourly wrecks of being fair,
Is there no central, all-sustaining base,
All-realising, all-connecting power,
Which, as it call'd forth all things, can recall,
And force Destruction to refund her spoil?
Command the grave restore her taken prey?
Bid death's dark vale its human harvest yield,
And earth, and ocean, pay their debt of man,
True to the grand deposit trusted there?
Is there no potentate, whose outstretch'd arm, 920
When ripening time calls forth th' appointed hour,
Pluck'd from foul Devastation's famish'd maw,
Binds present, past, and future, to his throne?
His throne, how glorious, thus divinely graced,
By germinating beings clustering round!
A garland worthy the divinity!
A throne, by Heaven's omnipotence in smiles,
Built (like a Pharos towering in the waves)
Amidst immense effusions of his love!
An ocean of communicated bliss! 930
An all-prolific, all-preserving God!
This were a God indeed.--And such is man,
As here presumed: he rises from his fall.
Think'st thou Omnipotence a naked root,
Each blossom fair of Deity destroy'd?
Nothing is dead; nay, nothing sleeps; each soul,
That ever animated human clay,