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12
The Complaint.
Night I.
To labouring thought is born. How dim our eye!
The present moment terminates our sight;
Clouds, thick as those on doomsday, drown the next;
We penetrate, we prophesy in vain.
Time is dealt out by particles; and each,
Ere mingled with the streaming sands of life,
By fate's inviolable oath is sworn
Deep silence, 'Where eternity begins.'
By Nature's law, what may be, may be now;
There's to prerogative in human hours
In human hearts what bolder thought can rise,
Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn?
Where is to-morrow? in another world.
For numbers this is certain; the reverse
Is sure to none; and yet on this perhaps,
This peradventure, infamous for lyes,
As on a rock of adamant we build
Our mountain hopes; spin out eternal schemes,
As we the fatal sisters could out-spin,
And, big with life's futurities, expire.
Not ev'n Philander had bespoke his shroud.
Nor had he cause; a warning was deny'd:
How many fail as sudden, not as safe;
As sudden, tho' for years admonisht home?
Of human ills the last extreme beware,
Beware, Lorenzo! a now sudden death.
How dreadful that deliberate surprize;
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
The present moment terminates our sight;
Clouds, thick as those on doomsday, drown the next;
We penetrate, we prophesy in vain.
Time is dealt out by particles; and each,
Ere mingled with the streaming sands of life,
By fate's inviolable oath is sworn
Deep silence, 'Where eternity begins.'
By Nature's law, what may be, may be now;
There's to prerogative in human hours
In human hearts what bolder thought can rise,
Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn?
Where is to-morrow? in another world.
For numbers this is certain; the reverse
Is sure to none; and yet on this perhaps,
This peradventure, infamous for lyes,
As on a rock of adamant we build
Our mountain hopes; spin out eternal schemes,
As we the fatal sisters could out-spin,
And, big with life's futurities, expire.
Not ev'n Philander had bespoke his shroud.
Nor had he cause; a warning was deny'd:
How many fail as sudden, not as safe;
As sudden, tho' for years admonisht home?
Of human ills the last extreme beware,
Beware, Lorenzo! a now sudden death.
How dreadful that deliberate surprize;
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
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