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POEMS OF SENTIMENT.

POEMS OF SENTIMENT.

I.

TIME.

TIME THE SUPREME.

FROM "NIGHT THOUGHT3," NIGHT I.

THE bell strikes one we take no note of time, But from its loss. To give it, then, a tongue,

Is wise in man.

As if an angel spoke,

I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright,

It is the knell of my departed hours:

Where are they? With the years beyond the flood.

It is the signal that demands despatch;

How much is to be done! my hopes and fears
Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down-on what? a fathomless abyss;
A dread eternity; how surely mine!

And can eternity belong to me,

Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?

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Time the supreme!-Time is eternity;

Pregnant with all eternity can give;

Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile.

Who murders time, he crushes in the birth
A power ethereal, only not adored.

Ah! how unjust to Nature and himself,
Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!
Like children babbling nonsense in their sports,
We censure Nature for a span too short;
That span too short, we tax as tedious too;
Torture invention, all expedients tire,

To lash the lingering moments into speed,
And whirl us (happy riddance!) from ourselves.
Art, brainless Art! our furious charioteer
(For Nature's voice, unstifled, would recall),
Drives headlong towards the precipice of death!
Death, most our dread; death, thus more dreadful
made:

O, what a riddle of absurdity!

Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot wheels:

How heavily we drag the load of life!
Blest leisure is our curse: like that of Cain,
It makes us wander; wander earth around
To fly that tyrant, Thought. As Atlas groaned
The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.
We cry for mercy to the next amusement:
The next amusement mortgages our fields;
Slight inconvenience! prisons hardly frown,
From hateful Time if prisons set us free.
Yet when Death kindly tenders us relief,
We call him cruel; years to moments shrink,
Ages to years. The telescope is turned.
To man's false optics (from his folly false)
Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings,
And seems to creep, decrepit with his age;
Behold him when past by: what then is seen
But his broad pinions, swifter than the winds?

And all mankind, in contradiction strong,
Rueful, aghast, cry out on his career.

DR. EDWARD YOUNG.

TO-MORROW.

FROM IRENE."

TO-MORROW's action! can that hoary wisdom,
Borne down with years, still doat upon to-morrow!
The fatal mistress of the young, the lazy,
The coward and the fool, condemned to lose
An useless life in waiting for to-morrow,
To gaze with longing eyes upon to-morrow,
Till interposing death destroys the prospect.
Strange that this general fraud from day to day
Should fill the world with wretches, undetected!
The soldier, laboring through a winter's march,
Still sees to-morrow drest in robes of triumph;
Still to the lover's long-expecting arms
To-morrow brings the visionary bride.
But thou, too old to bear another cheat,
Learn that the present hour alone is man's.

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

THREE DAYS.

So much to do: so little done!

Ah! yesternight I saw the sun

Sink beamless down the vaulted gray,-
The ghastly ghost of YESTERDAY.

So little done so much to do!

Each morning breaks on conflicts new;

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