| |
| THOUGHTS! what are they? | |
| They are my constant friends, | |
| Who, when harsh Fate its dull brow bends, | |
| Uncloud me with a smiling ray, | |
| And in the depth of midnight force a day. | 5 |
| |
| When I retire and flee | |
| The busy throngs of company | |
| To hug myself in privacy, | |
| O the discourse—the pleasant talk | |
| ’Twixt us, my thoughts, along a lonely walk! | 10 |
| |
| You (like the stupefying wine | |
| The dying malefactors sip | |
| With trembling lip, | |
| T’ abate the rigour of their doom | |
| By a less troublous cut to their long home) | 15 |
| Make me slight crosses, though they piled up lie, | |
| All by the magic of an ecstasy. | |
| |
| Do I desire to see | |
| The throne and awful majesty | |
| Of that proud one, | 20 |
| Brother and uncle to the stars and sun? | |
| These can conduct me where such toys reside | |
| And waft me ’cross the main, sans wind and tide. | |
| |
| Would I descry | |
| Those radiant mansions ’bove the sky, | 25 |
| Invisible to mortal eye, | |
| My thoughts can easily lay | |
| A shining track thereto, | |
| And nimbly flitting go; | |
| Through all the eleven orbs can shove a way. | 30 |
| My thoughts like Jacob’s ladder are | |
| A most angelic thoroughfare. | |
| |
| The wealth that shines | |
| In th’ oriental mines; | |
| Those sparkling gems which Nature keeps | 35 |
| Within her cabinets, the deeps; | |
| The verdant fields, | |
| Those rarities the rich world yields, | |
| Huge structures, whose each gilded spire | |
| Glisters like lightning, which while men admire | 40 |
| They deem the neighbouring sky on fire— | |
| These can I dwell upon and ’live mine eyes | |
| With millions of varieties. | |
| As on the front of Pisgah I | |
| Can th’ Holy Land through these my optics spy. | 45 |
| |
| Contemn we then | |
| The peevish rage of men, | |
| Whose violence can ne’er divorce | |
| Our mutual amity, | |
| Or lay so damned a curse | 50 |
| As non-addresses ’twixt my thoughts and me; | |
| For though I sigh in irons, they | |
| Use their old freedom, readily obey, | |
| And, when my bosom friends desert me, stay. | |
| |
| Come then, my darlings, I’ll embrace | 55 |
| My privilege; make known | |
| The high prerogative I own, | |
| By making all allurements give you place, | |
| Whose sweet society to me | |
| A sanctuary and a shield shall be | 60 |
| ’Gainst the full quivers of my Destiny. | |
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