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BY the blue taper’s trembling light, | |
| No more I waste the wakeful night, | |
| Intent with endless view to pore | |
| The schoolmen and the sages o’er: | |
| Their books from wisdom widely stray, | 5 |
| Or point at best the longest way. | |
| I ’ll seek a readier path, and go | |
| Where wisdom ’s surely taught below. | |
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| How deep yon azure dyes the sky, | |
| Where orbs of gold unnumber’d lie, | 10 |
| While through their ranks in silver pride | |
| The nether crescent seems to glide! | |
| The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe, | |
| The lake is smooth and clear beneath, | |
| Where once again the spangled show | 15 |
| Descends to meet our eyes below. | |
| The grounds which on the right aspire, | |
| In dimness from the view retire: | |
| The left presents a place of graves, | |
| Whose wall the silent water laves | 20 |
| That steeple guides thy doubtful sight | |
| Among the livid gleams of night. | |
| There pass, with melancholy state, | |
| By all the solemn heaps of fate, | |
| And think, as softly-sad you tread | 25 |
| Above the venerable dead, | |
| ‘Time was, like thee they life possest, | |
| And time shall be, that thou shalt rest.’ | |
| |
| Those graves, with bending osier bound, | |
| That nameless heave the crumbled ground, | 30 |
| Quick to the glancing thought disclose, | |
| Where toil and poverty repose. | |
| The flat smooth stones that bear a name, | |
| The chisel’s slender help to fame, | |
| (Which ere our set of friends decay | 35 |
| Their frequent steps may wear away,) | |
| A middle race of mortals own, | |
| Men, half ambitious, all unknown. | |
| |
| The marble tombs that rise on high, | |
| Whose dead in vaulted arches lie, | 40 |
| Whose pillars swell with sculptur’d stones, | |
| Arms, angels, epitaphs, and bones, | |
| These, all the poor remains of state, | |
| Adorn the rich, or praise the great; | |
| Who while on earth in fame they live, | 45 |
| Are senseless of the fame they give. | |
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| Ha! while I gaze, pale Cynthia fades, | |
| The bursting earth unveils the shades! | |
| All slow, and wan, and wrapp’d with shrouds, | |
| They rise in visionary crowds, | 50 |
| And all with sober accent cry, | |
| ‘Think, mortal, what it is to die.’ | |
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