Night Thoughts by Edward Young 1683 -1765
Channel: Age of Enlightenment
Date: 2020-09-15

Edward Young published The Complaint: or, Night Thoughs on Life, Death, and Immortality between 1742 and 1745. William Blake  provided 45 illustrations for this poem in 1790.    The young Goethe told his sister in 1766 that he was learning English from Young and Milton.  https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33156

Thou, who didst put to flight
Primeval Silence, when the morning stars,
Exulting, shouted o’er the rising ball;

On piety, humanity is built;
And, on humanity, much happiness;
And yet still more on piety itself.

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.

By Nature's law, what may be, may be now;
There's no prerogative in human hours.
In human hearts what bolder thought can rise,
Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn?