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 ling'ring 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 tow'rds the precipice of death—
Death, most our dread; death thus more dreadful made
O what a riddle of absurdity!
Leisure is pain; take 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 groan'd
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 turn'd,

Publische Druckerei K. Böhm, N. W. Böhm, St.