72

* And vapid; sense and reason shew the door,
Call for my bier, and point me to the dust.

O THOU! great arbiter of life and death!
Nature's immortal, immaterial sun!
Whose all-prolific beam late call'd me forth
From darkness—teeming darkness where I lay
The worm's inferior, and in rank beneath
The dust I tread on, high to bear my brow,
To drink the spirit of the golden day,
And triumph in existence! and couldst know
No motive but my bliss! and hast ordain'd
A rise in blessing! with the patriarch's joy,
Thy call I follow to the land unknown:
I trust in THEE, and know in whom I trust:
Or life or death is equal; neither weighs;
All weight in this—O let me live to THEE!

Though nature's terrors thus may be repress'd;
Still frowns grim death, guilt points the tyrant's spear:
And whence all human guilt?—from death forgot.
Ah me! too long I set at nought the swarm
Of friendly warnings which around me flew;
And smiled unsmitten: small my cause to smile!
Death's admonitions, like shafts upward shot,
More dreadful by delay; the longer ere
They strike our hearts, the deeper is their wound:
O think how deep, LORENZO! here it stings:
Who can appease its anguish? how it burns!
What hand the barb'd, envenom'd thought can draw?
What healing hand can pour the balm of peace,
And turn my sight undaunted on the tomb?

Pub. June 5, 1797 by R.L. Heaviside, 342 New Broad Street.