independently of the excellence of his versification. The famous passage on Procrastination, which, hackneyed as it is, is so decidedly his masterpiece, that it cannot be left out in any selection from his works, is in its way not to be surpassed, and its excellence fully accounts for the popularity of Young in a century such as the eighteenth, which, whatever its practice might be, was, in theory, nothing if not moralist. This popularity, as is pretty generally known, spread to France, where Young long had many fervent admirers, though he is probably to a great extent chargeable with the bad repute of England for spleen. Blake's remarkable illustrations also add considerable interest of the accidental kind to the book. Those of the minor poems which deserve notice at all are not dissimilar in characteristics to the Night Thoughts. The satires have almost as great, though scarcely so original a merit as these latter, and both in the Last Day and the Job fine and striking passages abound.
FROM THE LAST DAY.' BOCK I.
Sooner or later, in some future date,
(A dreadful secret in the book of Fate)
This hour, for aught all human wisdom knows,
Or when ten thousand harvests more have rose;
When scenes are changed on this revolving Earth,
Old empires fall, and give new empires birth;
While other Bourbons rule in other lands,
And, (if man's sin forbids not) other Annes ;
While the still busy world is treading o'er
The paths they trod five thousand years before,
Thoughtless as those who now life's mazes run,
Of earth dissolved, or an extinguished sun;
(Ye sublunary worlds, awake, awake!
Ye rulers of the nation, hear and shake)
Thick clouds of darkness shall arise on day;
In sudden night all Earth's dominions lay;
Impetuous winds the scatter'd forests rend;
Eternal mountains, like their cedars, bend;
The valleys yawn, the troubled ocean roar
And break the bondage of his wonted shore ;
A sanguine stain the silver moon o'erspread;
Darkness the circle of the sun invade;
From inmost Heaven incessant thunders roll
And the strong echo bound from pole to pole.
[From Satire V, on Women.]
'But adoration! give me something more,' Cries Lycé on the borders of threescore. Nought treads so silent as the foot of Time: Hence we mistake our autumn for our prime. VOL. III.
'Tis greatly wise to know before we're told The melancholy news that we grow old. Autumnal Lycé carries in her face
Memento mori to each public place.
O how your beating breast a mistress warms
Who looks through spectacles to see your charms,
While rival undertakers hover round
And with his spade the sexton marks the ground!
Intent not on her own, but others' doom,
She plans new conquests and defrauds the tomb.
In vain the cock has summoned sprites away,
She walks at noon and blasts the bloom of day.
Gay rainbow silks her mellow charms infold,
And nought of Lycé but herself is old.
Her grizzled locks assume a smirking grace,
And art has levelled her deep furrowed face.
Her strange demand no mortal can approve,
We'll ask her blessing, but can't ask her love.
She grants, indeed, a lady may decline
(All ladies but herself) at ninety-nine.
[From The Complaint, Night I.]
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?
Where is to-morrow? In another world.
For numbers this is certain; the reverse
Is sure to none; and yet on this perhaps,
This peradventure, infamous for lies,
As on a rock of adamant, we build
Our mountain hopes, spin out eternal schemes
As we the fatal sisters could out-spin,
And big with life's futurities, expire.
Not e'en Philander had bespoke his shroud,
Nor had he cause; a warning was denied:
How many fall as sudden, not as safe;
As sudden, though for years admonish'd home!
Of human ills the last extreme beware;
Beware, Lorenzo, a slow sudden death.
How dreadful that deliberate surprise!
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.
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.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.
Of man's miraculous mistakes this bears
The palm, 'That all men are about to live,
For ever on the brink of being born.'
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel: and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise;
At least, their own; their future selves applaud
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead.
Time lodg'd in their own hands is folly's vails;
That lodg'd in fate's to wisdom they consign.
The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone.
'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool,
And scarce in human wisdom to do more.
All promise is poor dilatory man,
And that through every stage: when young indeed
In full content we sometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish,
As duteous sons our fathers were more wise.
At thirty man suspects himself a fool,
Knows it at forty and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves, and re-resolves, then dies the same.
Our dying friends come o'er us like a cloud,
To damp our brainless ardours; and abate
That glare of life which often blinds the wise.
Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth
Our rugged pass to death; to break those bars
Of terror and abhorrence Nature throws
'Cross our obstructed way; and thus to make
Welcome as safe, our port from every storm.
Each friend by fate snatched from us is a plume,
Pluck'd from the wing of human vanity,
Which makes us stoop from our aërial heights
And, damp'd with omen of our own decease,
On drooping pinions of ambition lower'd,
Just skim Earth's surface, ere we break it up,
O'er putrid earth to scratch a little dust
And save the world a nuisance. Smitten friends
Are angels sent on errands full of love;
For us they languish and for us they die,
And shall they languish, shall they die, in vain?
Ungrateful, shall we grieve their hovering shades
Which wait the revolution in our hearts?
Shall we disdain their silent soft address,
Their posthumous advice and pious prayer?
Senseless as herds that graze their hallow'd graves,
Tread under-foot their agonies and groans,
Frustrate their anguish and destroy their deaths?
O thou great arbiter of life and death,
Nature's immortal, unmaterial sun,
Whose all-prolific beam late call'd me forth
From darkness, teeming darkness where I lay,
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