----! thy grave with aching eye I scan, And inly groan for Heaven's poor outcast--Man! 'Tis tempest all, or gloom! In earliest youth If gifted with th' Ithuriel lance of Truth He force to start amid the feign'd caress Vice, siren-hag, in native ugliness; A brother's fate shall haply rouse the tear, And on he goes in heaviness and fear! But if his fond heart call to Pleasure's bower Some pigmy Folly in a careless hour, The faithless Guest quick stamps th' enchanted ground, And mingled forms of Misery threaten round: Heart-fretting Fear, with pallid look aghast, That courts the future woe to hide the past; Remorse, the poison'd arrow in his side, And loud lewd Mirth to Anguish close allied; Till Frenzy, frantic child of moping Pain, Darts her hot lightning-flash athwart the brain! Rest, injur'd Shade! shall Slander, squatting near, Spit her cold venom in a dead man's ear? 'Twas thine to feel the sympathetic glow In Merit's joy and Poverty's meek woe: Thine all that cheer the moment as it flies, The zoneless Cares and smiling Courtesies. Nurs'd in thy heart the generous Virtues grew, And in thy heart they wither'd! such chill dew Wan Indolence on each young blossom shed; And Vanity her filmy network spread, With eye that prowl'd around in asking gaze, And tongue that trafficked in the trade of praise! Thy follies such the hard world mark'd them well. Were they more wise, the proud who never fell? Rest, injur'd Shade! the poor man's grateful prayer, On heavenward wing, thy wounded soul shall bear!
As oft in Fancy's thought thy grave I pass, And sit me down upon its recent grass, With introverted eye I contemplate Similitude of soul--perhaps of fate! To me hath Heaven with liberal hand assign'd Energic reason and a shaping mind, The daring soul of Truth, the patriot's part, And Pity's sigh, that breathes the gentle heart-- Sloth-jaundiced all! and from my graspless hand Drop Friendship's precious pearls, like hour-glass sand. I weep, yet stoop not! the faint anguish flows, A dreamy pang in Morning's fev'rish doze!
Is that pil'd earth our Being's passless mound? Tell me, cold Grave! is Death with poppies crown'd? Tir'd Sentinel! with fitful starts I nod, And fain would sleep, though pillow'd on a clod!