More Night Thoughts

O Night, dark Night! wrapt round with Stygian gloom, Thy riding-hood opaque! wove by the hands Of Clotho and of Atropos:—Those hands That spin my thread of life,—how near its end! Ah wherefore, silent Goddess, should'st thou thus Awake my terrors? silence sounds alarms To me, and darkness dazzles my weak mind. Hark!—'tis the death-watch!—posts themselves can speak Death's language!—stop, O stop, insatiate worm, I feel thy summons; to my fellow-worms Thou bidst me hasten!—I obey thy call;— For wherefore should I live?—vain life to me Is but a tatter'd garment, a patch'd rag, That ill defends us from the cold of age. Cramp'd are my faculties, my eyes grow dim, No music charms my ear, no meats my taste; The females fly me, and my very wife— Poor woman!—knows me not.— Ye flattering, idle vanities of life, Where are ye flown? the birds, that us'd to sing Amidst my spreading branches, now forsake This leafless trunk, and find no shelter there, What's life?—what's death? thus coveted and fear'd?— Life is a fleeting shadow—death's no more:— Death's a dark lantern; life a candle's end, Stuck on a save-all, soon to end in stench— Foh! death's a privy; life the alley green, That leads to't; where, perchance, from either side A sweet briar hedge, or shrubs of broader leaf, And more commodious, breathe their treacherous sweets. Death follows life, and stops it ere it reach The topmost spoke of Fortune's envied wheel!— Wheel!—life's a wheel, and each man is the ass, That turns it; oft receiving in the end But water and rank thistles for his pains. And yet, Lorenzo, if consider'd right, A life of labour is a life of ease! Pain is true joy, and want is luxury! Vain mirth's an opera tune, a tortur'd sigh, The breath of eunuchs; it dismembers bliss, Makes man not man, and castrates real joy. Would you be merry?—seek some charnel-house Where death inhabits, give a ball to death, A dooms-day ball, and lead up Holben's dance. How weak? how strong? how gentle? how severe Are Laughter's chains, that gall a willing world! The noisy Idiot shakes her bells at all, Not e'en the Bible, or the Night-Thoughts 'scape— Fools spare not Heaven itself, O Y—! nor thee.