PART I. MELPOMENE; or, The Melancholy

Offspring of folly and of noise, Fantastick train of airy joys, Cease, cease your vain delusive lore, And tempt my serious thoughts no more. Ye horrid forms, ye gloomy throng, Who hear the bird of midnight's song; Thou too, DESPAIR, pale spectre, come, From the self-murd'rer's haunted tomb, Whilst sad MELPOMENE relates, How we're afflicted by the fates.

What's all this wish'd for empire, Life! A scene of mis'ry, care, and strife; And make the most, that's all we have, Betwixt the cradle and the grave. The being is not worth the charge, Behold the estimate at large. Our youth is silly, idle, vain; Our age is full of care and pain; From wealth accrues anxiety; Contempt and want from poverty; What trouble business has in store! How idleness fatigues us more! To reason, th' ignorant are blind; The learned's eyes are too refin'd; Each wit deems every wit his foe, Each fool is naturally so; And ev'ry rank and ev'ry station Meet justly with disapprobation. Say, man, is this the boasted state, Where all is pleasant, all is great? Alas! another face you'll see, Take off the veil of vanity. Is aught in pleasure, aught in pow'r, Has wisdom any gift in store, To make thee stay a single hour?

Tell me, ye youthful, who approve Th' intoxicating sweets of love, What endless nameless throbs arise, What heart-felt anguish and what sighs, When jealousy has gnaw'd the root, Whence love's united branches shoot. Or grant that Hymen lights his torch, To lead you to the nuptial porch, Behold! the long'd-for rapture o'er! Desire begins to lose it's pow'r, Then cold indifference takes place, Fruition alters quite the case; And what before was extasy, Is scarcely now civility. Your children bring a second care, If childless, then you want an heir; So that in both alike you find The same perplexity of mind.

Do pow'r or wealth more comfort own? Behold yon pageant on a throne, Where silken swarms of flattery Obsequious wait his asking eye. But view within his tortur'd breast, No more the downy seat of rest, Suspicion casts her poison'd dart, And guilt, that scorpion, stings his heart.

Will knowledge give us happiness? In that, alas! we know there's less, For every pang of mental woe, Springs from the faculty, to know.

Hark! at that death-betok'ning knell, Of yonder doleful passing-bell, Perhaps a friend, a father's dead, Or the lov'd part'ner of thy bed! Perhaps thy only son lies there, Breathless upon the sable bier! Say, what can ease the present grief, Can former joys afford relief? Those former joys remember'd still, The more augment the recent ill, And where you seek for comfort, gain Additional increase of pain. What woes from moral ills accure! And what from natural ensue! Disease and casualty attend Our footsteps to the journey's end; The cold catarrh, the gout and stone, The dropsy, jaundice, joyn'd in one, The raging fever's inward heat, The pale consumption's fatal sweat, And thousand more distempers roam, To drag us to th' eternal home. And when solution sets us free From prison of mortality, The soul dilated joins in air, To go, alas! we know not where, And the poor body will become A clod within a lonely tomb. Reflection sad! such bodies must Return, and mingle with the dust! But neither sense nor beauty have Defensive charms against the grave, Nor virtue's shield, nor wisdom's lore, Nor true-religion's sacred pow'r; For as that charnel's earth you see, E'en, my EUDOCIA, you will be,