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Shall Truth be silent, because Folly frowns?
Turn the world's history; what find we there,
But Fortune's sports, or Nature's cruel claims,
Or Woman's artifice, or Man's revenge,
And endless inhumanities on man?
Fame's trumpet seldom sounds, but, like the knell,
It brings bad tidings: how it hourly blows
Man's misadventures round the listening world!
Man is the tale of narrative old time;
Sad tale; which high as Paradise begins; 110
As if, the toil of travel to delude,
From stage to stage, in his eternal round,
The Days, his daughters, as they spin our hours
On Fortune's wheel, where accident unthought
Oft, in a moment, snaps life's strongest thread,
Each, in her turn, some tragic story tells,
With, now and then, a wretched farce between;
And fills his chronicle with human woes.
Time's daughters, true as those of men, deceive us;
Not one, but puts some cheat on all mankind: 120
While in their father's bosom, not yet ours,
They flatter our fond hopes, and promise much
Of amiable; but hold him not o'er-wise, 123
Who dares to trust them; and laugh round the year
At still-confiding, still-confounded, man,
Confiding, though confounded; hoping on,
Untaught by trial, unconvinced by proof,
And ever looking for the never seen.
Life to the last, like harden'd felons, lies;
Nor owns itself a cheat, till it expires. 130
Its little joys go out by one and one,
And leave poor man, at length, in perfect night;
Night darker, than what, now, involves the pole.
O Thou, who dost permit these ills to fall,
For gracious ends, and would'st that man should mourn!
O Thou, whose hands this goodly fabric framed,
Who know'st it best, and would'st that man should know!
What is this sublunary world? A vapour;
A vapour all it holds; itself, a vapour;
From the damp bed of chaos, by Thy beam 140
Exhaled, ordain'd to swim its destined hour
In ambient air, then melt, and disappear.
Earth's days are number'd, nor remote her doom;
As mortal, though less transient, than her sons;
Yet they doat on her, as the world and they
Were both eternal, solid; Thou, a dream.
They doat!--on what? Immortal views apart,
A region of outsides! a land of shadows!
A fruitful field of flowery promises!
A wilderness o