If from great nature’s or our own abyss Of thought we could but snatch a certainty, Perhaps mankind might find the path they miss— But then ’twould spoil much good philosophy. One system eats another up, and this Much as old Saturn ate his progeny; For when his pious consort gave him stones In lieu of sons, of these he made no bones. But System doth reverse the Titan’s breakfast, And eats her parents, albeit the digestion Is difficult. Pray tell me, can you make fast, After due search, your faith to any question? Look back o’er ages, ere unto the stake fast You bind yourself, and call some mode the best one. Nothing more true than not to trust your senses; And yet what are your other evidences? For me, I know nought; nothing I deny, Admit, reject, contemn; and what know you, Except perhaps that you were born to die? And both may after all turn out untrue. An age may come, Font of Eternity, When nothing shall be either old or new. Death, so call’d, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is pass’d in sleep. A sleep without dreams, after a rough day Of toil, is what we covet most; and yet How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay! The very Suicide that pays his debt At once without instalments (an old way Of paying debts, which creditors regret) Lets out impatiently his rushing breath, Less from disgust of life than dread of death. ’Tis round him, near him, here, there, every where; And there’s a courage which grows out of fear, Perhaps of all most desperate, which will dare The worst to know it:—when the mountains rear Their peaks beneath your human foot, and there You look down o’er the precipice, and drear The gulf of rock yawns,—you can’t gaze a minute Without an awful wish to plunge within it. ’Tis true, you don’t—but, pale and struck with terror, Retire: but look into your past impression! And you will find, though shuddering at the mirror Of your own thoughts, in all their self-confession, The lurking bias, be it truth or error, To the unknown; a secret prepossession, To plunge with all your fears—but where? You know not, And that’s the reason why you do—or do not. But what ’s this to the purpose? you will say. Gent. reader, nothing; a mere speculation, For which my sole excuse is—’tis my way; Sometimes with and sometimes without occasion I write what ’s uppermost, without delay: This narrative is not meant for narration, But a mere airy and fantastic basis, To build up common things with common places. You know, or don’t know, that great Bacon saith, ‘Fling up a straw, ’twill show the way the wind blows;’ And such a straw, borne on by human breath, Is poesy, according as the mind glows; A paper kite which flies ’twixt life and death, A shadow which the onward soul behind throws: And mine ’s a bubble, not blown up for praise, But just to play with, as an infant plays.