What is there here, that man should wish to bear A weight of years?--such rage to madness vext; Wan, wasting, grief, and ever musing care, Distressful pain, and poverty perplext?-- What is there here, but tombs and monuments-- Tyrants--who misery spread through every shore; Wide wasting wars, the scourge of innocence; Fevers and plagues, with all their noxious store? Before we called this wrangling world our home, In undisturbed abodes we sweetly slept: But when dame Nature made that world our doom, 'Twas then our troubles came--and then we wept! Though humbled now, disheartened, or distressed, Yet, when returning to the peaceful ground, With heroes, kings, and conquerors we shall rest; Shall sleep as sweetly, and no doubt, as sound. Ne'er shall we hope to see the day-light spring Or from the up-lifted window lean to hear (Fore-runner of the scarlet-mantled morn) The early note of wakeful Chanticleer! Oblivion there, expands her raven wing:-- We soon must go where all the dead are gone, Trace the dull path, explore the gloomy road To that dark country, where I see no dawn. Then why these sobs, these useless floods of woe, That vainly flow for the departed dead? If doomed to wander on the coasts below, What are to them these floods of grief you shed? Since heaven in rapture doth their hours employ-- If empty sighs, or groans, could reach them there, These funeral howls would damp their heaven of joy, Would make them wretched, and renew their care. The joys of wine, immortal as my theme, To days of mirth the aspiring soul invite: Life, void of this, a punishment I deem, A Greenland winter, robbed of heat and light. Ah! envy not, ye sages too precise, The drop from life's gay tree, that kills our woe-- Noah himself, the wary and the wise, A vineyard planted--and the vines did grow. (Of social soul was he)--the grape he pressed, And drank the juice, oblivious to his care: Sorrow he banished from his place of rest, And sighs, and sextons, had no business there. Such bliss be our's through every changing scene: The jovial face bespeaks the glowing heart; If heaven be joy, wine is to heaven a-kin, Since wine, on earth, can heavenly joys impart. Mere glow-worms are we all--a moment shine!-- I, like the rest, in giddy circles run, And grief shall say, when I this breath resign, His glass is empty, and his sermon done! [89] Freneau seems deliberately to have manufactured this poem for his edition of 1795 from fragments of his discarded poems, the _House of Night_ and the _Jamaica Funeral_. It is made up as follows: _Jamaica Funeral_, stanzas 44-46; _House of Night_ 73, 132-134, 139; _Jamaica Funeral_ 47; _House of Night_ 76, 77; an original stanza; _House of Night_ 48, 34, 116, 30, 43; _Jamaica Funeral_ 34, 35, 40, 48-51. Many of these stanzas are much changed. Text from the 1809 edition. ON A LEGISLATIVE ACT[90]