Heaven gives the needful, but neglected, call. What day, what hour, but knocks at human hearts, To wake the soul to sense of future scenes? 3 Deaths stand, like Mercuries, in every way, And kindly point us to our journey's end. Pope, who could'st make immortals! art thou dead? I give thee joy: nor will I take my leave; So soon to follow. Man but dives in death; Dives from the sun, in fairer day to rise; The grave, his subterranean road to bliss. 10 Yes, infinite indulgence plann'd it so; Through various parts our glorious story runs; Time gives the preface, endless age unrolls The volume (ne'er unroll'd!) of human fate. This, earth and skies already[32] have proclaim'd. The world's a prophecy of worlds to come; And who, what God foretells (who speaks in things, Still louder than in words) shall dare deny? If Nature's arguments appear too weak, Turn a new leaf, and stronger read in Man. 20 If man sleeps on, untaught by what he sees, Can he prove infidel to what he feels? He, whose blind thought futurity denies, Unconscious bears, Bellerophon![33] like thee, His own indictment; he condemns himself; Who reads his bosom, reads immortal life; Or, Nature, there, imposing on her sons, Has written fables; man was made a lie. Why Discontent for ever harbour'd there? Incurable consumption of our peace! 30 Resolve me, why, the cottager, and king, He, whom sea-sever'd realms obey, and he Who steals his whole dominion from the waste, Repelling winter blasts with mud and straw 34 Disquieted alike, draw sigh for sigh, In fate so distant, in complaint so near? Is it, that things terrestrial can't content? Deep in rich pasture will thy flocks complain? Not so; but to their master is denied To share their sweet serene. Man, ill at ease, In this, not his own place, this foreign field, Where Nature fodders him with other food, 42 Than was ordain'd his cravings to suffice, Poor in abundance, famish'd at a feast, Sighs on for something more, when most enjoy'd. Is Heaven, then, kinder to thy flocks than thee? Not so; thy pasture richer, but remote; In part, remote; for that remoter part Man bleats from instinct, though perhaps, debauch'd By sense, his reason sleeps, nor dreams the cause. 50 The cause how obvious, when his reason wakes! His grief is but his grandeur in disguise; And discontent is immortality. Shall sons of ether, shall the blood of heaven, Set up their hopes on earth, and stable here, With brutal acquiescence in the mire? Lorenzo, no! they shall be nobly pain'd; The glorious foreigners, distress'd, shall sigh On thrones; and thou congratulate the sigh: Man's misery declares him born for bliss; 60