Lorenzo! hear, pause, ponder, and pronounce. Just is this history? If such is man, Mankind's historian, though divine, might weep. And dares Lorenzo smile!--I know thee proud; For once let Pride befriend thee; Pride looks pale At such a scene, and sighs for something more. Amid thy boasts, presumptions, and displays, 850 And art thou then a shadow? less than shade? A nothing? less than nothing? To have been, And not to be, is lower than unborn. Art thou ambitious? Why then make the worm Thine equal? Runs thy taste of pleasure high? Why patronise sure death of every joy? Charm riches? Why choose beggary in the grave, Of every hope a bankrupt! and for ever? Ambition, pleasure, avarice, persuade thee To make that world of glory, rapture, wealth, 860 They lately proved,[37] the soul's supreme desire. What art thou made of? Rather, how unmade? Great Nature's master-appetite destroy'd! Is endless life, and happiness, despised? Or both wish'd, here, where neither can be found? Such man's perverse, eternal war with Heaven! Darest thou persist? And is there nought on earth But a long train of transitory forms, Rising, and breaking, millions in an hour? Bubbles of a fantastic deity, blown up 870 In sport, and then in cruelty destroy'd? Oh! for what crime, unmerciful Lorenzo! Destroys thy scheme the whole of human race? Kind is fell Lucifer, compared to thee: 874 Oh! spare this waste of being half divine; And vindicate th' economy of Heaven. Heaven is all love; all joy in giving joy: It never had created, but to bless: And shall it, then, strike off the list of life, A being bless'd, or worthy so to be? Heaven starts at an annihilating God. Is that, all Nature starts at, thy desire? 882 Art such a clod to wish thyself all clay? What is that dreadful wish?--The dying groan Of Nature, murder'd by the blackest guilt. What deadly poison has thy nature drank? To Nature undebauch'd no shock so great; Nature's first wish is endless happiness; Annihilation is an after-thought, A monstrous wish, unborn till virtue dies. 890 And, oh! what depth of horror lies enclosed! For non-existence no man ever wish'd, But, first, he wish'd the Deity destroy'd. If so; what words are dark enough to draw Thy picture true? The darkest are too fair. Beneath what baleful planet, in what hour Of desperation, by what fury's aid, In what infernal posture of the soul, All hell invited, and all hell in joy At such a birth, a birth so near of kin, 900 Did thy foul fancy whelp so black a scheme Of hopes abortive, faculties half-blown, And deities begun, reduced to dust? There's nought (thou say'st) but one eternal flux Of feeble essences, tumultuous driven