But hope, ere long, my midnight dream will wake Your hearts, and teach your wisdom--to be wise: For why should souls immortal, made for bliss, E'er wish (and wish in vain!) that souls could die? What ne'er can die, oh! grant to live; and crown 1400 The wish, and aim, and labour of the skies; Increase, and enter on the joys of heaven: Thus shall my title pass a sacred seal, Receive an imprimatur from above, While angels shout--An Infidel Reclaimed! To close, Lorenzo! spite of all my pains, Still seems it strange, that thou should'st live for ever? Is it less strange, that thou should'st live at all? This is a miracle; and that no more. Who gave beginning, can exclude an end. 1410 Deny thou art: then, doubt if thou shalt be. A miracle with miracles enclosed, Is man; and starts his faith at what is strange? What less than wonders, from the Wonderful; 1414 What less than miracles, from God, can flow? Admit a God--that mystery supreme! That Cause uncaused! all other wonders cease; Nothing is marvellous for Him to do: Deny Him--all is mystery besides; Millions of mysteries! each darker far, Than that thy wisdom would, unwisely, shun. If weak thy faith, why choose the harder side? 1422 We nothing know, but what is marvellous; Yet what is marvellous, we can't believe. So weak our reason, and so great our God, What most surprises in the sacred page, Or full as strange, or stranger, must be true. Faith is not reason's labour, but repose. To faith, and virtue, why so backward, man? From hence:--the present strongly strikes us all; 1430 The future, faintly: can we, then, be men? If men, Lorenzo! the reverse is right. Reason is man's peculiar: Sense, the brute's. The present is the scanty realm of Sense; The future, Reason's empire unconfined: On that expending all her godlike power, She plans, provides, expatiates, triumphs, there; There, builds her blessings; there, expects her praise; And nothing asks of Fortune, or of men. And what is Reason? Be she thus defined; 1440 Reason is upright stature in the soul. Oh! be a man;--and strive to be a god. "For what? (thou say'st)--to damp the joys of life?" No; to give heart and substance to thy joys. That tyrant, Hope; mark how she domineers; She bids us quit realities, for dreams; Safety and peace, for hazard and alarm; That tyrant o'er the tyrants of the soul, 1448 She bids Ambition quit its taken prize, Spurn the luxuriant branch on which it sits, Though bearing crowns, to spring at distant game; And plunge in toils and dangers--for repose. If hope precarious, and of things, when gain'd, Of little moment, and as little stay, Can sweeten toils and dangers into joys; What then, that hope, which nothing can defeat,