O thou most awful being, and most vain! Thy will, how frail! how glorious is thy power! 2078 Though dread eternity has sown her seeds Of bliss, and woe, in thy despotic breast; Though heaven, and hell, depend upon thy choice; A butterfly comes cross, and both are fled. Is this the picture of a rational? This horrid image, shall it be most just? Lorenzo! no: it cannot,--shall not, be, If there is force in reason; or, in sounds Chanted beneath the glimpses of the moon, A magic, at this planetary hour, When slumber locks the general lip, and dreams Through senseless mazes hunt souls uninspired. 2090 Attend--the sacred mysteries begin-- My solemn night-born adjuration hear; Hear, and I'll raise thy spirit from the dust; While the stars gaze on this enchantment new; Enchantment, not infernal, but divine! "By silence, Death's peculiar attribute; By darkness, Guilt's inevitable doom; By Darkness, and by Silence, sisters dread! That draw the curtain round Night's ebon throne, And raise ideas, solemn as the scene! 2100 By Night, and all of awful, Night presents To thought, or sense (of awful much, to both, The goddess brings)! By these her trembling fires, Like Vesta's, ever burning; and, like hers, Sacred to thoughts immaculate, and pure! By these bright orators, that prove, and praise, And press thee to revere, the Deity; Perhaps, too, aid thee, when revered a while, To reach his throne; as stages of the soul, Through which, at different periods, she shall pass, 2110 Refining gradual, for her final height, And purging off some dross at every sphere! 2112 By this dark pall thrown o'er the silent world! By the world's kings, and kingdoms, most renown'd, From short ambition's zenith set for ever; Sad presage to vain boasters, now in bloom! By the long list of swift mortality, From Adam downward to this evening knell, Which midnight waves in Fancy's startled eye; And shocks her with an hundred centuries, 2120 Round Death's black banner throng'd, in human thought! By thousands, now, resigning their last breath, And calling thee--wert thou so wise to hear! By tombs o'er tombs arising; human earth Ejected, to make room for--human earth; The monarch's terror! and the sexton's trade! By pompous obsequies that shun the day, The torch funereal, and the nodding plume, Which makes poor man's humiliation proud; Boast of our ruin! triumph of our dust! 2130 By the damp vault that weeps o'er royal bones; And the pale lamp that shows the ghastly dead, More ghastly, through the thick incumbent gloom! By visits (if there are) from darker scenes, The gliding spectre! and the groaning grave! By groans, and graves, and miseries that groan For the grave's shelter! By desponding men,