The twilight of our day, the vestibule; Life's theatre as yet is shut, and death, Strong death, alone can heave the massy bar, This gross impediment of clay remove, And make us embryos of existence free. From real life, but little more remote Is he, not yet a candidate for light, 130 The future embryo, slumbering in his sire. Embryos we must be, till we burst the shell, Yon ambient azure shell, and spring to life, The life of gods, O transport! and of man. Yet man, fool man! here buries all his thoughts; Inters celestial hopes without one sigh. Prisoner of earth, and pent beneath the moon, Here pinions all his wishes; wing'd by heaven To fly at infinite; and reach it there, Where seraphs gather immortality, 140 On life's fair tree, fast by the throne of God. What golden joys ambrosial clustering glow In His full beam, and ripen for the just, Where momentary ages are no more! Where time, and pain, and chance, and death, expire! And is it in the flight of threescore years To push eternity from human thought, And smother souls immortal in the dust? A soul immortal, spending all her fires, Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness 150 Thrown into tumult, raptured, or alarm'd, 151 At aught this scene can threaten or indulge, Resembles ocean into tempest wrought, To waft a feather, or to drown a fly. Where falls this censure? It o'erwhelms myself; How was my heart encrusted by the world! O how self-fetter'd was my grovelling soul! How, like a worm, was I wrapt round and round In silken thought, which reptile fancy spun, Till darken'd reason lay quite clouded o'er 160 With soft conceit of endless comfort here, Nor yet put forth her wings to reach the skies! Night-visions may befriend (as sung above): Our waking dreams are fatal. How I dream'd Of things impossible! (could sleep do more?) Of joys perpetual in perpetual change! Of stable pleasures on the tossing wave! Eternal sunshine in the storms of life! How richly were my noontide trances hung With gorgeous tapestries of pictured joys! 170 Joy behind joy, in endless perspective! Till at death's toll, whose restless iron tongue Calls daily for his millions at a meal, Starting I woke, and found myself undone. Where now my phrensy's pompous furniture? The cobwebb'd cottage, with its ragged wall Of mouldering mud, is royalty to me! The spider's most attenuated thread Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze. 180 O ye blest scenes of permanent delight! Full above measure! lasting beyond bound! A perpetuity of bliss is bliss. Could you, so rich in rapture, fear an end, That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy, 185