Drives headlong towards the precipice of death; 122 Death, most our dread; death thus more dreadful made: Oh, what a riddle of absurdity! Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot wheels; How heavily we drag the load of life! Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain, It makes us wander; wander earth around, To fly that tyrant, thought. As Atlas groan'd The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour. 130 We cry for mercy to the next amusement; The next amusement mortgages our fields; Slight inconvenience! prisons hardly frown, From hateful time if prisons set us free. Yet when Death kindly tenders us relief, We call him cruel; years to moments shrink, Ages to years. The telescope is turn'd. To man's false optics (from his folly false), Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings, And seems to creep, decrepit with his age; 140 Behold him, when pass'd by; what then is seen, But his broad pinions swifter than the winds? And all mankind, in contradiction strong, Rueful, aghast! cry out on his career. Leave to thy foes these errors and these ills; To Nature just, their cause and cure explore. Not short Heaven's bounty, boundless our expence; No niggard, Nature; men are prodigals. We waste, not use our time; we breathe, not live. Time wasted is existence, used is life. 150 And bare existence, man, to live ordain'd, Wrings, and oppresses with enormous weight. And why? since time was given for use, not waste, Enjoin'd to fly; with tempest, tide, and stars, To keep his speed, nor ever wait for man; Time's use was doom'd a pleasure: waste, a pain; 156 That man might feel his error, if unseen: And, feeling, fly to labour for his cure; Not, blundering, split on idleness for ease. Life's cares are comforts; such by Heaven design'd; He that has none, must make them, or be wretched. Cares are employments; and without employ The soul is on a rack; the rack of rest, 163 To souls most adverse; action all their joy. Here then, the riddle, mark'd above, unfolds; Then time turns torment, when man turns a fool. We rave, we wrestle, with great Nature's plan; We thwart the Deity; and 'tis decreed, Who thwart his will shall contradict their own. Hence our unnatural quarrels with ourselves; 170 Our thoughts at enmity; our bosom-broils; We push Time from us, and we wish him back; Lavish of lustrums, and yet fond of life; Life we think long, and short; death seek, and shun; Body and soul, like peevish man and wife, United jar, and yet are loth to part. Oh the dark days of vanity! while here, How tasteless! and how terrible, when gone! Gone! they ne'er go; when past, they haunt us still; The spirit walks of every day deceased; 180 And smiles an angel, or a fury frowns.