Or is it virtue to be conquer'd here? This hoary cheek a train of tears bedews; And each tear mourns its own distinct distress; And each distress, distinctly mourn'd, demands Of grief still more, as heighten'd by the whole. A grief like this proprietors excludes: Not friends alone such obsequies deplore; 250 They make mankind the mourner; carry sighs Far as the fatal fame can wing her way; And turn the gayest thought of gayest age, 253 Down their right channel, through the vale of death. The vale of death! that hush'd Cimmerian vale, Where darkness, brooding o'er unfinish'd fates With raven wing incumbent, waits the day (Dread day!) that interdicts all future change! That subterranean world, that land of ruin! Fit walk, Lorenzo, for proud human thought! There let my thought expatiate, and explore 261 Balsamic truths, and healing sentiments, Of all most wanted, and most welcome, here. For gay Lorenzo's sake, and for thy own, My soul! "the fruits of dying friends survey; Expose the vain of life; weigh life and death; Give death his eulogy; thy fear subdue; And labour that first palm of noble minds, A manly scorn of terror from the tomb." This harvest reap from thy Narcissa's grave. 270 As poets feign'd from Ajax' streaming blood Arose, with grief inscribed, a mournful flower; Let wisdom blossom from my mortal wound. And first, of dying friends; what fruit from these? It brings us more than triple aid; an aid To chase our thoughtlessness, fear, pride, and guilt. Our dying friends come o'er us like a cloud, To damp our brainless ardours; and abate That glare of life, which often blinds the wise. Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth 280 Our rugged pass to death; to break those bars Of terror, and abhorrence, nature throws Cross our obstructed way; and, thus to make Welcome, as safe, our port from every storm. Each friend by fate snatch'd from us, is a plume Pluck'd from the wing of human vanity, Which makes us stoop from our aerial heights, 287 And, damp'd with omen of our own decease, On drooping pinions of ambition lower'd, Just skim earth's surface, ere we break it up, O'er putrid earth to scratch a little dust, And save the world a nuisance. Smitten friends Are angels sent on errands full of love; For us they languish, and for us they die: And shall they languish, shall they die, in vain? Ungrateful, shall we grieve their hovering shades, Which wait the revolution in our hearts? Shall we disdain their silent soft address; Their posthumous advice, and pious prayer? Senseless, as herds that graze their hallow'd graves, 300 Tread under foot their agonies and groans; Frustrate their anguish, and destroy their deaths? Lorenzo! no; the thought of death indulge;