660 What folly can be ranker? Like our shadows, Our wishes lengthen, as our sun declines. 662 No wish should loiter, then, this side the grave. Our hearts should leave the world, before the knell Calls for our carcases to mend the soil. Enough to live in tempest, die in port; Age should fly concourse, cover in retreat Defects of judgment; and the will subdue; Walk thoughtful on the silent, solemn shore Of that vast ocean it must sail so soon; 670 And put good works on board; and wait the wind That shortly blows us into worlds unknown: If unconsider'd too, a dreadful scene! All should be prophets to themselves; foresee Their future fate; their future fate foretaste; This art would waste the bitterness of death. The thought of death alone, the fear destroys. A disaffection to that precious thought Is more than midnight darkness on the soul, Which sleeps beneath it, on a precipice, 680 Puff'd off by the first blast, and lost for ever. Dost ask, Lorenzo, why so warmly press'd, By repetition hammer'd on thine ear, The thought of death? That thought is the machine, The grand machine, that heaves us from the dust, And rears us into men. That thought, plied home, Will soon reduce the ghastly precipice O'er-hanging hell, will soften the descent, And gently slope our passage to the grave; How warmly to be wish'd! What heart of flesh 690 Would trifle with tremendous? dare extremes? Yawn o'er the fate of infinite? What hand, Beyond the blackest brand of censure bold, (To speak a language too well known to thee), Would at a moment give its all to chance, 695 And stamp the die for an eternity? Aid me, Narcissa! aid me to keep pace With Destiny; and ere her scissors cut My thread of life, to break this tougher thread Of moral death, that ties me to the world. Sting thou my slumbering reason to send forth A thought of observation on the foe; 702 To sally; and survey the rapid march Of his ten thousand messengers to man; Who, Jehu-like, behind him turns them all. All accident apart, by Nature sign'd, My warrant is gone out, though dormant yet; Perhaps behind one moment lurks my fate. Must I then forward only look for Death? Backward I turn mine eye, and find him there. 710 Man is a self-survivor every year. Man, like a stream, is in perpetual flow. Death's a destroyer of quotidian[23] prey. My youth, my noontide, his; my yesterday; The bold invader shares the present hour. Each moment on the former shuts the grave. While man is growing, life is in decrease; And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb. Our birth is nothing but our death begun; As tapers waste, that instant they take fire. 720