Night Thoughts

     Happy! did sorrow seize such alone:
Not prudence can defend, or virtue save;
Disease invades the chastest temperance;
And punishment the guiltless; and alarm,
Thro' thickest shades pursues the fond of peace:
Man's caution often into danger turns,
And his guard falling, crushes him to death.
Not Happiness itself makes good her name;
Our very wishes give us not our wish:
How distant oft the thing we doat on most,
From that for which we doat felicity?
The smoothest course of nature has its pains,
And truest friends, thro' error, wound our rest.
Without misfortune, what calamities?
And what hostilities, without a foe?
Nor are foes wanting to the best on earth.
But endless is the list of human ills;
And sighs might sooner fail, than cause to sigh.
— Reverend Dr. Edward Young, The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality, from "Night the First," p. 8.

Beware, LORENZO! a slow-sudden death
How dreadful that deliberate surprize?
Be wise to day; 'tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life,
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.
     Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears
The palm, "That all men are about to live,"
For ever on the brink of being born.
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They, one day, shall not drivel; and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise;
At least, their own; their future selves applauds.
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead!
Time lodg'd in their own hands is Folly's vail;
That lodg'd in Fate's, to wisdom they consign;
The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone;
'Tis not in Folly, not to scorn a fool;
And scarce in human wisdom to do more.
All promise is poor dilatory man,
And that thro' every stage: When young, indeed,
In full content we sometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish,
As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise:
At thirty man suspects himself a fool:
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan:
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves; and re-resolves: Then dies the same.
     And why? Because he thinks himself immortal:
All men think all men mortal, but themselves:....
— Reverend Dr. Edward Young, Ibid., pp. 11-12.

O ye LORENZOS of our age! who deem
One moment unamus'd, a misery
Not made for feeble man! who call aloud
For every bawble, drivell'd o'er by sense;
For rattles, and conceits of every cast,
For change of follies, and relays of joy,
To drag you, patient, through the tedious length
Of a short winter's day; — say sages! say,
Wit's oracles! say, dreamers of gay dreams!
How will you weather an eternal night.
Where such expedients fail? where wit's a fool,
Mirth mourns, dreams vanish, laughter drops a tear?
— Reverend Dr. Edward Young, Ibid.,
from "Night the Second," pp. 20-21