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Lettered inside image: "4 | An heir of glory! a frail child of dust! | Helpless immortal! insect infinite! | A worm! a God!--I tremble at myself, | And in myself am lost! At home a stranger, | Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast, | And wond'ring at her own: how reason reels! | O what a miracle to man is man, | Triumphantly distress'd! what joy, what dread! | Alternately transported, and alarm'd! | What can preserve my life? or what destroy? | An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave-- | Legions of angels can't confine me there. | 'Tis past conjecture: all things rise in proof. | While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread: | *What, though my soul fantastick measures trod | O'er fairy fields; or mourn'd along the gloom | Of pathless woods; or down the craggy steep | Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool; | Or scaled the cliff; or danced on hollow winds, | With antick shapes wild natives of the brain? | Her ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her nature | Of subtler essence than the trodden clod; | Active, aerial, tow'ring, unconfined, | Unfetter'd with her gross companion's fall. | Even silent night proclaims my soul immortal; | Even silent night proclaims eternal day. | For human weal, Heaven husbands all events; | Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain. | Why then their loss deplore that are not lost? | Why wanders wretched thought their tombs around,"; lower left: "Pubd. June 27th 1796, by R. Edwards, No. 142 New Bond Street."; Lettered on facing page: "5 | In infidel distress? Are angels there? | Slumbers, raked up in dust, ethereal fire? | They live! they greatly live a life on earth | Unkindled, unconceived! and from an eye | Of tenderness, let heavenly pity fall | On me, more justly number'd with the dead. | This is the desart, this the solitude: | How populous, how vital, is the grave! | This is creation's melancholy vault, | The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom; | The land of apparitions, empty shades! | All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond | Is substance: the reverse is folly's creed: | How solid all, where change shall be no more! | This is the bud of being, the dim dawn, | 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, | The future embryo, slumb'ring 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: | Pris'ner of earth, and pent beneath the moon, | Here pinions all his wishes; wing'd by heaven"