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Lettered inside image: "8 | Bliss! sublunary bliss!--proud words, and vain! | Implicit treason to divine decree! | A bold invasion of the rights of heaven! | I clasp'd the phantoms, and I found them air: | O had I weigh'd it ere my fond embrace, | What darts of agony had miss'd my heart! | *Death! great proprietor of all! 'tis thine | To tread out empire, and to quench the stars: | The sun himself by thy permission shines; | And, one day, thou shalt pluck him from his sphere. | Amidst such mighty plunder, why exhaust | Thy partial quiver on a mark so mean? | Why thy peculiar rancour wreak'd on me? | Insatiate archer! could not one suffice? | Thy shaft flew thrice--and thrice my peace was slain; | And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn. | O Cynthia! why so pale? dost thou lament | Thy wretched neighbor? grieve to see thy wheel | Of ceaseless change outwhirl'd in human life? | How wanes my borrow'd bliss from fortune's smile! | Precarious courtesy! not virtue's sure, | Self-given, solar ray of sound delight. | In every varied posture, place, and hour, | How widow'd every thought of every joy! | Thought, busy thought! too busy for my peace, | Through the dark postern of time long elapsed, | Led softly; by the stillness of the night, | Led like a murderer, and such it proves; | Strays, wretched rover! o'er the pleasing past; | In quest of wretchedness perversely strays;"; lower left: "inv & sc | WB"; lower left: "Pubd. June 27, 1796, by R. Edwards, 142 New Bond Street."; Lettered on facing page: "9 | And finds all desert now; and meets the ghosts | Of my departed joys, a numerous train! | I rue the riches of my former fate: | Sweet comfort's blasted clusters I lament: | I tremble at the blessings once so dear; | And every pleasure pains me to the heart. | Yet why complain? or why complain for one? | Hangs out the sun his lustre but for me, | The single man? are angels all beside? | I mourn for millions--'tis the common lot: | In this shape, or in that, has fate entail'd | The mother's throes on all of women born, | Not more the children, than sure heirs of pain. | War, famine, pest, volcano, storm, and fire, | Intestine broils, oppression, with her heart | Wrapp'd up in triple brass, besiege mankind: | GOD's image, disinherited of day, | Here, plunged in mines, forgets a sun was made; | There, beings, deathless as their haughty lord, | Are hammer'd to the galling oar for life; | And plough the winter's wave, and reap despair: | Some, for hard masters broken under arms, | In battle lopp'd away, with half their limbs | Beg bitter bread through realms their valour saved, | If so the tyrant, or his minions doom. | Want and incurable disease, fell pair! | On hopeless multitudes remorseless seize | At once; and make a refuge of the grave: | How groaning hospitals eject their dead! | What numbers groan for sad admission there!"