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Lettered inside image: "7 | How richly were my noontide trances hung | With gorgeous tapestries of pictured joys, | Joy behind joy, in endless perspective! | *Till at Death's toll, whose restless iron tongue | Calls daily for his millions at a meal, | Starting I 'woke, and found myself undone. | Where's now my frenzy's pompous furniture? | The cobweb'd cottage, with its ragged wall | Of mould'ring mud, is royalty to me: | The spider's most attenuated thread, | Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie | On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze. | O ye blest scenes of permanent delight! | Full, above measure! lasting, beyond bound! | A perpetuity of bliss, is bliss. | Could you, so rich in rapture, fear an end, | That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy, | And quite unparadise the realms of light. | Safe are you lodged above these rolling spheres; | The baleful influence of whose giddy dance | Sheds sad vicissitude on all beneath. | Here teems with revolutions every hour, | And rarely for the better; or the best, | More mortal than the common births of fate: | Each moment has its sickle, emulous | Of time's enormous scythe, whose ample sweep | Strikes empires from the root; each moment plays | His little weapon in the narrower sphere | Of sweet domestick comfort, and cuts down | The fairest bloom of sublunary bliss."; lower left: "inv. & sc | WB"; lower left: "Pubd. June 27, 1796, by R. Edwards, No. 142 New Bond Street."; Lettered on verso, 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."