’Tis impious in a good man to be sad

Great let me call him, for he conquered me.

Life is the desert, life the solitude; Death joins us to the great majority.

In records that defy the tooth of time.

Ah! what is human life? How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade, Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd! The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth; Too subtle is the movement to be seen; Yet soon the hour is up—and we are gone.

Creation sleeps! 'Tis as the general pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause; An awful pause! prophetic of her end.

Souls made of fire, and children of the sun, With whom revenge is virtue.