Thomson and Pollok: containing The seasons, by James Thomson, and The course of time, by Robert Pollok, A. M.

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218

THE COURSE OF TIME.

And moulder into dust among vile worms,
And leave no whispering of a name on earth!Such thought was cold about the heart and chilled
The blood. Who could endure it? who could choose,
Without a struggle, to be swept away
From all remembrance, and have part no more
With living men? Philosophy failed here,
And self-approving pride. Hence it became
The aim of most, and main pursuit, to win
A name, to leave some vestige as they passed,
That following ages might discern, they once
Had been on earth, and acted something there.
Many the roads they took, the plans they tried.
The man of science to the shade retired,
And laid his head upon his hand, in mood
Of awful thoughtfulness, and dived, and dived
Again, deeper and deeper still, to sound
The cause remote; resolved, before he died,
To make some grand discovery, by which
He should be known to all posterity.
And in the silent vigils of the night,
When uninspired men reposed, the bard,
Ghastly of countenance, and from his eye
Oft streaming wild unearthly fire, sat up,
And sent imagination forth, and searched
The far and near, heaven, earth, and gloomy hell,
For fiction new, for thought, unthought before;
And when some curious, rare idea peered
Upon his mind, he dipped his hasty pen,
And by the glimmering lamp, or moonlight beam
That through his lattice peeped, wrote fondly down,
What seemed in truth imperishable song.