YCBA Collections Search

Lettered inside image: "41 | On this side death; and points them out to men: | A lecture silent, but of sovereign power! | To vice, confusion; and to virtue, peace. | Whatever farce the boastful hero plays, | Virtue alone has majesty in death; | And greater still, the more the tyrant frowns: | PHILANDER! he severely frown'd on thee: | 'No warning given--unceremonious fate! | 'A sudden rush from life's meridian joys! | 'A wrench from all we love--from all we are! | 'A restless bed of pain! a plunge opaque | 'Beyond conjecture! feeble nature's dread! | 'Strong reason's shudder at the dark unknown! | 'A sun extinguish'd! a just opening grave! | 'And oh! the last--last--what? can words express? | 'Thought reach? the last, last--silence of a friend!' | Where are those horrors, that amazement where, | This hideous group of ills, which singly shock? | Demand from man--I thought him man till now. | Through nature's wreck, through vanquish'd agonies, | Like the stars struggling through this midnight gloom, | What gleams of joy! what more than human peace! | Where, the frail mortal? the poor abject worm? | No, not in death, the mortal to be found. | His conduct is a legacy for all, | Richer than Mammon's for his single heir: | His comforters he comforts; great in ruin, | With unreluctant grandeur gives, not yields | His soul sublime; and closes with his fate."; lower right: "London: Pub. Mar. 22, 1797, by R. Edwards, 142 New Bond Street."