Page:Miscellaneous Plays 1.pdf/132

112

Methinks, by the flow progress of this hand, I should have liv'd an age since yesterday, And have an age to live. Still on it creeps, Each little moment at another's heels, Till hours, days, years, and ages are made up Of such small parts as these, and men look back, Worn and bewilder'd, wond'ring how it is. Thou trav'llest like a ship in the wide ocean, Which hath no bounding shore to mark its progress; O Time! ere long I shall have done with thee. When next thou leadest on thy nightly shades, Tho' many a weary heart thy steps may count, Thy midnight 'larum shall not waken me. Then shall I be a thing, at thought of which The roused foul swells boundless and sublime, Or wheels in wildness of unfathom'd fears: A thought; a consciousness; unbodied spirit. Who but would shrink from this? It goes hard with thee, Social connected man; it goes hard with thee To be turned out into a state unknown, From all thy kind, an individual being. But wherefore shrink? came we not thus to earth? And he who sent, prepar'd reception for us. Ay, glorious are the things that are prepar'd, As we believe!—yet, heaven pardon me! I fain would sculk beneath my wonted cov'ring, Mean as it is. Ah, Time! when next thou fill'st thy nightly term, Where shall I be? Fye! fye upon thee still! E'en where weak infancy, and tim'rous age,