EXISTENCE, CONSIDERED IN ITSELF, NO BLESSING

From the Latin of Palingenius

(1832)

The Poet, after a seeming approval of suicide, from a consideration of the cares and crimes of life, finally rejecting it, discusses the negative importance of existence, contemplated in itself, without reference to good or evil.

Of these sad truths consideration had—­
Thou shalt not fear to quit this world so mad,
So wicked; but the tenet rather hold
Of wise Calanus, and his followers old,
Who with their own wills their own freedom wrought,
And by self-slaughter their dismissal sought
From this dark den of crime—­this horrid lair
Of men, that savager than monsters are;
And scorning longer, in this tangled mesh
Of ills, to wait on perishable flesh,
Did with their desperate hands anticipate
The too, too slow relief of lingering fate. 
And if religion did not stay thine hand,
And God, and Plato’s wise behests, withstand,
I would in like case counsel thee to throw
This senseless burden off, of cares below. 
Not wine, as wine, men choose, but as it came
From such or such a vintage:  ’tis the same
With life, which simply must be understood
A black negation, if it be not good. 
But if ’tis wretched all—­as men decline
And loath the sour lees of corrupted wine—­
’Tis so to be contemn’d.  Merely TO BE
Is not a boon to seek, nor ill to flee,
Seeing that every vilest little Thing
Has it in common, from a gnat’s small wing,
A creeping worm, down to the moveless stone,
And crumbling bark from trees.  Unless TO BE,
And TO BE BLEST, be one, I do not see
In bare existence, as existence, aught
That’s worthy to be loved, or to be sought.

TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ.

On the New Edition of his “Pleasures of Memory"

(1833)

When thy gay book hath paid its proud devoirs,
Poetic friend, and fed with luxury
The eye of pampered aristocracy
In glittering drawing-rooms and gilt boudoirs,
O’erlaid with comments of pictorial art,
However rich and rare, yet nothing leaving
Of healthful action to the soul-conceiving
Of the true reader—­yet a nobler part
Awaits thy work, already classic styled. 
Cheap-clad, accessible, in homeliest show
The modest beauty through the land shall go
From year to year, and render life more mild;
Refinement to the poor man’s hearth shall give,
And in the moral heart of England live.

TO CLARA N[OVELLO]

(1834)

The Gods have made me most unmusical,
With feelings that respond not to the call
Of stringed harp, or voice—­obtuse and mute
To hautboy, sackbut, dulcimer, and flute;
King David’s lyre, that made the madness flee
From Saul, had been but a jew’s-harp to me: 
Theorbos, violins, French horns, guitars,