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　　COMPOSED AT MIDNIGHT

　　(1797? Text of 1818)

　　From broken visions of perturbed rest

　　I wake, and start, and fear to sleep again.

　　How total a privation of all sounds,

　　Sights, and familiar objects, man, bird, beast,

　　Herb, tree, or flower, and prodigal light of heaven.

　　'Twere some relief to catch the drowsy cry

　　Of the mechanic watchman, or the noise

　　Of revel reeling home from midnight cups.

　　Those are the moanings of the dying man,

　　Who lies in the upper chamber; restless moans,

　　And interrupted only by a cough

　　Consumptive, torturing the wasted lungs.

　　So in the bitterness of death he lies,

　　And waits in anguish for the morning's light.

　　What can that do for him, or what restore?

　　Short taste, faint sense, affecting notices,

　　And little images of pleasures past,

　　Of health, and active life—health not yet slain,

　　Nor the other grace of life, a good name, sold

　　For sin's black wages. On his tedious bed

　　He writhes, and turns him from the accusing light,

　　And finds no comfort in the sun, but says

　　"When night comes I shall get a little rest."

　　Some few groans more, death comes, and there an end.

　　'Tis darkness and conjecture all beyond;

　　Weak Nature fears, though Charity must hope,

　　And Fancy, most licentious on such themes

　　Where decent reverence well had kept her mute,

　　Hath o'er-stock'd hell with devils, and brought down,

　　By her enormous fablings and mad lies,

　　Discredit on the gospel's serious truths

　　And salutary fears. The man of parts,

　　Poet, or prose declaimer, on his couch

　　Lolling, like one indifferent, fabricates

　　A heaven of gold, where he, and such as he,

　　Their heads encompassed with crowns, their heels

　　With fine wings garlanded, shall tread the stars

　　Beneath their feet, heaven's pavement, far removed

　　From damned spirits, and the torturing cries

　　Of men, his breth'ren, fashioned of the earth,

　　As he was, nourish'd with the self-same bread,

　　Belike his kindred or companions once—

　　Through everlasting ages now divorced,

　　In chains and savage torments to repent

　　Short years of folly on earth. Their groans unheard

　　In heav'n, the saint nor pity feels, nor care,

　　For those thus sentenced—pity might disturb

　　The delicate sense and most divine repose

　　Of spirits angelical. Blessed be God,

　　The measure of his judgments is not fixed

　　By man's erroneous standard. He discerns

　　No such inordinate difference and vast

　　Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom

　　Such disproportion'd fates. Compared with him,

　　No man on earth is holy called: they best

　　Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet

　　Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield

　　To him of his own works the praise, his due.

　　Poems at the End of John Woodvil,

　　1802 The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 4