Page:The Bible of Nature, and Substance of Virtue.djvu/39

Besides, come tell mo why a soul should grow,
And rise mature, as all the members do,
If 'twere not born? When feeble age comes on,
Why is't in haste, and eager to be gone?
What does it fear, it makes such haste away,
To be imprison'd in the stinking clay?
What doth it fear the aged heap's decay?
'Tis fond to think, that whilst wild beasts beget,
Or bear their young, a thousand souls should wait,
Expect the falling body, fight and strive,
Which first shall enter in, and make it live.
But now suppose the soul, when separate,
Could live, and think, in a divided state:
Yet what is that to us, who are the whole,
A frame compos'd of body, join'd with soul?
Nay, grant the scatter'd ashes of our urn
Be join'd again, and life and sense return:
Yet how can that concern us, when 'tis done,
Since all the memory of past life is gone?
Now we ne'er joy, nor grieve, to think that we
Were heretofore, nor what those things will be,
Which fram'd from us, the following age shall see.
When we revolve, how numerous years have run,
How oft the east beheld the rising sun
E'er we began, and how the atoms move,
How the unthinking seed forever strove;
'Tis probable, and reason's laws allow,
These seeds of ours were once combin'd as now;
Yet now who minds, who knows his former state?
The interim of death, the hand of fate,
Or stopt the seeds, or made them all commence
Such motions, as destroy'd the former sense.
He that is miserable, must perceive
Whilst he is so, he then must be and live;
But now since death permits to feel no more
Those cares, those troubles, which we felt before,
It follows too, that when we die again,
We need not fear; for he must live, that lives in pain:
But now the dead, though they should all return
To life again, should grieve no more, nor mourn
For evils past, than if they ne'er were born.