Young's Night Thoughts

ON LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE ARTHUR ONSLOW, ESQ., SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

Tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy Sleep! He, like the world, his ready visit pays Where Fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes; Swift on his downy pinion flies from woe, And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.

From short (as usual) and disturb’d repose, I wake: how happy they, who wake no more! Yet that were vain, if dreams infest the grave. I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams Tumultuous; where my wreck’d desponding thought From wave to wave of fancied misery At random drove, her helm of reason lost. Though now restored, ’tis only change of pain, (A bitter change!) severer for severe: The day too short for my distress; and night, Even in the zenith of her dark domain, Is sunshine to the colour of my fate.