Vital spark of heavenly flame! Quit, O quit this mortal frame! Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying, O, the pain, the bliss of dying! Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife, And let me languish into life! Hark! they whisper; angels say, Sister spirit, come away! What is this absorbs me quite? Steals my senses, shuts my sight, Drowns my spirits, draws my breath? Tell me, my soul, can this be death? The world recedes; it disappears! Heaven opens on my eyes! my ears With sounds seraphic ring: Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O Grave! where is thy victory? O Death! where is thy sting?
The Dying Christian to His Soul
More from Poet
-
From the “Essay on Man,” Epistles I. and IV. LO, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind: His soul, proud science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or Milky Way: Yet simple Nature to his hope has given, Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler...
-
Father of all! in every age, In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord! Thou great First Cause, least understood, Who all my sense confined To know but this, that thou art good, And that myself am blind; Yet gave me, in this dark estate, To see the...
-
From “The Rape of the Lock,” Canto II. ll. 7–18. ON her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, Which Jews might kiss, and Infidels adore, Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those: Favors to none, to all she smiles extends: Oft she rejects, but...
-
From “The Rape of the Lock,” Canto I. AND now, unveiled, the toilet stands displayed, Each silver vase in mystic order laid. First, robed in white, the nymph intent adores, With head uncovered, the cosmetic powers. A heavenly image in the glass appears, To that she bends, to that her eyes she...
-
[Lord Bolingbroke] From “An Essay on Man,” Epistle IV. COME then, my friend! my genius! come along; O master of the poet, and the song! And while the muse now stoops, or now ascends, To man’s low passions, or their glorious ends, Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise, To fall with...