THE

COMPLAINT:

O R,

Night Thoughts

ON

LIFE, DEATH,

AND

IMMORTALITY.

To which is added,
A PARAPHRASE on Part of the Book of JOB.

A NEW EDITION, from one Corrected by the Author.

With the Addition of the Author's Life, by an
Eminent Hand.

Sunt lacrymæ rerum, & mentem mortalia tangunt.
VIRG.

LONDON:

Printed in the Year M. DCC. LXXI.
280. p. 261.

THE

COMPLAINT.

NIGHT the FIRST. On Life, Death, and Immortality. To the Right Hon. ARTHUR Onslow, SPEAKER of the House of COMMONS.

Τ'

AIR'D nature's fweet reftorer, balmy Sleep! He, like the world, his ready vifit pays, Where fortune fmiles; the wretched he forfakes: Swift on his downy pinions flies from woe, And lights on lids unfully'd with a tear.

From fhort, (as usual) and disturb'd repose,
I wake: How happy they who wake no more!
Yet that were vain, if dreams infeft the grave.
I wake emerging from a fea of dreams
Tumultuous; where my wreck'd defponding thought
From wave to wave of Fancy'd mifery,

At random drove, her helm of reason loft:
Tho' now reftor'd, 'tis only change of pain,
(A bitter change :) feverer for severe :
The Day too fhort for my diftrefs! and Night,
Even in the Zenith of her dark domain,
Is funshine to the colour of my fate.

Night, fable goddess! from her Ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now ftretches forth
Her leaden fcepter o'er a slumb'ring world:
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound!
Nor eye, nor lift'ning ear an object finds :
Creation fleeps. 'Tis as the general pulfe
Of life food ftill, and nature made a pause;
An aweful paufe! prophetic of her end.