Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. III. The Eighteenth Century: Addison to Blake

Edward Young (1681–1765)

Extracts from Night Thoughts: The Stream of Life, from Night V

IS it, that life has sown her joys so thick

We can’t thrust in a single care between?

Is it, that life has such a swarm of cares

The thought of death can’t enter for the throng?

Is it, that time steals on with downy feet,

Nor wakes indulgence from her golden dream?

To day is so like yesterday, it cheats;

We take the lying sister for the same.

Life glides away, Lorenzo, like a brook;

For ever changing, unperceived the change.

In the same brook none ever bathed him twice,

To the same life none ever twice awoke.

We call the brook the same; the same we think

Our life, though still more rapid in its flow;

Nor mark the much, irrevocably laps’d

And mingled with the sea. Or shall we say

(Retaining still the brook to bear us on)

That life is like a vessel on the stream?

In life embark’d we smoothly down the tide

Of time descend, but not on time intent,

Amused, unconscious of the gliding wave;

Till on a sudden we perceive a shock;

We start, awake, look out; what see we there?

Our brittle bark is burst on Charon’s shore.