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

Robert Blair (1699–1746)

Extracts from The Grave: Omnes eodem cogimur

ON this side and on that men see their friends

Drop off like leaves in autumn, yet launch out

Into fantastic schemes, which the long livers

In the world’s hale and undegenerate days

Could scarce have leisure for. Fools that we are,

Never to think of death and of ourselves

At the same time: as if to learn to die

Were no concern of ours. Oh! more than sottish

For creatures of a day in gamesome mood

To frolic on Eternity’s dread brink

Unapprehensive, when, for aught we know,

The very first swoln surge shall sweep us in.

Think we or think we not, time hurries on

With a resistless unremitting stream,

Yet treads more soft than e’er did midnight thief

That slides his hand under the miser’s pillow

And carries off his prize. What is this world?

What but a spacious burial-field unwalled

Strewed with death’s spoils, the spoils of animals

Savage and tame, and full of dead men’s bones.

The very turf on which we tread once lived,

And we that live must lend our carcases

To cover our own offspring; in their turns

They too must cover theirs—’tis here all meet.

The shivering Icelander and sunburnt Moor,

Men of all climes who never met before,

And of all creeds, the Jew, the Turk, the Christian.

Here the proud prince, and favourite yet prouder,

His sovereign’s keeper and the people’s scourge,

Are huddled out of sight.—Here lie abashed

The great negotiators of the earth,

And celebrated masters of the balance,

Deep read in stratagems and wiles of courts;

Now vain their treaty skill.—Death scorns to treat.

Here the o’erloaded slave flings down his burden

From his galled shoulders, and when the stern tyrant.

With all his guards and tools of power about him

Is meditating new unheard-of hardships,

Mocks his short arm, and quick as thought escapes

Where tyrants vex not and the weary rest.