Extracts a pride from his humility. 
        Some braver spirits of the modern stamp
        Affect a Godhead nearer:  these talk loud
        Of mind, and independent intellect,
        Of energies omnipotent in man,
        And man of his own fate artificer;
        Yea of his own life Lord, and of the days
        Of his abode on earth, when time shall be,
        That life immortal shall become an art,
        Or Death, by chymic practices deceived,
        Forego the scent, which for six thousand years
        Like a good hound he has followed, or at length
        More manners learning, and a decent sense
        And reverence of a philosophic world,
        Relent, and leave to prey on carcasses.

        But these are fancies of a few:  the rest,
        Atheists, or Deists only in the name,
        By word or deed deny a God.  They eat
        Their daily bread, and draw the breath of heaven
        Without or thought or thanks; heaven’s roof to them
        Is but a painted ceiling hung with lamps,
        No more, that lights them to their purposes. 
        They wander “loose about,” they nothing see,
        Themselves except, and creatures like themselves,
        Short-liv’d, short-sighted, impotent to save. 
        So on their dissolute spirits, soon or late,
        Destruction cometh “like an armed man,”
        Or like a dream of murder in the night,
        Withering their mortal faculties, and breaking
        The bones of all their pride.

POEMS FROM BLANK VERSE, BY
CHARLES LLOYD AND CHARLES LAMB, 1798

TO CHARLES LLOYD

A stranger, and alone, I past those scenes
We past so late together; and my heart
Felt something like desertion, when I look’d
Around me, and the well-known voice of friend
Was absent, and the cordial look was there
No more to smile on me.  I thought on Lloyd;
All he had been to me.  And now I go
Again to mingle with a world impure,
With men who make a mock of holy things
Mistaken, and of man’s best hope think scorn. 
The world does much to warp the heart of man,
And I may sometimes join its ideot laugh. 
Of this I now complain not.  Deal with me,
Omniscient Father! as thou judgest best,
And in thy season tender thou my heart. 
I pray not for myself; I pray for him
Whose soul is sore perplex’d:  shine thou on him,
Father of Lights! and in the difficult paths
Make plain his way before him.  His own thoughts
May he not think, his own ends not pursue;
So shall he best perform thy will on earth. 
Greatest and Best, thy will be ever ours!

        August, 1797.

          WRITTEN ON THE DAY OF MY AUNT’S FUNERAL