glancing ray,
    Swift as a falcon darting on its prey;
    No planet’s swift career could match his speed,
    That seem’d the power of fancy to exceed. 
    The courier of the sky I mark’d with dread,
    As by degrees the baseless fabric fled
    That human power had built, while high disdain
    I felt within to see the toiling train
    Striving to seize each transitory thing
    That fleets away on dissolution’s wing;
    And soonest from the firmest grasp recede,
    Like airy forms, with tantalizing speed. 
    O mortals! ere the vital powers decay,
    Or palsied eld obscures the mental ray,
    Raise your affections to the things above,
    Which time or fickle chance can never move. 
    Had you but seen what I despair to sing,
    How fast his courser plied the flaming wing
    With unremitted speed, the soaring mind
    Had left his low terrestrial cares behind. 
    But what an awful change of earth and sky
    All in a moment pass’d before my eye! 
    Now rigid winter stretch’d her brumal reign
    With frown Gorgonean over land and main;
    And Flora now her gaudy mantle spread,
    And many a blushing rose adorn’d her bed: 
    The momentary seasons seem’d to fleet
    From bright solstitial dews to winter’s driving sleet. 
    In circle multiform, and swift career: 
    A wondrous tale, untold to mortal ear
    Before:  yet reason’s calm unbiass’d view
    Must soon pronounce the seeming fable true,
    When deep remorse for many a wasted spring
    Still haunts the frighted soul on demon wing. 
    Fond hope allured me on with meteor flight,
    And Love my fancy fed with vain delight,
    Chasing through fairy fields her pageants gay. 
    But now, at last, a clear and steady ray,
    From reason’s mirror sent, my folly shows,
    And on my sight the hideous image throws
    Of what I am—­a mind eclipsed and lost,
    By vice degraded from its noble post
    But yet, e’en yet, the mind’s elastic spring
    Buoys up my powers on resolution’s wing,
    While on the flight of time, with rueful gaze
    Intent, I try to thread the backward maze,
    And husband what remains, a scanty space. 
    Few fleeting hours, alas! have pass’d away,
    Since a weak infant in the lap I lay;
    For what is human life but one uncertain day! 
    Now hid by flying vapours, dark and cold,
    And brighten’d now with gleams of sunny gold,
    That mock the gazer’s eye with gaudy show,
    And leave the victim to substantial woe: 
    Yet hope can live beneath the stormy sky,
    And empty pleasures have their pinions ply;
    And frantic pride exalts the lofty brow,
    Nor marks the snares of death that lurk below. 
    Uncertain, whether now the shaft of fate
    Sings on the wind, or heaven prolongs my date.