Hark! my gay friend, that solemn toll

Speaks the departure of a soul:

'Tis gone, that's all we know, but where,

Or how the unbodied ghost does fare

In that mysterious world, God knows,

And God alone, to whom it goes;

To whom departing souls return,

To know their doom to shine, or burn.

Ah by what glim'ring light we view

The Unknown World we're hast'ning to!

God has lock'd up the future age,

And planted darkness round the stage.

Wise Heav'n has made it all perplext,

And drawn 'twixt this life and the next

A dark impenetrable skreen,

And all behind is all unseen.

We talk of Heav'n, and talk of hell:

But what they mean, no tongue can tell.

Heav'n is a place where angels are,

And hell of horrible despair.

But what these awful words imply,

None of us know before we die.

Whether we will or no, we must

Take the succeeding life on trust.

This Hour, suppose, our friend is well;

Death-struck the next cries out farewell.

I die, and then, for all we see,

Ceases at once to breath and be.

Thus launch'd from life's ambiguous shore.

Ingulph'd in death, appears no more;

T'emerge where unseen ghosts repair,

In distant worlds, we know not where.

Spirits fly swift; perhaps 'tis gone

A thousand leagues beyond the sun,

Or twice ten thousand more twice told,

E'er the forsaken clay is cold.

And yet who knows? the friends we lov'd,

Tho' dead, may'nt be so far remov'd,

Only this vail of flesh between,

Perhaps glide by us, tho' unseen.

While we their loss lamenting say,

"They're out of hearing far away;

Guardians to us perhaps they're there,

Conceal'd in vehicles of air. 

And yet no notices they give,

Nor tell us where, or how they live;

Tho' conscious, while with us below.

How they themselves desir'd to know.

As if bound up by solemn fate

To keep this secret of their state;

To tell their joys or pains to none,

That man might live by faith alone.

Well, let my Sovereign if he please,

Lock up his marvellous decrees.

Why should I wish him to reveal

What he thinks proper to conceal?

It is enough that I believe,

Heav'n's sweeter than I can conceive,

That he who makes it all his care

To serve God here, shall see him there.

But oh, what worlds shall I survey,

The moment that I leave this clay?

How sudden the surprize! How new!

God grant it may be happy too!