Sonnet V: On Life

Ere we can think of time--the moment's past--
And straight another since that thought began:
So swift each instant mingles with the last,
The flying now exists--no more for man.
With consciousness suspended ev'n by sleep,
To what this phantom, life, then likest seems?
Say thou! whose doubtful being (lost in dreams)
Allows the wilder'd but to wake and weep,
So thoughtless hurried to th' eternal deep!
'Tis like a moon-light vision's airy shade,
A bubble driving down the deep beneath
Then, ere the bubble burst, the vision fade,
Dissolv'd in air this evanescent breath!
Let man, not mortal, learn true life begins at death.