Night Thoughts on Life

First issued in nine parts between 1742 and 1745, this long blank-verse poem, also called The Complaint, follows a speaker through successive nights of meditation after the deaths of those he names Lucia, Philander, and Narcissa. He addresses Lorenzo, a worldly skeptic, on time, friendship, the grave, and the hope of immortality. Night by night the argument moves from grief and the brevity of life to Christian consolation and a vision of the last things. A famous passage treats delay as the thief of time. The work is a didactic elegy in nine books, not a narrative epic and not a theological treatise in prose.

Bound in one quarter silver lettered black goatskin over blue and silver decorated cloth with leather title label on front panels and leather gilt printed title label on spines, in 2 facsimile volumes. COMMENTARY VOLUME -un. SOLANDER CASE -dark green cloth, black leather label on edge with title in silver.