CONTRAST the hour of Fashion’s brief delight,
With that of fearful Death’s unhallow’d night;
When life and time are ebbing to their close,
And martyr’d pleasure dreads the tomb’s repose:,
Alone and fever’d, on his sleepless bed,
Yon dying libertine supports his head;
There is an awe , a silence in the gloom,
As if the fiend were cow’ring o’er the room:
A faintly-glimm’ring taper flickers there,
Tinting his livid cheek with hectic glare.
Days were when beauty, love, saloon, and ball,
Found him the gayest, wildest, rake of all;
Unmanly wreck! all blanched and blighted now,
With hollow cheek, and anguish-moisten’d brow,
Oft turns he round, to feel his throbbing brain,
Grind his dark teeth, and root his locks for pain; ,
Then tears the garment from his heated breast,
And lifts in vain, his pale-clench’d hands, for rest;
No tears of sad remorse bedew his face,
But penitential woe is in each trace;
Those burning lips that breathe a dismal sigh,
The frenzies flashing from his fretful eye,
That wild convulsion through each feature spread ,
All speak of pangful guilt, and hopeless dread!

Quoted from: Robert Montgomery: Selections from the Poetical Works of Robert Montgomery. London: Churton, 1836.