With you, can rage for plunder make a god?
And bloodshed wash out every other stain?—
But you, perhaps, can’t bleed: from matter gross
Your spirits clean, are delicately clad
In fine-spun ether, privileged to soar,
Unloaded, uninfected; how unlike
The lot of man! how few of human race
By their own mud unmurder’d! how we wage
Self-war eternal!—Is your painful day
Of hardy conflict o’er? or, are you still
Raw candidates at school? and have you those
Who disaffect reversions, as with us?—
But what are we? You never heard of man;
Or earth, the bedlam of the universe!

-From Edward Young's "Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality"