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If arms engage him, he devotes to sport
His date of life, so likely to be short;
A soldier may be any thing, if brave,

So may a tradesman, if not quite a knave.
Such stuff the world is made of; and mankind
To passion, interest, pleasure, whim, resigned,
Insist on, as if each were his own pope,
Forgiveness and the privilege of hope.
But conscience, in some awful silent hour,
When captivating lusts have lost their power,
Perhaps when sickness, or some fearful dream,
Reminds him of religion, hated theme!
Starts from the down, on which she lately slept,
And tells of laws despised, at least not kept:
Shows with a pointing finger but no noise
A pale procession of past sinful joys,
All witnesses of blessings foully scorned,
And life abused, and not to be suborned.
Mark these, she says; these, summoned from afar,
Begin their march to meet thee at the bar;
There find a Judge inexorably just,

And perish there, as all presumption must.

Peace be to those (such peace as earth can give) Who live in pleasure, dead even while they live; Born capable indeed of heavenly truth;

But down to latest age, from earliest youth,
Their mind a wilderness through want of care,
The plough of wisdom never entering there.
Peace (if insensibility may claim

A right to the meek honours of her name)
To men of pedigree, their noble race,
Emulous always of the nearest place

To any throne, except the throne of grace.
Let cottagers and unenlightened swains

Revere the laws they dream that heaven ordains;
Resort on Sundays to the house of prayer,

And ask, and fancy they find, blessings there. Themselves, perhaps, when weary they retreat To enjoy cool nature in a country seat,

To exchange the centre of a thousand trades, For clumps, and lawns, and temples, and cas

cades,

May now and then their velvet cushions take,

And seem to pray for good example sake;

Judging, in charity no doubt, the town
Pious enough, and having need of none.
Kind souls! to teach their tenantry to prize
What they themselves, without remorse, despise:
Nor hope have they, nor fear, of aught to come,
As well for them had prophecy been dumb;
They could have held the conduct they pursue,
Had Paul of Tarsus lived and died a Jew;
And truth, proposed to reasoners wise as they,
Is a peari cast-completely cast away.

They die.-Death lends them, pleased and as

in sport,

All the grim honours of his ghastly court.
Far other paintings grace the chamber now,
Where late we saw the mimic landscape glow:
The busy heralds hang the sable scene

With mournful 'scutcheons, and dim lamps be

tween;

Proclaim their titles to the crowd around,

But they that wore them move not at the sound;

The coronet, placed idly at their head,

Adds nothing now to the degraded dead,

And even the star, that glitters on the bier,
Can only say-Nobility lies here.

Peace to all such-'twere pity to offend
By use.ess censure, whom we cannot mend;

Life without hope can close but in despair,

'Twas there we found them, and must leave them there.

As, when two pilgrims in a forest stray,
Both may be lost, yet each in his own way;
So fares it with the multitudes beguiled
In vain opinion's waste and dangerous wild;
Ten thousand rove the brakes and thorns among,
Some eastward, and some westward, and all wrong.
But here, alas! the fatal difference lies,

Each man's belief is right in his own eyes;
And he that blames what they have blindly chose,
Incurs resentment for the love he shows.

Say botanist, within whose province fall
The cedar and the hyssop on the wall,

Of all that deck the lanes, the fields, the bowers, What parts the kindred tribes of weeds and

flowers?

Sweet scent, or lovely form, or both combined, Distinguish every cultivated kind;

The want of both denotes a meaner breed,

And Chloe from her garland picks the weed.
Thus hopes of every sort, whatever sect

Esteem them, sow them, rear them, and protect,
If wild in nature, and not duly found,
Gethsemane! in thy dear hallowed ground,
That cannot bear the blaze of scripture light,
Nor cheer the spirit, nor refresh the sight,
Nor animate the soul to Christian deeds,

(Oh cast them from thee!) are weeds, arrant weeds.
Ethelred's house, the centre of six ways,
Diverging each from each, like equal rays,
Himself as bountiful as April rains,

Lord paramount of the surrounding plains, Would give relief of bed and board to none, But guests that sought it in the appointed ONE. And they might enter at his open door,

Even till his spacious hall would hold no more. He sent a servant forth by every road,

To sound his horn and publish it abroad,

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