To build our altar, confident and bold,

And fay as ftern Elijah faid of old,
The ftrife now ftands upon a fair award,

If Is'rael's Lord be God, then ferve the Lord

If he be filent, faith is all a whim,

Then Baal is the God and worship him.
Digreffion is fo much in modern ufe,

Thought is fo rare, and fancy fo profufe,
Some never seem fo wide of their intent,
As when returning to the theme they meant.
As mendicants whofe bufinefs is to roam,

Make ev'ry parish but their own, their home:
Though fuch continual zigzags in a book,
Such drunken reelings have an aukward look,
And I had rather creep to what is true,

Than rove and stagger with no mark in view,
Yet to confult a little, feem'd no crime,
The freakish humour of the present time.
But now, to gather up what feems difpers'd,
And touch the fubject I defign'd at first,

May

May prove, though much befide the rules of art, Beft for the public,” and my wifeft part.

And first let no man charge me that I mean

To cloath in fables every focial scene,

And give good company a face fevere

As if they met around a father's bier;
For tell fome men that pleasure all their bent,
And laughter all their work, is life mispent,
Their wisdom burfts into this fage reply,
Then mirth is fin, and we fhould always cry.
To find the medium asks some share of wit,
And therefore 'tis a mark fools never hit.
But though life's valley be a vale of tears,
A brighter fcene beyond that vale appears,
Whofe glory with a light that never fades,
Shoots between scattered rocks and opening fhades,
And while it shows the land the foul defires,
The language of the land fhe feeks, inspires.
Thus touched, the tongue receives a facred cure
Of all that was abfurd, profane, impure,

Held

Held within modest bounds the tide of speech
Pursues the course that truth and nature teach,
No longer labours merely to produce
The pomp of found, or tinkle without use,
Where'er it winds, the falutary stream
Sprightly and fresh, enriches ev'ry theme,
While all the happy man poffefs'd before,
The gift of nature or the claffic store,
Is made fubfervient to the grand design
For which heav'n form'd the faculty divine.
So fhould an ideot while at large he ftrays,
Find the sweet lyre on which an artist plays,
With rash and aukward force the chords he shakes,
And grins with wonder at the jar he makes;
But let the wife and well-inftructed hand,

Once take the shell beneath his just command,
In gentle founds it seems as it complained
Of the rude injuries it late sustained,

'Till tun'd at length to fome immortal fong,

It founds Jehovah's name, and pours his praife along.

But which when life at ebb runs weak and low,

All wifh, or feem to wish they could forego, The flatesman, lawyer, merchant, man of trade, Pants for the refuge of fome rural shade, Where all his long anxieties forgot

Amid the charms of a fequefter'd spot,

Or

Or recollected only to gild o'er

And add a fmile to what was sweet before,
He may poffefs the joys he thinks he fees,
Lay his old age upon the lap of ease,
Improve the remnant of his wafted span,
And having liv'd a trifler, die a man.

Thus confcience pleads her caufe within the breaft,
Though long rebell'd againft, not yet fupprefs'd,
And calls a creature formed for God alone,
For heaven's high purposes and not his own,
Calls him away from felfifh ends and aims,
From what debilitates and what inflames,
From cities humming with a restless crowd,
Sordid as active, ignorant as loud,

Whose highest praise is that they live in vain,
The dupes of pleasure, or the slaves of gain,
Where works of man are cluster'd clofe around,

And works of God are hardly to be found,

To regions where in fpite of fin and woe,

Traces of Eden are ftill feen below,