No trifle, howsoever short it seem,!}
And, howsoever shadowy, no dream;
Its value, what no thought can ascertain,
Nor all an angel's eloquence explain.
Men deal with life as children with their play,
Who first misuse then cast their toys away;
Live to no sober purpose, and contend
That their Creator had no serious end.
When God and man stand opposite in view,
Man's disappointment must of course ensue.
The just Creator condescends to write,
In beams of inextinguishable light,

His names of wisdom, goodness, power and love,
On all that blooms below, or shines above;
To catch the wandering notice of mankind,
And teach the world, if not perversely blind,
His gracious attributes, and prove the share
His offspring hold in his paternal care..
If, led from earthly things to things divine, i
His creature thwart not his august design,
Then praise is heard instead of reasoning pride,
And captious cavil and complaint subside.
Nature, employed in her allotted place,
Is hand-maid to the purposes of grace;
By good vouchsafed makes known superior good,
And bliss not seen by blessings understood:/
That bliss, revealed in scripture, with a glow.
Bright as the covenant-ensuring bow, si
Fires all his feelings with a noble scorn L
Of sensual evil, and thus Hope is born, vi

A

1

Hope sets the stamp of vanity on all,
That men have deemed substantial since the fall,
Yet has the wonderous virtue to educe
From emptiness itself a real use;

And while she takes, as at a father's hand,
What health and sober appetite demand,
From fading good derives, with chemic art,
That lasting happiness, a thankful heart,
Hope, with uplifted foot set free from earth,
Pants for the place of her ethereal birth,
On steady wings sails through the immense abyss,
Plucks amaranthine joys from bowers of bliss,
And crowns the soul, while yet a mourner here,
With wreaths like those triumphant spirits wear.
Hope, as an anchor firm and sure, holds fast
The Christian vessel, and defies the blast.
Hope! nothing else can nourish and secure
His new-born virtues, and preserve him pure.
Hope! let the wretch, once conscious of the joy,
Whom now despairing agonies destroy,
Speak, for he can, and none so well as he,
What treasures centre, what delights in thee.
Had he the gems, the spices, and the land,
That boasts the treasure, all at his command;
The fragrant grove, the inestimable mine,
Were light, when weighed against one smile of thine..
Though clasped and cradled in his nurse's arms,
He shine with all a cherub's artless charms,
Man is the genuine offspring of revolt,
Stubborn and sturdy as wild ass's colt;

His passions, like the watery stores that sleep
Beneath the smiling surface of the deep,
Wait but the lashes of a wintry storm,

To frown and roar, and shake his feeble form.
From infancy through childhood's giddy maze,
Froward at school, and fretful in his plays,
The puny tyrant burns to subjugate
The free republic of the whip-gig state.
If one, his equal in athletic frame,
Or, more provoking still, of nobler name;
Dare step across his arbitrary views;
An Iliad, only not in verse, ensues:
The little Greeks look trembling at the scales,
Till the best tongue, or heaviest hand prevails.

Now see him launched into the world at large;
If priest, supinely droning over his charge;
Their fleece his pillow, and his weekly drawl,
Though short, too long; the price he pays for all.
If lawyer, loud whatever cause he plead,
But proudest of the worst, if that succeed.
Perhaps a grave physician, gathering fees,
Punctually paid for lengthening out disease)
No COTTON, whose humanity sheds rays,
That make superior skill his second praise.
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 cascades,
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 pearl cast-completely cast away.

They die.-Death lends them, pleased and as in All the grim honours of his ghastly court. [sport, 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 between ;

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.