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Oh facred art, to which alone life owes

Its happiest seasons, and a peaceful clofe,

Scorn'd in a world, indebted to that fcorn
For evils daily felt and hardly born,

Not knowing thee, we reap, with bleeding hands,
Flow'rs of rank odour upon thorny lands,

And, while experience cautions us in vain,
Grafp seeming happiness, and find it pain,
Defpondence, felf-deferted in her grief,

Loft by abandoning her own relief,
Murmuring and ungrateful difcontent,
That scorns afflictions mercifully meant,

Those humours tart as wines upon the fret,

Which idleness and weariness beget;

These, and a thousand plagues that haunt the breast,

Fond of the phantom of an earthly rest,

Divine communion chases, as the day

Drives to their dens th' obedient beafts of prey,

See Judah's promis'd king, bereft of all,

Driv'n out an exile from the face of Saul,

To distant caves the lonely wand'rer flies,
To seek that peace a tyrant's frown denies.
Hear the sweet accents of his tuneful voice,
Hear him, o'erwhelm'd with forrow, yet rejoice;
No womanish or wailing grief has part,
No, not a moment, in his royal heart;
'Tis manly mufic, fuch as martyrs make,
Suff'ring with gladness for a Saviour's fake;
His foul exults, hope animates his lays,
The sense of mercy kindles into praise,
And wilds, familiar with the lion's roar,
Ring with extatic founds unheard before;
'Tis love like his that can alone defeat

The foes of man, or make a desert sweet,
Religion does not cenfure or exclude
Unnumber'd pleasures harmlessly purfu'd;
To ftudy culture, and with artful toil

To meliorate and tame the stubborn foil;

To give diffimilar yet fruitful lands

The grain, or herb, or plant, that each demands;

To cherish virtue in an humble ftate,
And fhare the joys your bounty may create;
To mark the matchlefs workings of the pow'r
That fhuts within its feed the future flow'r,
Bid these in elegance of form excel,

In colour these, and those delight the smell,
Sends nature forth the daughter of the fkies,
To dance on earth, and charm all human eyes;
To teach the canvass innocent deceit,

Or lay the landscape on the fnowy fheet-
These, these are arts purfu'd without a crime,
That leave no stain upon the wing of time.
Me poetry (or, rather, notes that aim
Feebly and vainly at poetic fame)

Employs, fhut out from more important views,
Fast by the banks of the flow winding Oufe;
Content if, thus fequefter'd, I may raise
A monitor's, though not a poet's praise,
And while I teach an art too little known,
To clofe life wifely, may not wafte my own.

THE DOVE S...

I.

REAS'NING at every step he treads,

Man yet mistakes his way,

While meaner things, whom inftinct leads,

Are rarely known to stray.

II.

One filent eve I wander'd late,

And heard the voice of love;

The turtle thus addrefs'd her mate,

And footh'd the lift'ning dove

III.

Our mutual bond of faith and truth,

No time fhall difengage;

Those bleffings of our early youth,

Shall cheer our latest age:

IV.

While innocence without disguise,

And conftancy fincere,

Shall fill the circles of those eyes,

And mine can read them there;

V.

Thofe ills that wait on all below

Shall ne'er be felt by me,

Or, gently felt, and only fo,

As being shar'd with thee.

VI.

When lightnings flash among the trees, Or kites are hov'ring near,

I fear left thee alone they seize,

And know no other fear,

VII.

'Tis then I feel myself a wife,

And prefs thy wedded fide,

Refolv'd an union form'd for life

Death never fhall divide.

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