Shall worthless seem to thee, as leaves embrown'd That blasts autumnal scatter o'er the ground. O then, from all of earthly taint made free, What scenes unthought thy blessed eyes may see! Perhaps commission'd thou shalt bend thy flight, Where worlds and suns roll far from mortal sight, And, hail'd by beings pure, who know no care, Thy gracious master's high behests declare : Or raptur'd bend, amid the seraph band, That round the throne of light attending stand, To golden harps their dulcet voices raise, And ceaseless hymn the great Creator's praise. O while such hopes await, can aught on Earth, My conscious soul, to one sad sigh give birth? Be far each anxious thought, no more repine, Soon shall the crown of amaranth be thine. Davenport.
THE Soul, which doth with God unite, Those gaieties how doth she slight Which o'er opinion sway! Like sacred virgin wax, which shines On altars, or on martyrs' shrines, How doth she burn away!
How violent are her throes, till she From envious earth deliver'd be, Which doth her flight restrain! How doth she doat on whips and racks, On fires, and the so dreaded axe, And ev'ry murd'ring pain!
How soon she leaves the pride of wealth, The flatteries of youth and health,
And fame's more precious breath; And ev'ry gaudy circumstance, That doth the pomp of life advance, At the approach of death?
The cunning of astrologers Observes each motion of the stars, Placing all knowledge there : And lovers in their mistress' eyes Contract those wonders of the skies, And seek no higher sphere.
The wand'ring pilot sweats to find The causes that produce the wind Still gazing on the pole : The politician scorns all art,
But what doth pride and pow'r impart, And swells th' ambitious soul.
But he whom heav'nly fire doth warm, And 'gainst these potent follies arm, Doth soberly disdain
All these fond human mysteries, As the deceitful and unwise Distempers of our brain.
He, as a burden, bears his clay, Yet vainly throws it not away On ev'ry idle cause:
But with the same untroubled eye Can or resolve to live or die,
Regardless of th' applause.
My God! if 'tis thy great decree That this must the last moment be Wherein I breathe this air; My heart obeys, joy'd to retreat From the false favours of the great, And treach❜ry of the fair.
When thou shalt please this soul t' enthrone Above impure corruption;
What should I grieve or fear, To think this breathless body must Become a loathsome heap of dust, And ne'er again appear?
For in the fire when ore is tried, And by that torment purified, Do we deplore the loss?
And when thou shalt my soul refine,
That it thereby may purer shine, Shall I grieve for the dross?
REASONINGS WITH AN INFIDEL ON A FUTURE STATE.
SINCE Virtue's recompense is doubtful here, If man dies wholly, well may we demand Why is man suffer'd to be good in vain? Why to be good in vain is man enjoin'd? Why to be good in vain is man betray'd? Betray'd by traitors lodg'd in his own breast, By sweet complacencies from virtue felt? Why whispers Nature lies on Virtue's part? Or if blind Instinct (which assumes the name
Of sacred Conscience) plays the fool in man, Why Reason made accomplice in the cheat? Why are the wisest loudest in her praise? Can man by reason's beam be led astray? Or, at his peril, imitate his God?
Since virtue sometimes ruins us on earth, Or both are true, or man survives the grave.
Or man survives the grave; or own, Lorenzo, Thy boast supreme a wild absurdity. Dauntless thy spirit, cowards are thy scorn: Grant man immortal, and thy scorn is just. The man immortal, rationally brave, Dares rush on death-because he cannot die : But if man loses all when life is lost, He lives a coward, or a fool expires. A daring infidel (and such there are, From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge, Or pure heroical defect of thought)
Of all Earth's madmen most deserves a chain. When to the grave we follow the renown'd For valour, virtue, science, all we love,
And all we praise; for worth whose noon-tide beam, Enabling us to think in higher style,
Mends our ideas of ethereal powers,
Dream we that lustre of the moral world
Goes out in stench, and rottenness the close?
Why was he wise to know, and warm to praise, And strenuous to transcribe, in human life, The Mind Almighty? Could it be that Fate, Just when the lineaments began to shine, And dawn the Deity, should snatch the draught, With night eternal blot it out, and give The skies alarm, lest angels too might die? If human souls, why not angelic, too,
Extinguish'd, and a solitary God,
O'er ghastly ruin, frowning from his throne? Shall we this moment gaze on God in man, The next lose man for ever in the dust? From dust we disengage, or man mistakes, And there where least his judgment fears a flaw. Wisdom and worth how boldly he commends ! Wisdom and worth are sacred names; rever'd Where not embrac'd; applauded! deified! Why not compassion'd too? If spirits die, Both are calamities, inflicted both
To make us but more wretched. Wisdom's eye Acute, for what? to spy more miseries; And worth, so recompens'd, new-points their stings. Or man surmounts the grave, or gain is loss, And worth exalted humbles us the more. Thou wilt not patronise a scheme that makes Weakness and vice the refuge of mankind. "Has virtue, then, no joys ?-Yes, joys dear- bought.
Talk ne'er so long, in this imperfect state Virtue and vice are at eternal war.
Virtue's a combat; and who fights for aought, Or for precarious, or for small reward? Who virtue's self-reward so loud resound, Would take degrees angelic here below, And virtue, while they compliment, betray By feeble motives and unfaithful guards. The crown, th' unfading crown, her soul inspires; 'Tis that and that alone, can countervail The body's treacheries and the world's assaults. On Earth's poor pay our famish'd virtue dies; Truth incontestable ! in spite of all
A Bayle has preach'd, or a Voltaire believ'd.
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