By poets, and by senators unprais'd, Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the pow'rs Of earth and hell confed'rate take away: A liberty, which persecution, fraud, Oppression, prisons, have no power to bind; Which whoso tastes can be enslav'd no more. "Tis liberty of heart, deriv'd from heav'n; Bought with HIS blood who gave it to mankind, And promise of a God! His other gifts All bear the royal stamp that speaks them his, And are august; but this transcends them all. His other works, the visible display Of all-creating energy and might, Are grand, no doubt, and worthy of the word That, finding an interminable space Unoccupied, has fill'd the void so well, And made so sparkling what was dark before. But these are not his glory. Man, 'tis true, Smit with the beauty of so fair a scene, Might well suppose th' artificer divine Meant it eternal, had he not himself Pronounc'd it transient, glorious as it is, And, still designing a more glorious far, Doom'd it as insufficient for his praise. These, therefore, are occasional, and pass; Form'd for the confutation of the fool, Whose lyeing heart disputes against a God; That office serv'd, they must be swept away. Not so the labours of his love: they shine In other heav'ns than these that we behold, And fade not. There is paradise that fears No forfeiture, and of its fruits he sends Large prelibation oft to saints below. Of these the first in order, and the pledge And confident assurance of the rest, Is liberty:—a flight into his arms Ere yet mortality's fine threads give way, A clear escape from tyrannizing lust, Chains are the portion of revolted man, Careless of their Creator. And that low To a vile clod so draws him, with such force That he at last forgets it. All his hopes In heav'n-renouncing exile, he endures— What does he not?. from lusts oppos'd in vain, And self-reproaching conscience. He foresees The fatal issue to his health, fame, peace, That can ennoble man, and make frail life, Far worse than all the plagues with which his sins And death still future. Not an hasty stroke, Scripture is still a trumpet to his fears: What none can prove a forg'ry, may be true; Remorse begets reform. His master-lust Falls first before his resolute rebuke, And seems dethron'd and vanquish'd. Peace ensues, But spurious and short-liv'd; the puny child Of self-congratulating pride, begot On fancied innocence. Again he falls, "Hath God indeed giv'n appetites to man, "And stor❜d the earth so plenteously with means |