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And catechise it well; apply your glass,
Search it, and prove now if it be not blood
Congenial with thine own: and if it be,
What edge of fubtlety canst thou suppose
Keen enough, wife and fkilful as thou art,
To cut the link of brotherhood, by which
One common Maker bound me to the kind.
True; I am no proficient, I confefs,

In arts like yours. I cannot call the swift
And perilous lightnings from the angry clouds,
And bid them hide themselves in earth beneath;
I cannot analyse the air, nor catch

The parallax of yonder luminous point
That feems half quench'd in the immense abyfs;
Such pow'rs I boast not-neither can I reft
A filent witness of the headlong rage
Or heedlefs folly by which thousands die,
Bone of my bone, and kindred fouls to mine.
God never meant that man fhould fcale the

heav'ns

By ftrides of human wisdom. In his works,
Though wond'rous, he commands us in his word
To feek him rather, where his mercy fhines.
The mind indeed, enlighten'd from above,
Views him in all: afcribes to the grand caufe
The grand effect: acknowledges with joy
His manner, and with rapture taftes his ftyle.
But never yet did philofophic tube,

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That brings the planets home into the eye
Of obfervation, and discovers, else

Not vifible, his family of worlds,

Discover him that rules them; fuch a veil
Hangs over mortal eyes, blind from the birth,
And dark in things divine. Full often too
Our wayward intellect, the more we learn
Of nature, overlooks her author more,
From inftrumental caufes proud to draw
Conclufions retrograde, and mad mistake.
But if his word once teach us, shoot a ray
Through all the heart's dark chambers, and reveal
Truths undifcern'd, but by that holy light,
Then all is plain. Philofophy baptiz'd

In the pure fountain of eternal love

Has eyes indeed; and viewing all the fees,
As meant to indicate a God to man,

Gives him his praife, and forfeits not her own.
Learning has borne fuch fruit in other days
On all her branches: piety has found

Friends in the friends of science, and true pray'r
Has flow'd from lips wet with Caftalian dews.
Such was thy wifdom, Newton, childlike fage!
Sagacious reader of the works of God,
And in his word fagacious. Such too thine,
Milton, whofe genius had angelic wings,
And fed on manna. And fuch thine, in whom
Our British Themis gloried with juft caufe,

Immortal

Immortal Hale! for deep difcernment prais'd,
And found integrity not more, than fam'd
For fanctity of manners undefil'd.

All flesh is grafs, and all its glory fades
Like the fair flow'r difhevell'd in the wind;
Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream;
The man we celebrate must find a tomb,
And we that worship him, ignoble graves.
Nothing is proof against the genʼral curfe
Of vanity, that feizes all below.

The only amaranthine flow'er on earth
Is virtue; th' only lasting treasure, truth.
But what is truth? 'twas Pilate's question put
To Truth himself, that deign'd him no reply.
And wherefore? will not God impart his light
To them that afk it ?-Freely-'tis his joy,
His glory, and his nature to impart.
But to the proud, uncandid, infincere,
Or negligent enquirer, not a spark.

What's that which brings contempt upon a book,
And him who writes it, though the style be neat,
The method clear, and argument exact ?
That makes a minister in holy things

The joy of many, and the dread of more,

His name a theme for praise and for reproach ?-
That while it gives us worth in God's account,
Depreciates and undoes us in our own?
What pearl is it that rich men cannot buy,
That learning is too proud to gather up,
E 4

But

But which the poor, and the defpis'd of all,
Seek and obtain, and often find unfought?
Tell me, and I will tell thee, what is truth.

O friendly to the best pursuits of man,
Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace,
Domestic life in rural leifure pafs'd 1

Few know thy value, and few tafte thy fweets,
Though many boast thy favours, and affect
To understand and chufe thee for their own.
But foolish man foregoes his proper bliss,
Ev'n as his first progenitor, and quits,
Though placed in paradise (for earth has still
Some traces of her youthful beauty left)
Substantial happiness for tranfient joy.
Scenes form'd for contemplation, and to ñurfe
The growing feeds of wifdom; that fuggeft,
By ev'ry pleasing image they prefent,

Reflections fuch as meliorate the heart,
Compofe the paffions, and exalt the mind ;
Scenes fuch as thefe, 'tis his fupreme delight
To fill with riot, and defile with blood.
Should fome contagion, kind to the poor brutes
We perfecute, annihilate the tribes

That draw the sportsman over hill and dale
Fearless, and rapt away from all his cares;
Should never game-fowl hatch her eggs again,
Nor baited hook deceive the fishes eye;
Could pageantry and dance, and feast and song,

Be

Be quell'd in all our fummer-months retreat; How many felf-deluded nymphs and fwains, Who dream they have a tafte for fields and

groves,

Would find them hideous nurs'ries of the spleen,
And crowd the roads, impatient for the town;
They love the country, and none eife, who feek
For their own fake its filence and its fhade.
Delights which who would leave, that has a heart
Sufceptible of pity, or a mind

Cultur'd and capable of fober thought,
For all the favage din of the fwift pack,.
And clamours of the field? detested sport,,
That owes its pleasures to another's pain,
That feeds upon the fobs and dying fhrieks
Of harmless nature, dumb, but yet endu'd.
With eloquence that agonies inspire
Of filent tears and heart diftending fighs!
Vain tears, alas! and fighs that never find
A correfponding tone in jovial fouls.
Well-one at leaft is fafe.

One fhelter'd hare

Has never heard the fanguinary yell
Of cruel man, exulting in her woes.
Innocent partner of my peaceful home,
Whom ten long years experience of my care
Has made at laft familiar; fhe has loft
Much of her vigilant instinctive dread,
Not needful here, beneath a roof like mine.

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