A lecture, silent, but of sov'reign pow'r! To vice, confusion; and to virtue, peace.
Whatever farce the boastful hero plays, Virtue alone has majesty in death ;
And greater still the more the tyrant frowns.
Reflections on a Future State, from a review of Winter. "Tis done! dread winter spreads his latest glooms, And reigns tremendous o'er the conquered year. How dead the vegetable kingdom lies!
How dumb the tuneful! Horror wide extends His desolate domain. Behold fond man! See here thy pictured life: pass some few years, Thy flow'ring spring, thy summer's ardent strength, Thy sober autumn fading into age,
And pale concluding winter comes at last, And shuts the seene. Ah! whither now are fled, Those dreams of greatness? Those unsolid hopes Of happiness? those longings after fame? Those restless cares? those busy bustling days? Those gay-spent festive nights ? those veering thoughts Lost between good and ill, that shared thy life? All now are vanished! Virtue sole survives, Immortal, never failing friend of man, His guide to happiness on high. And see! 'Tis come the glorious morn! the second birth Of heaven and earth! awak'ning nature hears The new creating word: and starts to life, In ev'ry heighten'd form, from pain and death Forever free. The great eternal scheme, Involving all, and in a perfect whole Uniting, as the prospect wider spreads, To reason's eye refined clears up apace. Ye vainly wise! Ye blind presumptuous! now, Coufounded in the dust, adore that Power, And Wisdom oft arraign'd; see now the cause, Why unassuming worth in secret lived, And died neglected; why the good man's share In life was gall and bitterness of soul; Why the lone widow and her orphans pined In starving solitude; while luxury, In palaces, lay straining her low thought, To form uureal wants; why heaven-born truth,
And moderation fair, wore the red marks Of superstition's scourge: why licens'd pain, That cruel spoiler, that embosom'd foe, - Imbitter'd all our bliss. Ye good distressed! Ye noble few! who here unbending stand Beneath life's pressure, yet bear up awhile And what your bounded view, which only saw A little part, deem'd evil, is no more: The storms of wintry time will quickly pass, And one unbounded spring encircle all.
Adam's Advice to Eve, to avoid Temptation. "O WOMAN, best are all things as the will Of God ordained them; his creating hand Nothing imperfect or deficient left
Of all that he created, much less man, Or aught that might his happy state secure, Secure from outward force. Within himself The danger lies, yet lies within his power; Against his will he can receive no harm. But God left free the will; for what obeys Reason, is free, and reason he made right; But bid her well beware, and still erect, Lest by some fair appearing good surpris'd, She dictate false, and misinform the will To do what God expressly hath forbid. Not then mistrust, but tender love enjoins That I should mind thee oft; and mind thou me. Firm we subsist, yet possible to swerve, Since reason not impossibly may meet Some specious object by the foe suborn'd, And fall into deception unaware,
Not keeping strictest watch as she was warn'd. Seek not temptation then, which to avoid Were better, and most likely if from me Thou sever not; trial will come unsought. Wouldst thou approve thy constancy? approve First thy obedience; th' other who can know, Not seeing thee attempted, who attest? But if thou think, trial unsought may find Us both securer than thus warned thou seem'st, Go, for thy stay, not free, absents thee more; Go in thy native inuocence; rely
On what thou hast of virtue; summon all;
For God towards thee has done his part; do thine."
SECTION IX.
On Procrastination.
BE wise to-day; 'tis madness to defert Next day the fatal precedent will plead; Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life. Procrastination is the thief of time.
Year after year it steals, till all are fled; And to the mercies of a moment leaves The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears The palm, "That all men are about to live ;" Forever on the brink of being born.
All pay themselves the compliment to think, They, one day, shall not drivel; and their pride On this reversion takes up ready praise;
At least, their own; their future selves applaud; How excellent that life they ne'er will lead! Time lodg'd in their own hands is folly's vails; That lodg'd in fate's, to wisdom they consign; The thing they can't bat purpose, they postpone. 'Tis not in folly, not to scorn a fool:
And scarce in human wisdom to do more. All promise is poor dilatory man;
And that thro' ev'ry stage. When young, indeed, In full content, we sometimes nobly rest, Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish, As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise, At thirty, man suspects himself a fool : Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; At fifty, chides his infamous delay; Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; In all the magnanimity of thought,
Resolves, and re-resolves, then dies the same. And why? Because he thinks himself immortal. All men think all men mortal, but themselves; Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread ; But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air, Soon close; where past the shaft no trace is found. As from the wing no sear the sky retains; The parted wave no furrow from the keel;
So dies in human hearts the thought of death. Ev'n with the tender tear which nature sheds O'er those we love, we drop it in their
That Philosophy, which stops at secondary Causes, reproved
HAPPY the man who sees a God employ'd In all the good and ill that checker life! Resolving all events, with their effects And manifold results, into the will And arbitration wise of the Supreme. Did not his eye rule all things, and intend The least of our conce; (since from the least The greatest oft originate ;) could chance Find place in his dominion, or dispose One lawless partiele to thwart his plan; Then God might be surprised, and unforeseen Contingence might alarm him, and disturb The smooth and equal course of his affairs. This truth, philosophy, though eagle-eyed In nature's tendencies, oft o'erlooks; And having found his instrument, forgets Or disregards, or, more presumptuous still, Denies the pow'r that wields it. God proclaims. His hot displeasure against foolish men
That live an atheist life; involves the heav'n In tempests; quits his grasp upon the winds, And gives them all their fury; bids a plague Kindle a fiery bile upon the skin,
And putrify the breath of blooming health. He calls for famine, and the meager fiend Blows mildew from between his shrivell'd lips, And taints the golden ear; he springs his mines, And desolates a nation at a blast ;
Forth steps the spruce philosopher, and tells Of homogenial and discordant springs, And principles; of causes, how they work By necessary laws, their sure effects, Of action and reaction. He has found The source of the disease that nature feels; And bids the world take heart and banish fear. Thou fool! will thy discovery of the cause Suspend th' effect, or heal it? Has not God
Still wrought by means since first he made the world?
And did he not of old employ his means To drown it? What is his creation less Than a capacious reservoir of means, Form'd for his use, and ready at his will? Go, dress thine eye with eye-salve; ask of Hin Or ask of whomsoever he has taught;
And learn, tho' late, the genuine cause of all.
Indignant Sentiments on National Prejudices and Hatred ; and on Slavery.
O for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumour of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more! My ear is pain'd, My soul is sick with ev'ry day's report Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd. There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart. It does not feel for man. The nat'ral bond Of brotherhood is severed, as the flax That falls asunder at the touch of fire. He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not coloured like his own; and having pow'r T' inforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause Doems and devotes him as his lawful prey. Lands intersected by a narrow frith Abhor each other. Mountains interpos'd, Make enemies of nations, who had else, Like kindred drops, been mingled into one. Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys: And worse than all, and most to be deplor'd As human nature's broadest, foulest blot, Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat With stripes, that mercy, with a bleeding heart, Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast. Then what is man! And what man seeing this, And having human feelings, does not blush And hang his head, to think himself a man ? I would not have a slave to till my ground, To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd No: dear as freedom is, aud in my heart's
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