E'en here is a season of rest,
And I to my cabin repair.
There's mercy in every place;
And mercy (encouraging thought!)
Gives even affliction a grace,
And reconciles man to his lot.
WHEN all thy mercies, O my God!
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, I'm lost
In wouder, love, and praise.
O how shall words with equal warmth,
The gratitude declare,
That glows within my ravish'd heart ?
But thou canst read it there.
Thy Providence my life sustain❜d,
And all my wants redrest,
When in the silent womb 1 lay,
And hung upon the breast.
To all my weak complaints and cries,
Thy mercy lent an ear,
Ere yet my feeble thoughts had learnt
To form themselves in pray'r.
Unnumber'd comforts to my soul
Thy tender care bestow'd,
Before my infant heart conceiv'd
From whom those comforts flow'd.
When, in the slipp'ry paths of youth,
With heedless steps, I ran,
Thine arm, unseen, convey'd me safe,
And led me up to man.
Through hidden dangers, toils and deaths,
It gently clear'd my way :
And through the pleasing snares of vice,
More to be fear'd than they.
When worn with sickness, oft hast thou,
With health renew'd my face,
And, when in sins and sorrows sunk,
Reviv'd my soul with grace.
Thy bounteous hand, with worldly bliss,
Has made my cup run o'er;
And, in a kind and faithful friend,
Has doubled all my store.
Ten thousand thousand precious gifts
My daily thanks employ ;
Nor is he least a cheerful heart,
at tastes those gifts with joy.
Through ev'ry period of my life,
Thy goodness I'll pure
And, after death, in distant worlds
The glorious theme renew
When nature fails, and day and night
Divide thy works no more,
My ever grateful heart, O Lord!
Thy mercy shall adore.
Through all eternity, to thee
A joyful song I'll raise,
For O eternity's too short
To utter all thy praise.
A Alan perishing in the Snow; from whence reflections are raised on the Miseries of Life.
As thus the snows arise; and foul and fierce,
All winter drives along the darken'd air
In his own loose revolving field, the swain
Disaster'd stands ; sees other hills ascend,
Of unknown joyless brow; and other scenes,
Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain;
Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on
From hill to dale, still more and more astray;
Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth
In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul!
What black despair, what horrour fills his heart !
When for the dusky spot which fancy feign'd
His tufted cottage rising through the snow,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track and blest abode of man;
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And ev'ry tempest howling o'er his head,
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind,
Of cover'd pits unfathomably deep,
A dire descent beyond the power of frost!
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,
Smooth'd up with snow; and what is land, unknown ; What water, of the still unfrozen spring,
In the loose marsh or solitary lake,
Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils,
These check his fearful steps, and down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mix'd with the tender anguish nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man,
His wife, his children, and his friends unseen.
In vain for him th' officious wife prepares
The fire fair blazing, and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingled storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence.
Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold ;
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly winter seizes; shuts up sense ;
And o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snow a stiffen'd corse,
Stretch'd out and bleaching in the northern blast.
Ah! little think the gay licentious proud,
Whom pleasure, power and affluence surround;
They who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth,
And wanton, often cruel riot, waste;
Ah, little think they, while they dance along,
How many feel, this very moment, death,
And all the sad variety of pain.
How many sink in the devouring flood,
Or more devouring flames! How many bleed,
By shameful variance betwixt man and man!
How many pine in want, and dungeon glooms,
Shut from the common air, and common use
Of their own limbs! how many drink the cup
Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread
Of misery! Sore piere'd by wintry winds,
How many shrink into the sordid hut
Of cheerless poverty! How many shake
With all the fiercer tortures of the mind,
Unbounded passion, madness, guilt, remorse!
How many, rack'd with honest passions, droop
In deep retir'd distress! How many stand
Around the death-bed of their dearest friends,
And point the parting anguish! Thought fond man
Of these, and all the thousand nameless ills,.
That one incessant struggle render life
One scene of toil, of suffering, and of fate,
Vice in his high career would stand appall'd,
And heedless rambling impulse learn to think;
The conscious heart of charity would warm,
And her wide wish benevolence dilate ;
The social tear would rise, the social sigh:
And into clear perfection, gradual bliss,
Refining still, the social passions work.
SECTION VIII.
A Morning Hymn.
THESE are thy glorious works, Parent of good,
Almighty, thine this universal frame,
Thus wondrous fair; thyself how wondrous then!
Unspeakable, who sitt'st above these heavens,
To us invisible, or dimly seen
In these thy lower works; yet these declare
Thy goodness beyond thought, and pow'r divine.
Speak ye who best can tell, ye sous of light,
Angels; for ye behold him, and with songs
And choral symphonies, day without night,
Circle his throne rejoicing; ye in heaven,
On earth, join all ye creatures to extol
Him first, Him last, Him midst, and without end.
Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,
If better thou belong not to the dawn,
Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn
With thy bright circlet, praise him in thy sphere,
While day arises. that sweet hour of prime.
Thou sun, of this great world, both eye and soul,
Acknowledge him thy greater, sound his praise
In thy eternal course, both when thou climb'st,
And when high noon hast gain'd, and when thou fall'st.
Moon, that now meet'st the orient sun, now fly'st,
With the fix'd stars, fix'd in their orb that flies;
And ye five other wandering fires that move
In mystic dance, not without song, resound
His praise, who out of darkness call'd up light.
Air, and ye elements, the eldest birth
Of nature's womb, that in quaternion run
Perpetual circle multiform; and mix
And nourish all things; let your ceaseless change
Vary to our great MAKER still new praise.
Ye mists and exhalations that now rise
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honour to the world's great AUTHOR rise!
Whether to deck with clouds th' uncolour'd sky,
Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,
Rising or falling, still advance his praise.
His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow,
Breath soft or loud and wave your tops, ye pines,
With ev'ry plant in sign of worship wave.
Fountains, and ye that warble as ye flow
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.
Join voices, all ye living souls; ye birds,
That singing up to heaven's gate ascend,
Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise.
Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk
The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep;
Witness if I be silent, morn or even,
To hill or valley, fountain, or fresh shade
Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise
Hail, UNIVERSAL LORD! be bounteous still
To give us only good; and if the night
Has gather'd aught of evil, or conccal'd,
Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark,
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