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HOPE.

doceas iter, et sacra ostia pandas.
VIRG. En. 6.

Ask what is human life-the fage replies,
With difappointment lowering in his eyes,
A painful paffage over a reftlefs flood,
A vain pursuit of fugitive false good,
A fcene of fancied blifs and heart-felt care,
Clofing at laft in darkness and despair.
The poor, inured to drudgery and diftrefs,
A&t without aim, think little, and feel lefs,
And no where, but in feigned Arcadian scenes,
Tafte happiness, or know what pleasure means.
Riches are paffed away from hand to hand,
As fortune, vice, or folly may command;
As in a dance the pair that take the lead
Turn downward, and the lowest pair fucceed,

So fhifting and fo various is the plan,

By which Heaven rules the mixt affairs of man
Viciffitude wheels round the motley crowd,

The rich grow poor, the poor become purse-proud;
Bufinefs is labour, and man's weakness fuch,
Pleasure is labour too, and tires as much,
The very fenfe of it foregoes its use,
By repetition palled, by age obtuse.
Youth loft in diffipation we deplore,

Through life's fad remnant, what no fighs reftore;
Our years, a fruitless race without a prize,
Too many, yet too few to make us wife.
Dangling his cane about, and taking fnuff,
Lothario cries, What philofophic ftuff-

Oh querulous and weak!—whose useless brain
Once thought of nothing, and now thinks in vain ;
Whofe eye reverted weeps over all the past,
Whose prospect shows thee a difheartening wafte;
Would age in thee resign his wintry reign,
And youth invigorate that frame again,
Renewed defire would grace with other speech
Joys always prized, when placed within our reach.
For lift thy palfied head, shake off the gloom,
That overhangs the borders of thy tomb,
See nature gay, as when she first began
With fmiles alluring her admirer man;

She spreads the morning over eastern hills,
Earth glitters with the drops the night diftils;
The fun obedient at her call appears,

To fling his glories over the robe she wears;

Banks clothed with flowers, groves filled with sprightly

founds,

The yellow tilth, green meads, rocks, rifing grounds,
Streams edged with ofiers, fattening every field
Wherever they flow, now feen and now concealed;
From the blue rim where skies and mountains meet,
Down to the very turf beneath thy feet,

Ten thousand charms, that only fools defpife,
Or pride can look at with indifferent eyes,
All speak one language, all with one sweet voice
Cry to her univerfal realm, Rejoice!

Man feels the spur of paffions and defires,
And the gives largely more than he requires;
Not that his hours devoted all to care,

Hollow-eyed abftinence, and lean despair,

The wretch may pine, while to his smell, tafte, fight,

She holds a paradife of rich delight;

But gently to rebuke his awkward fear,

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To prove that what she gives, she gives fincere,

To banish hesitation, and proclaim

His happiness, her dear, her only aim.

"Tis grave philofophy's abfurdeft dream,
That heaven's intentions are not what they feem,
That only fhadows are dispensed below,
And earth has no reality but woe.

Thus things terreftrial wear a different hue,
As youth or age perfuades; and neither true.
So Flora's wreath through coloured crystal seen,
The rofe or lily appears blue or green,
But ftill the imputed tints are those alone
The medium reprefents, and not their own.
To rife at noon, fit flipfhod and undreffed,
To read the news, or fiddle, as feems beft,
Till half the world comes rattling at his door,
To fill the dull vacuity till four;

And, juft when evening turns the blue vault gray,
To spend two hours in dreffing for the day;
To make the fun a bauble without use,
Save for the fruits his heavenly beams produce;
Quite to forget, or deem it worth no thought,
Who bids him shine, or if he shine or not;
Through mere neceffity to close his eyes

Juft when the larks and when the shepherds rife;
Is fuch a life, fo tediously the fame,

So void of all utility or aim,

That poor JONQUIL, with almost every breath

Sighs for his exit, vulgarly called death:

For he, with all his follies, has a mind
Not yet fo blank, or fashionably blind,
But now and then, perhaps a feeble ray
Of diftant wisdom shoots across his way,
By which he reads, that life without a plan,
As ufelefs as the moment it began,
Serves merely as a foil for discontent

To thrive in; an incumbrance ere half spent.
Oh wearinefs beyond what affes feel,
That tread the circuit of the ciftern wheel;
A dull rotation, never at a stay,

Yefterday's face twin image of to-day;
While converfation, an exhausted stock,
Grows drowsy as the clicking of a clock.
No need, he cries, of gravity ftuffed out
With academic dignity devout,

To read wife lectures, vanity the text:
Proclaim the remedy, ye learned, next;
For truth, felf-evident, with pomp impreffed,
In vanity furpaffing all the reft.

That remedy, not hid in deeps profound,
Yet feldom fought where only to be found,
While paffion turns afide from its due fcope
The inquirer's aim, that remedy is hope.
Life is his gift, from whom whatever life needs,
With every good and perfect gift proceeds;

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