To exchange the centre of a thousand trades,
For clumps, and lawns, and temples, and cascades,
May now and then their velvet cushions take,
And feem to pray for good example fake;
Judging, in charity no doubt, the town
Pious enough, and having need of none.
Kind fouls! to teach their tenantry to prize
What they themselves, without remorfe, despise:
Nor hope have they, nor fear, of aught to come,
As well for them had prophecy been dumb;
They could have held the conduct they pursue,
Had Paul of Tarfus lived and died a Jew;
And truth, proposed to reafoners wife as they,
Is a pearl caft-completely caft away.
They die.-Death lends them, pleased, and as in sport,
All the grim honours of his ghaftly court.
Far other paintings grace the chamber now,
Where late we saw the mimic landscape glow:
The bufy heralds hang the fable scene
With mournful efcutcheons, and dim lamps between;
Proclaim their titles to the crowd around,
But they that wore them move not at the found;
The coronet, placed idly at their head,
Adds nothing now to the degraded dead,
And even the ftar, that glitters on the bier,
Can only fay-Nobility lies here.
Peace to all fuch-'twere pity to offend
By ufelefs cenfure, whom we cannot mend;
Life without hope can close but in despair,
'Twas there we found them, and muft leave them there.
• As, when two pilgrims in a forest stray,
Both may be loft, yet each in his own way;
So fares it with the multitudes beguiled
In vain opinion's waste and dangerous wild;
Ten thousand rove the brakes and thorns among,
Some eastward, and fome weftward, and all wrong.
But here, alas! the fatal difference lies,
Each man's belief is right in his own eyes;
And he that blames what they have blindly chofe,
Incurs refentment for the love he shows.
Say botanist, within whose province fall
The cedar and the hyffop on the wall,
Of all that deck the lanes, the fields, the bowers, What parts the kindred tribes of weeds and flowers?
Sweet fcent, or lovely form, or both combined,
Distinguish every cultivated kind;
The want of both denotes a meaner breed,
And Chloé from her garland picks the weed.
Thus hopes of every sort, whatever se&t
Efteem them, fow them, rear them, and protect,
If wild in nature, and not duly found,
Gethsemane! in thy dear hallowed ground,
That cannot bear the blaze of fcripture light,
Nor cheer the fpirit, nor refresh the sight,
Nor animate the foul to Chriftian deeds,
(Oh caft them from thee!) are weeds, arrant weeds. Ethelred's houfe, the centre of fix ways,
Diverging each from each, like equal rays,
Himself as bountiful as April rains,
Lord paramount of the furrounding plains,
Would give relief of bed and board to nong,
But guests that fought it in the appointed ONE.
And they might enter at his open door,
Even till his fpacious hall would hold no more.
He fent a fervant forth by every road,
To found his horn and publish it abroad,
That all might mark-knight, menial, high and low, An ordinance it concerned them much to know.
If after all fome headstrong hardy lout
Would difobey, though fure to be shut out,
Could he with reafon murmur at his cafe,
Himfelf fole author of his own difgrace?
No! the decree was juft and without flaw;
And he that made, had right to make, the law;
His fovereign power and pleasure unrestrained,
The wrong was his, who wrongfully complained.
Yet half mankind maintain a churlish ftrife
With him the Donor of eternal life,
Because the deed, by which his love confirms
The largefs he beftows, prefcribes the terms.
Compliance with his will your lot enfures,
Accept it only, and the boon is your's.
And fure it is as kind to fmile and give,
As with a frown to fay, Do this, and live.
Love is not pedlar's trumpery bought and fold:
He will give freely, or he will withhold;
His foul abhors a mercenary thought,
And him as deeply who abhors it not;
He ftipulates indeed, but merely this,
That man will freely take an unbought blifs,
Will truft him for a faithful generous part,
Nor fet a price upon a willing heart.
Of all the ways that feem to promise fair,
To place you where his faints his prefence share,
This only can; for this plain cause, expreffed
In terms as plain, himself has fhut the reft.
But oh the ftrife, the bickering, and debate,
The tidings of unpurchased heaven create!
The flirted fan, the bridle and the tofs,
All speakers, yet all language at a lofs.
From ftuccoed walls fmart arguments rebound;
And beaus, adept in every thing profound,
Die of difdain, or whiftle off the found.
Such is the clamour of rooks, daws, and kites,
The explosion of the levelled tube excites,
Where mouldering abbey-walls overhang the glade,
And oaks coeval spread a mournful shade,
The fcreaming nations, hovering in mid air,
Loudly refent the ftranger's freedom there,
And feem to warn him never to repeat
His bold intrufion on their dark retreat.
Adieu, Vinofa cries, ere yet he fips
The purple bumper trembling at his lips,
Adieu to all morality! if grace
Make works a vain ingredient in the cafe.
The Chriftian hope isWaiter draw the cork
If I mistake not-Blockhead! with a fork! -
Without good works, whatever fome may boast,
Mere folly and delufion-Sir, your toast..
My firm perfuafion is, at leaft fometimes,
That heaven will weigh man's virtues and his crimes
With nice attention, in a righteous fcale,
And fave or damn as these or those prevail,
I plant my foot upon this ground of truft,
And filence every fear with--God is juft.
But if perchance on fome dull drizzling day
A thought intrude that fays, or feems to say,
If thus the important caufe is to be tried,
Suppose the beam should dip on the wrong fide;
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