THE COUNTRY PARSON. PARSON, these things in thy poffeffing He that has thefe, may pass his life, Pray heartily for fome new gift, 13 pews, t. IBID. P. 13. MAN. AWAKE, my St. John! leave all meaner things shoot; Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit. Try what the open, what the covert yield! Say firft, of God above, or Man below, What can we reason, but from what we know? Of Man, what fee we but his ftation here, From which to reason, or to which refer? Thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the God be known, 'Tis ours to trace him only in our own. He, who thro' vaft immenfity can pierce, See worlds on worlds compofe one universe, Obferve Obferve how fyftem into fyftem runs, Is the great chain, that draws all to agree, And drawn fupports, upheld by God, or thee? Prefumptuous Man! the reafon wouldst thou find, Why form'd fo weak, fo little, and fo blind? First, if thou canft, the harder reafon guess, Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less. Ask of thy mother Earth, why oaks are made Taller and ftronger than the weeds they fhade; Or afk of yonder argent fields above, Why Jove's Satellites are lefs than Jove? Of Syftems poffible, if 'tis confest, That Wisdom infinite must form the best, Where all must full, or not coherent be, And all that rifes, rife in due degree; Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain, There must be, fomewhere, fuch a rank as Man: And all the queftion (wrangle e'er fo long) Is only this, if God has plac'd him wrong? Refpecting Refpecting Man, whatever wrong we call In human works, though labour'd on with pain, When the proud fteed fhall know why man restrains His fiery courfe, or drives him o'er the plains; Then say not Man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault: What matter, foon or late, or here or there? Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prescrib'd, their present state; From brutes what men, from men what fpirits know: Or who could fuffer Being here below? The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, And now a bubble burst, and now a world. Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions foar; Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore. What future blifs, he gives not thee to know, But gives that Hope to be thy bleffing now. Hope fprings eternal in the human breaft: Man never Is, but always To be bleft: The foul, uneafy, and confin'd from home, Refts and expatiates in a life to come. Lo, the poor Indian; whofe untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His foul, proud Science never taught to ftray Far as the folar walk, or milky way; Yet fimple Nature to his hope has giv'n, Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav'n ; Some |