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And give good company a face fevere, As if they met around a father's bier; For tell fome men, that pleasure all their bent, And laughter all their work, is life mispent, Their wifdom bursts into this fage reply, Then mirth is fin, and we should always cry. To find the medium asks some share of wit, And therefore 'tis a mark fools never hit. But though life's valley be a vale of tears, A brighter fcene beyond that vale appears, Whofe glory with a light, that never fades, Shoots between scattered rocks and opening fhades, And, while it shows the land the foul defires, The language of the land fhe feeks infpires. Thus touched the tongue receives a facred cure Of all that was abfurd, profane, impure; Held within modeft bounds the tide of speech Purfues the courfe, that truth and nature teach; No longer labours merely to produce The pomp of found, or tinkle without ufe: Wherever it winds, the falutary fiream, Sprightly and fresh, enriches every theme, While all the happy man poffèffed before, The gift of nature, or the claffic ftore, Is made fubfervient to the grand defign, For which heaven formed the faculty divine.

So fhould an ideot, while at large he ftrays,
Find the sweet lyre, on which an artist plays,
With rash and awkward force the chords he shakes,
And grins with wonder at the jar he makes;
But let the wife and well-inftructed hand
Once take the fhell beneath his juft command,
In gentle founds it feems as it complained
Of the rude injuries it late fuftained,

Till tuned at length to fome immortal fong,
It founds Jehovah's name, and pours his praise along.

RETIREMENT.

studiis florens ignobilis otî.

VIRG. Geor. Lib. 4.

HACKNEYED in bufinefs, wearied at that oar,
Which thousands, once faft chained to, quit no more,
But which, when life at ebb runs weak and low,
All with, or feem to wish, they could forego;
The ftatefman, lawyer, merchant, man of trade,
Pants for the refuge of some rural shade,
Where, all his long anxieties forgot
Amid the charms of a fequeftered spot,
Or recollected only to gild o'er,

And add a fmile to what was fweet before,
He may poffefs the joys he thinks he fees,
Lay his old age upon the lap of eafe,
Improve the remnant of his wafted span,
And, having lived a trifler, die a man.

Thus confcience pleads her caufe within the breaft,
Though long rebelled againft, not yet fuppreffed,
And calls a creature formed for God alone,
For heaven's high purposes, and not his own;
Calls him away from selfish ends and aims,
From what debilitates and what inflames,
From cities humming with a restless crowd,
Sordid as active, ignorant as loud,

Whose highest praise is that they live in vain,
The dupes of pleasure, or the slaves of gain,
Where works of man are clustered clofe around,
And works of God are hardly to be found,
To regions where, in fpite of fin and woe,
Traces of Eden are ftill feen below,

Where mountain, river, forest, field, and grove,
Remind him of his Maker's power and love.
'Tis well if, looked for at so late a day,
In the last scene of such a senseless play,
True wisdom will attend his feeble call,
And grace his action ere the curtain fall,
Souls, that have long despised their heavenly birth,
Their wishes all impregnated with earth,
For threescore years employed with ceafelefs care
In catching smoke and feeding upon air,
Converfant only with the ways of men,
Rarely redeem the short remaining ten.

Inveterate habits choke the unfruitful heart,
Their fibres penetrate its tendereft part,
And, draining its nutritious powers to feed
Their noxious growth, ftarve every better feed.
Happy, if full of days-but happier far,
If, ere we yet difcern life's evening star,
Sick of the fervice of a world, that feeds
Its patient drudges with dry chaff and weeds,
We can efcape from cuftom's idiot fway,
To ferve the Sovoreign we were born to obey.
Then fweet to mufe upon his fkill displayed
(Infinite skill) in all that he has made!
To trace in nature's most minute defign
The fignature and ftamp of power divine,
Contrivance intricate, expreffed with ease,
Where unaffifted fight no beauty fees,
The fhapely limb and lubricated joint,
Within the small dimenfions of a point,
Mufcle and nerve miraculously fpun,

is mighty work, who fpeaks and it is done,
The invisible in things fcarce feen revealed,
To whom an atom is an ample field;
To wonder at a thousand infect forms,
Thefe hatched, and those refufcitated' worms,
New life ordained and brighter fcenes to share,
Once prone on earth, now buoyant upon air,

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