Of felf-congratulating pride, begot
On fancied innocence. Again he falls,
And fights again; but finds his best effay
A prefage ominous, portending ftill
Its own dishonour by a worse relapse.
Till Nature, unavailing nature, foiled
So oft, and wearied in the vain attempt,
Scoffs at her own performance. Reason now
Takes part with appetite, and pleads the cause
Perversely, which of late fhe fo condemned;
With fhallow fhifts and old devices, worn
And tattered in the service of debauch,
Covering his fhame from his offended fight,
"Hath God indeed given appetites to man, "And stored the earth so plenteously with means "To gratify the hunger of his wish;
"And doth he reprobate and will he damn "The ufe of his own bounty? making first
"So frail a kind, and then enacting laws
"So ftrict, that less than perfect must defpair? "Falfehood! which whofo but fufpects of truth "Difhonours God, and makes a flave of man.
"Do they themselves, who undertake for hire
"The teacher's office, and difpenfe at large
"Their weekly dole of edifying strains,
"Attend to their own mufic? have they faith
"In what with such folemnity of tone
"And gefture they propound to our belief?
Nay-condu&t hath the loudeft tongue. The voice "Is but an inftrument, on which the priest
"May play what tune he pleases. In the deed, "The unequivocal authentic deed,
"We find found argument, we read the heart."
Such reafonings (if that name muft need belong
To excuses in which reafon has no part)
Serve to compose a spirit well inclined
To live on terms of amity with vice,
And fin without disturbance. Often urged,
(As often as libidinous discourse
Exhaufted, he resorts to folemn themes
Of theological and grave import)
They gain at laft his unreseved affent;
Till, hardened his heart's temper in the forge
Of luft, and on the anvil of despair,
He flights the strokes of conscience. Nothing moves,
Or nothing much, his conftancy in ill;
Vain tampering has but foftered his disease;
'Tis defperate, and he fleeps the fleep of death.
Hafte now, philofopher, and fet him free.
Charm the deaf ferpent wifely. Make him hear
Of rectitude and fitness, moral truth
How lovely, and the moral fense how sure,
Confulted and obeyed, to guide his steps
Directly to the FIRST AND ONLY FAIR.
Spare not in fuch a caufe. Spend all the powers
Of rant and rhapfody in virtue's praise:
Be moft fublimely good, verbosely grand,
And with poetic trappings grace thy profe,
Till it out-mantle all the pride of verse.—
Ah, tinkling cymbal, and high sounding brafs,
Smitten in vain! fuch mufic cannot charm
The eclipfe, that intercepts truth's heavenly beam,
And chills and darkens a wide-wandering foul.
The STILL SMALL VOICE is wanted. He must speak,
Whose word leaps forth at once to its effect;
Who calls for things that are not, and they come.
Grace makes the flave a freeman. 'Tis a change, That turns to ridicule the turgid speech And ftately tone of moralifts, who boast,
As if, like him of fabulous renown,
They had indeed ability to smooth
The fhag of favage nature, and were each
An Orpheus, and omnipotent in fong:
But transformation of apoftate man
From fool to wife, from earthly to divine,
Is work for Him that made him. He alone,
And he by means in philofophic eyes
Trivial and worthy of difdain, achieves
The wonder; humanizing what is brute
In the loft kind, extracting from the lips
Of afps their venom, overpowering strength
By weakness, and hoftility by love.
Patriots have toiled, and in their country's cause Bled nobly; and their deeds, as they deserve, Receive proud recompenfe. We give in charge Their names to the fweet lyre. The hiftoric mufe Proud of the treasure, marches with it down To latest times; and fculpture, in her turn, Gives bond in ftone and ever-during brass To guard them, and to immortalize her truft: But fairer wreaths are due, though never paid, To thofe, who posted at the shrine of truth
Have fallen in her defence. A patriot's blood
Well spent in fuch a ftrife may earn indeed,
And for a time enfure, to his loved land
The fweets of liberty and equal laws;
But martyrs ftruggle for a brighter prize,
And win it with more pain. Their blood is shed
In confirmation of the nobleft claim,
Our claim to feed upon immortal truth,
To walk with God, to be divinely free,
To foar, and to anticipate the skies.
Yet few remember them. They lived unknown
Till perfecution dragged them into fame,
And chafed them up to heaven. Their afhes flew
-No marble tells us whither. With their names
No bard embalms and fanctifies his fong:
And history, fo warm on meaner themes,
Is cold on this. She execrates indeed
The tyranny, that doomed them to the fire,
But gives the glorious fufferers little praise *.
He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are flaves befide. There's not a chain
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