Louder to weep. By day your frighted seers Shall call for fountains to express their tears, And wish their eyes were floods: by night, from dreams
Of opening gulfs, black storms, and raging flames, Starting amaz'd, shall to the people show [woe. Emblems of heavenly wrath, and mystic types of
'The captives, as their tyrant shall require That they should breathe the song and touch the Shall say, "Can Jacob's servile race rejoice, [lyre, Untun'd the music, and disus'd the voice? What can we play (they shall discourse) how sing In foreign lands, and to a barbarous king? We and our fathers, from our childhood bred To watch the cruel victor's eye, to dread The arbitrary lash, to bend, to grieve, (Outcast of mortal race) can we conceive Image of aught delightful, soft, or gay? Alas! when we have toil'd the longsome day, The fullest bliss our hearts aspire to know, Is but some interval from active woe; In broken rest and startling sleep to mourn, Till morn the tyrant and the scourge return: Bred up in grief, can pleasure be our theme? Our endless anguish does not Nature claim? Reason and sorrow are to us the same. Alas! with wild amazement we require If idle Folly was not Pleasure's sire? Madness, we fancy, gave an ill-tim❜d birth To grinning Laughter and to frantic Mirth." This is the series of perpetual woe,
Which thou, alas! and thine are born to know. Illustrious wretch! repine not, nor reply ;
View not what Heaven ordains with reason's eye; Too bright the object is, the distance is too high..
The man who would resolve the work of fate, May limit number and make crooked strait : Stop thy inquiry, then, and curb thy sense, Nor let dust argue with Omnipotence. "Tis God who must dispose, and man sustain, Born to endure, forbidden to complain : Thy sum of life must his decrees fulfil; What derogates from his command is ill, And that alone is good which centres in his will. 'Yet that thy labouring senses may, not droop, (Lost to delight, and destitute of hope,) Remark what I, God's messenger, aver
From Him, who neither can deceive nor err. The land, at length redeem'd, shall cease to mourn, Shall from her sad captivity return:
Sion shall raise her long-dejected head, And in her courts the law again be read: Again the glorious Temple shall arise,
And with new lustre pierce the neighbouring skies : The promis'd seat of empire shall again Cover the mountain, and command the plain; And from thy race distinguish'd, One shall spring Greater in act than victor, more than king; In dignity and power sent down from Heaven To succour earth. To him, to him 'tis given Passion, and care, and anguish, to destroy: Through him soft peace and plenitude of joy Perpetual o'er the world redeem'd shall flow; No more may man inquire, nor angel know.
'Now, Solomon, remembering who thou art, Act through thy remnant life the decent part: Go forth? be strong; with patience and with care Perform and suffer; to thyself severe,
Gracious to others, thy desires suppress'd, Diffus'd thy virtues, first of men, be best! Thy sum of duty let two words contain, O may they graven in thy heart remain! Be humble, and be just.' The angel said; With upward speed his agile wings he spread, Whilst on the holy ground I prostrate lay, By various doubts impell'd, or to obey Or to object: at length (my mournful look Heaven-ward erect) determin'd, thus I spoke : 'Supreme, all-wise, eternal Potentate!
Sole Author, sole Disposer of our fate! Enthron'd in light and immortality,
Whom no man fully sees, and none can see ! Original of Beings! Power divine!
Since that I live, and that I think, is thine; Benign Creator! let thy plastic hand Dispose its own effect: let thy command Restore, great Father, thy instructed son, And in my act may thy great will de done!'
THE PROGRESS OF THE MIND.
Πανία γελως, και πανία κόνις, και πανία το μηδεν. Πανία γαρ εξ αλόγων εςι τα γιγνόμενα.
MATTHEW met Richard,* when or where From story is not mighty clear:
Of many knotty points they spoke, And pro and con by turns they took : Rats half the manuscript have ate; Dire hunger! which we still regret; O! may they ne'er again digest The horrors of so sad a feast: Yet less our grief, if what remains, Dear Jacob,† by thy care and pains Shall be to future times convey'd : It thus begins;
**** Here Matthew said,
+Jacob Tonson, the bookseller.
'Alma, in verse; in prose, the mind; By Aristotle's pen defin❜d, Throughout the body squat or tall, Is bond fide, all in all :
And yet, slap dash, is all again
In every sinew, nerve, and vein; Runs here and there, like Hamlet's ghost, While every where she rules the roast. This system, Richard, we are told The men of Oxford firmly hold : The Cambridge wits, you know, deny With ipse dixit to comply:
They say, (for in good truth they speak With small respect of that old Greek) That, putting all his words together, 'Tis three blue beans in one blue bladder. 'Alma, they strenuously maintain, Sits cock-horse on her throne, the brain, And from that seat of thought dispenses Her sovereign pleasure to the senses: Two optic nerves, they say, she ties, Like spectacles, across the eyes, By which the spirits bring her word Whene'er the balls are fix'd or stirr'd; How quick at park and play they strike; The duke they court; the toast they like; And at St. James' turn their grace From former friends, now out of place.
"Without these aids, to be more serious, Her power, they hold, had been precarious : The eyes might have conspir'd her ruin, And she not known what they were doing. Foolish it had been, and unkind, That they should see, and she be blind.
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