Whofe precious blood the crofs did ftain,
Let not thofe agonies be vain.
Thou whom avenging powers obey,
Cancel my debt, too great to pay,
Before the fad accounting day.
Surrounded with amazing fears,
Whose load my foul with anguish bears,
I figh, I weep; accept my tears.
XIII.
Thou who wert mov'd with Mary's grief,
And by abfolving of the thief,
Has given me hope, now give relief.
XIV.
Reject not my unworthy prayer,
Preserve me from that dangʼrous fnare,
Which death and gaping hell prepare.
exalted foul a place,
Among thy chofen right-hand race,
The fons of God, and heirs of grace.
XVI.
From that infatiable abyss,
Where flames devour, and ferpents hifs,.
Promote me to thy feat of bliss.
Proftrate my contrite heart I rend,
My God, my father, and my friend,
Do not forfake me in my end.
Well may they curfe their fecond breath,
Who rife to a reviving death.
- Thou great Creator of mankind,
Let guilty man compassion find.
A CONTEMPLATION on NIGHT.
W or my glad eyes enjoy revolving day;
HETHER amid the gloom of night I ftray,
Still nature's various face informs my fenfe,
Of an all-wife, all-powerful Providence.
When the fun firft breaks the fhades of night,
gay
And strikes the distant eastern hills with light,
Colour returns, the plains their liv'ry wear,
And a bright verdure clothes the fmiling year;
The blooming flowers with op'ning beauties glow,
And grazing flocks their milky fleeces fhow,
The barren cliffs with chalky fronts arise,
And a pure azure arches o'er the skies.
But when the gloomy reign of night returns,
Stript of her fading pride, all nature mourns;
The trees no more their wonted verdure boast,
But weep in dewy tears their beauty loft
No diftant landskips draw our curious eyes,
Wrapt in night's robe the whole creation lyes,
Yet still, even now, while darkness clothes the land,
We view the traces of th' Almighty hand:
Millions of stars in heav'n's wide vault appear,
And with new glories hang the boundless sphere;
The filver moon her western couch forfakes,
And o'er the skies her. nightly circle makes,,
Her folid globe beats back the funny rays,
And to the world her borrow'd light repays.
Whether those stars that twinkling luftre fend
Are funs, and rolling worlds those funs attend,
Man may conjecture, and new schemes declare,
Yet all his fyftems but conjectures are;
But this we know, that heav'n's eternal King,
Who bid this univerfe from nothing fpring,
Can at his word bid num'rous worlds appear,
And rifing worlds th'all-pow'rful word fhall hear.
When to the western main the fun descends,
To other lands a rifing day he lends ;
The fpreading dawn another fhepherd spies,
The wakeful flocks from their warm folds arife ;:
Refresh'd the peasant seeks his early toil,
And bids the plow correct the fallow foil:
While we in fleep's embraces waste the night,
The climes oppos'd enjoy meridian light.
And when those lands the bufy fun forfakes,
With us again the rofy morning wakes;
N 3
In lazy fleep the night rolls fwift away,
And neither clime laments his absent ray.
When the pure foul is from the body flown,
No more fhall night's alternate reign be known,
The fun no more fhall rolling light bestow,
But from th' Almighty streams of glory flow.
Oh may some nobler thought my foul employ,
Than empty, tranfient, fublunary joy!
The ftars fhall drop, the fun fhall lose his flame,
But thou, O God, for ever shine the fame.
A THOUGHT on ETERNITY. By the fame
'RE the foundations of the world were laid,
E're kindling light th' Almighty word obey'd,
Thou wert, and when the fubterraneous flame,
Shall burft its prison, and devour this frame,
From angry heav'n, when the keen lightning flies,
When fervent heat diffolves the melting skies,
Thou ftill fhalt be still as thou wert before,
And know no change when time shall be no more.
O! endless thought, divine eternity!
Th' immortal foul fhares but a part of thee;
For thou wert present when our life began,
When the warm duft fhot up in breathing man.
Ah! what is life? with ills encompass'd round,
Amidft our hopes, fate strikes the fudden wound.
To-day the ftatesman of new honours dreams,
To-morrow death deftroys his airy fchemes.
Is mouldy treasure in thy cheft confin'd?
Think all that treasure thou must leave behind;
Thy heir, with fimiles, fhall view thy blazon'd hearfe,
And all thy hoards with lavish hand difperfe.
Should certain fate th'impending blow delay,
Thy mirth will ficken and thy bloom decay,
Then feeble age will all thy nerves difarm,
No more thy blood its narrow channels warm.
Who then would wish to stretch this narrow span,
To fuffer life beyond the date of man?
The virtuous foul purfues a nobler aim,
And life regards but as a fleeting dream;
She longs to wake, and wishes to get free,
To launch from earth into eternity:
For while the boundless theme extends our thought,
Ten thousand thousand rolling years are nought.
DEATH'S VISION. APOEM. By Mr. Reynolds
OME gentle ghoft, that's launch'd and gone
From coafts of dull mortality,
That's well arriv'd, and entertain❜d as one
Of the triumphant colony,
That flocks the regions of the blest eternity,
Come ease my burthen'd mind, and tell
What 'tis to bid the world farewell;
What 'tis t'abandon all that's dear,
My hopes and joys below,
My friends and studies too,
And all my known converses here.
Oh! tell me what it is to take a flight
Beyond the changes of revolving light,
To worlds I never faw,
Worlds of wonder, and of awe,
Or fill'd with folid glory, or with solid night!
Come, candid spirit, hafte and fly,
And (if thou canst declare,
And I the news can bear)
Come, tell me what it is to die.
Oh! fay what will become of me,
When monumental cold fhall feize
This organized cafk, and freeze
Its active pow'rs and faculties!
In what mysterious plight fhall I then be,
When life's weak lamp, that now thefe
Shall be extinct and gone;
And when the primogenial fire,
That bad the pulse keep time, and beat,
And ftrike the moments of its heat,
Shall fanguifh and expire.
When these soft bellows too, that fo
Unweariedly do blow,
Are working day and night,
To fan, and to foment the wafting light,
Shall all unmechaniz'd, and all unactive grow ;
Shall all their toilfome labour fpare,
And play no more with fwelling gales of intercurrent air.
And when the purple, vital flood,
That drives the wheels and keeps the bellows going,
Always fwelling, always blowing,
That never yet has stood;
A meer Mantis fhall be found,
Forget its beaten trace,
Be weary of its native pace,
And run no more its long accuftom'd hasty round..
III.
Alas! what fhall poor I become,.
When all the ministers of sense,
The pofts of quick intelligence,
Shall march no more from home:
Shall neither tell the affairs abroad,
Nor their domeftic news bring in,
Being flain upon the road,
Dispatch no more advices to the mind within.
When nimble fpies that were
So ready to detect from far,
Shall be cashier'd, their office quite,
No fprightly images restore,
And bufily converse no more
With the unnumber'd offspring of reflected light;
When the deaf drum fhall not rebound,
And trumpet's winding space
Shall modulate no more a needful found,
T'alarm the regent of the place;
When the perceptive hammer fhall not know
Its practice, nor confign prefcribed blow
Unto the wonted anvil there, and fo
No more fhall in the fon'rous forge be coin'd
The airy medals of a speaking mind;
When the officious guards that wait
Their duty at the palace gate,
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