"And gefture they propound to our belief? "Nay-conduct 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 reasonings (if that name muft need belong To excufes in which reafon has no part) Serve to compose a spirit well inclined
To live on terms of amity with vice, And fin without difturbance. Often urged, (As often as libidinous difcourfe Exhaufted, he reforts to folemn themes Of theological and grave import) They gain at last his unreserved affent;
Till, hardened his heart's temper in the forge Of luft, and on the anvil of despair,
He flights the ftrokes of confcience. Nothing moves,
Or nothing much, his conftancy in ill;
Vain tampering has but fostered his disease;
'Tis defperate, and he sleeps the fleep of death. Hafte now, philofopher, and set him free.
Charm the deaf ferpent wifely. Make him hear Of rectitude and fitness, moral truth
How lovely, and the moral sense how fure,
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 prose, Till it out-mantle all the pride of verse.- Ah, tinkling cymbal, and high sounding brass, Smitten in vain! fuch mufic cannot charm The eclipse, that intercepts: truth's heavenly beam, And chills and darkens a wide-wandering foul. The STILL SMALL VOICE is wanted. He muft 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 disdain, 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 caufe Bled nobly; and their deeds, as they deserve, Receive proud recompenfe. We give in charge Their names to the sweet lyre. The hiftoric muse, Proud of the treasure, marches with it down To latest times; 'and fculpture, in her turn, Gives bond in ftone and ever,during brafs To guard them, and to immortalize her trust: 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 sweets 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 fkies.
Yet few remember them. They lived unknown Till perfecution dragged them into fame,
And chased them up to heaven. Their ashes flew -No marble tells us whither. With their names No bard embalms and fanctifies his fong: And hiftory, fo warm on meaner themes, Is cold on this. She execrates indeed The tyranny, that doomed them to the fire, But gives the glorious sufferers little praise *.
He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are flaves befide. There's not a chain That hellifh foes, confederate for his harm, Can wind around him, but he cafts it off With as much ease as Samson his green wyths. He looks abroad into the varied field
Of nature, and though poor perhaps, compared With those whose manfions glitter in his fight, Calls the delightful scenery all his own. His are the mountains, and the vallies his, And the refplendent rivers. His to enjoy With a propriety that none can feel, But who, with filial confidence infpired, Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling fay-" My Father made them all!"
Are they not his by a peculiar right,
And by an emphasis of intereft his,
Whose eye they fill with tears of holy joy, Whose heart with praife, and whofe exalted mind With worthy thoughts of that unwearied love, That planned, and built, and still upholds, a world So clothed with beauty for rebellious man? Yes-ye may fill your garners, ye that reap The loaded foil, and ye may waste much good In fenfeless riot; but ye will not find In feaft or in the chafe, in fong or dance, A liberty like his, who, unimpeached Of ufurpation, and to no man's wrong, Appropriates nature as his Father's work, And has a richer ufe of your's than you. He is indeed a freeman. Free by birth Of no mean city; planned or ere the hills Were built, the fountains opened, or the fea With all his roaring multitude of waves, His freedom is the fame in every state; And no condition of this changeful life, So manifold in cares, whofe every day Brings its own evil with it, makes it lefs: For he has wings, that neither fickness, pain, Nor penury, can cripple or confine.
No nook fo narrow but he spreads them there
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