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Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior

(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?) Uncertain and unsettled still remains,

326

Deep vers'd in books and shallow in himself,

Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,

And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge;

As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
Or if I would delight my private hours
With music or with poem, where so soon
As in our native language can I find

330

That solace? All our law and story strow'd

336

With hymns, our psalms with artful terms inscrib'd,
Our Hebrew songs and harps in Babylon,
That pleas'd so well our victor's ear, declare
That rather Greece from us these arts deriv'd;
Ill imitated, while they loudest sing

340

The vices of their deities, and their own
In fable, hymn, or song, so personating
Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.
Remove their swelling epithets thick laid
As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest,
Thin sown with ought of profit or delight,
Will far be found unworthy to compare
With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling,
Where God is prais'd aright, and god-like men,
The holiest of holies, and his saints;

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Such are from God inspir'd, not such from thee, Unless where moral virtue is express'd

351

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By light of Nature not in all quite lost.
Their orators thou then extoll'st, as those
The top of eloquence, statists indeed,
And lovers of their country, as may seem;
But herein to our Prophets far beneath,
As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of civil government
In their majestic unaffected stile
Than all th' oratory of Greece and Rome,
In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,
What makes a nation happy', and keeps it so,
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;
These only with our law best form a king.

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So, spake the son of God; but Satan now 365 Quite at a loss, for all his darts were spent, Thus to our Saviour with stern brow reply'd : Since neither wealth, nor honor, arms nor arts, Kingdom nor empire pleases thee, nor ought By me propos'd in life contemplative, Or active, tended on by glory', or fame, What dost thou in this world? the wilderness For thee is fittest place; I found thee there, And thither will return thee; yet remember What I foretel thee, soon thou shalt have cause To wish thou never hadst rejected thus

Nicely or cautiously my offer'd aid,

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Which would have set thee in short time with ease
On David's throne, or throne of all the world,
Now at full age, fulness of time, thy season,

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When prophecies of thee are best fulfill'd.
Now contrary, if I read ought in Heav'n,

Or Heav'n write ought of Fate, by what the stars
Voluminous, or single characters,

In their conjunction met, give me to spell,

Sorrows, and labors, opposition, hate
Attends thee, scorns, reproaches, injuries,
Violence and stripes, and lastly cruel death;

385

A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom,
Real or allegoric I discern not,

Nor when, eternal sure, as without end,
Without beginning; for no date prefix'd
Directs me in the starry rubric set.

390

So say'ing he took (for still he knew his power Not yet expir'd) and to the wilderness

395 Brought back the Son of God, and left him there, Feigning to disappear. Darkness now rose, As day-light sunk, and brought in louring Night Her shadowy offspring, unsubstantial both, Privation mere of light and absent day. Our Saviour meek and with untroubled mind After his aery jaunt, though hurried sore, Hungry and cold betook him to his rest,

400

Wherever, under some concourse of shades, [shield
Whose branching arms thick intertwin'd might
From dews and damps of night his shelter'd head,
But shelter'd slept in vain, for at his head
The Tempter watch'd, and soon with ugly dreams
Disturb'd his sleep; and either tropic now

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415

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'Gan thunder, and both ends of Heav'n, the clouds
From many a horrid rift abortive pour'd
Fierce rain with lightning mix'd, water with fire
In ruin reconcil'd: nor slept the winds
Within their stony caves, but rush'd abroad
From the four hinges of the world, and fell
On the vex'd wilderness, whose tallest pines,
Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks
Bow'd their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts
Or torn up sheer: ill wast thou shrouded then,
O patient Son of God, yet only stood'st
Unshaken; nor yet stay'd the terror there,
Infernal ghosts, and hellish furies, round [shriek'd,
Environ'd thee, some howl'd, some yell'd, some
Some bent at thee their fiery darts, while thou
Satst unappall'd in calm and sinless peace. 425
Thus pass'd the night so foul, till morning fair
Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray,
Who with her radiant finger still'd the roar
Of thunder, chas'd the clouds, and laid the winds,
And grisly spectres, which the Fiend had rais'd 430
To tempt the Son of God with terrors dire.
And now the sun with more effectual beams
Had cheer'd the face of earth, and dry'd the wet
From drooping plant, or dropping tree; the birds,
Who all things now behold more fresh and green,
After a night of storm so ruinous,
436
Clear'd up their choicest notes in bush and spray
To gratulate the sweet return of morn;

440

Nor yet amidst this joy and brightest morn
Was absent, after all his mischief done,
The Prince of Darkness, glad would also seem
Of this fair change, and to our Saviour came,
Yet with no new device, they all were spent,
Rather by this his last affront resolv'd,
Desp❜rate of better course, to vent his rage, 445
And mad despite to be so oft repell'd.
Him walking on a sunny hill he found,
Back'd on the north and west by a thick wood;
Out of the wood he starts in wonted shape,
And in a careless mood thus to him said;

450

Fair morning yet betides thee, Son of God, After a dismal night; I heard the wrack As earth and sky would mingle; but myself Was distant; and these flaws, though mortals fear them

As dang'rous to the pillar'd frame of Heav'n, 455 Or to the Earth's dark basis underneath,

Are to the main as inconsiderable

And harmless, if not wholesome, as a sneeze
To man's less universe, and soon are gone;
Yet as being oft times noxious where they light 460
On man, beast, plant, wasteful and turbulent,
Like turbulencies in th' affairs of men,

Over whose heads they roar, and seem to point,
They oft fore-signify and threaten ill

This tempest at this desert most was bent; 465
Of men at thee, for only thou here dwell'st.

Volume III.

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