Nor heed, perchance, amid their fate or care,
To ask of old Tradition what we were.

Then by that deluge sea, our destined grave,

Shall lonely Silence sit, and watch the wave,
Where of all glory's peaks, now proudly steep,
Scarce one lone Ararat shall spot the deep.

B.-Enough! when talk thus allegoric grows, Fain would I yawn, and wish it at a close.

A. Then here we part. Yet end we here to say,
This hand may ne'er presume to claim the bay.
For me more fit, at leisure stretch'd along,

My days to cheat with charm of others' song,
And court in peace, nor mocked at nor admired,

Th' unpurchased duties of a life retired.

From guilt, from hate, as best I may,

aloof;

Too weak to cast, too shy to meet reproof;

Yet proud, in virtue's cause, faint voice to raise,
And be, for one brief hour, the thing I praise;
Well pleased, meanwhile, to see once more commence
The reign of temperate Fancy, leagued with Sense;
And, if the lash were plied with honest view,
Not much displeased that Sense were Satire too.

D

RHYMED PLEA FOR TOLERANCE.

DIALOGUE II.

"For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."

2 Cor. iii. 6.

A. THAT preacher's strain I never could approve,

Who, but in driblets, dwells on Christian love;

And when, in sooth, not wholly passing by,

Seems not so much to teach, as not deny;
Nay-deem theology, too much, of late,

Contracts the narrow-straitens still the strait.

And though, at length, our senatorial band, Reluctantly-with cold and grudging hand

Hath loosed faith's sterner statutes-yet a few

Retained, for old misdeeds to gall the Jew—

Those sterner statutes custom's iron pen,
Rased from the books, writes deeply still on men.

Love the mere deed-drips oft from saving sense, And many a slow concession filters thence;

-But largest Prudence ne'er was Virtue's whole 1,
Whose Love-a spirit-gushes from the soul.

And thus, even now, our world may little spare

Of Tolerance, that might win it to forbear,

For Pride aye wields an over-ready rod

To smite the wretch denounced a waif from God;

-Nor slow, meanwhile, her own harsh heart to please

With that old unction, "I am not like These."