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Nor yet conclude all fiery trials past, For Heav'n will exercise us to the last; Sometimes will check us in our full career

With doubtful blessings and with mingled fear; 270
That still depending on his daily grace,
His ev'ry mercy for an alms may pass ;
With sparing hands will diet us to good,
Preventing surfeits of our pamper'd blood.
So feeds the mother-bird her craving young
With little morsels, and delays 'em long.

True, this last blessing was a royal feast;
But where's the wedding-garment on the guest ?
Our manners, as religion were a dream,
Are such as teach the nations to blaspheme.
In lusts we wallow, and with pride we swell,
And injuries with injuries repel;

Prompt to revenge not daring to forgive,
Our lives unteach the doctrine we believe.
Thus Israel sinn'd, impenitently hard,

280

And vainly thought the present ark their guard; †
But when the haughty Philistines appear,
They fled, abandon'd to their foes and fear:
Their God was absent tho' his ark was there.
Ah! lest our crimes should snatch this pledge away,
And make our joys the blessings of a day!
For we have sinn'd him hence, and that he lives,
God to his promise, not our practice, gives.

t1 Sam. iv. $0.

291

Our crimes would soon weigh down the guilty scale,
But James, and Mary, and the Church prevail:
Nor Amalek can rout the chosen bands, t

While Hur and Aaron hold up Moses' hands.
By living well let us secure his days,
Mod'rate in hopes, and humble in our ways.
No force the freeborn spirit can constrain,
But charity and great examples gain.
Forgiveness is our thanks for such a day;
'Tis godlike God in his own coin to pay.
But you, propitious Queen! translated here,
From your mild heav'n, to rule our rugged sphere.
Beyond the sunny walks and circling year;
You, who your native climate have bereft
Of all the virtues, and the vices left;
Whom piety and beauty make their boast,
Tho' beautiful is well in pious lost;
So lost as star-light is dissolv'd away,
And melts into the brightness of the day;
Or gold about the regal diadem,
Lost to improve the lustre of the gem:
What can we add to your triumphant day?
Let the great gift the beauteous giver pay;
For should our thanks awake the rising sun,
And lengthen as his latest shadows run,
That, tho' the longest day, would soon, too soon be

[done,

300

310

+ Exod. xvii. 8.

Let angels' voices with their harps conspire,
But keep th' auspicious infant from the choir;
Late let him sing above, and let us know
No sweeter music than his cries below.

Nor can I wish to you, great Monarch! more
Than such an annual income to your store.
The day which gave this Unit did not shine
For a less omen than to fill the Trine.
After a Prince an Admiral beget;

4

330

The Royal Sov'reign wants an anchor yet.
Our isle has younger titles still in store.
And when th' exhausted land can yield no more,
Your line can force them from a foreign shore.

The name of Great your martial mind will suit,
But justice is your darling attribnte;

Of all the Greeks 'twas but one hero's * due,
And in him Plutarch prophesy'd of you:

A prince's favours but on few can fall,

But Justice is a virtue shar'd by all.

320

Some kings the name of Conqu'rors have assum'd, Some to be great, some to be gods presum'd;

349

But boundless pow'r and arbitrary lust

Made tyrants still abhor the name of Just;
They shunn'd the praises his godlike virtue gives,
And fear'd a title that reproach'd their lives.

The pow'r from which all kings derive their state, Whom they pretend at least to imitate,

Aristides. See his life in Plutarch.

Is equal both to punish and reward,

For few would love their God unless they fear'd.
Resistless force and immortality
Make but a lame imperfect deity:

Tempests have force unbounded to destroy,
And deathless being e'en the damn'd enjoy ;
And yet Heav'n's attributes, both last and first,
One without life, and one with life accurst;
But Justice is Heav'n's self, so strictly he,
That could it fail the Godhead could not be.
This virtue is your own; but life and state
Are one to Fortune subject, one to Fate:
Equal to all, you justly frown or smile;

Nor hopes nor fears your steady hand beguile;
Yourself our balance hold, the world's our isle. 361

350

RELIGIO LAICI.

Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta docere.

DIM as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers,
Is reason to the soul: and as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear

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When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere,
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight,
So dies, and so dissolves in supernat❜ral light.
Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause, to Nature's secret head,
And found that one first principle must be ;
But what or who that Universal He,
Whether from soul encompassing this ball
Unmade, unmov'd, yet making, moving all,
Or various atoms' interfering dance

Leapt into form, the noble work of Chance;
Or this great All was from eternity,
Not e'en the Stagirite himself could see,
And Epicurus guess'd as well as he.

Volume 1.

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