There find a Judge inexorably just,

And perish there, as all presumption must.
Peace be to those (such peace as earth can give)
Who live in pleasure, dead e'en while they live;
Born capable indeed of heavenly truth;
But down to latest age, from earliest youth,
Their mind a wilderness through want of care,
The plough of wisdom never entering there.
Peace (if insensibility may claim

A right to the meek honours of her name)
To men of pedigree, their noble race,
Emulous always of the nearest place
To any throne, except the throne of grace.
Let cottagers and unenlighten'd swains

Revere the laws they dream that Heaven ordains;
Resort on Sundays to the house of prayer,
And ask, and fancy they find, blessings there.
Themselves, perhaps, when weary they retreat
To enjoy cool nature in a country seat,

To exchange the centre of a thousand trades,
For clumps, and lawns, and temples, and cascades,
May now and then their velvet cushions take,
And seem to pray for good example sake;
Judging, in charity no doubt, the town
Pious enough, and having need of none.
Kind souls! to teach their peasantry to prize
What they themselves, without remorse, despise :
Nor hope have they, nor fear, of aught to come,
As well for them had prophecy been dumb;
They could have held the conduct they pursue,
Had Paul of Tarsus lived and died a Jew:
And truth, proposed to reasoners wise as they,
Is a pearl cast-completely cast away.

They die.-Death lends them, pleased and as in sport,

All the grim honours of his ghastly court.
Far other paintings grace the chamber now,
Where late we saw the mimic landscape glow;

The busy heralds sang the sable scene

With mournful 'scutcheons, and dim lamps between;
Proclaim their titles to the crowd around,

But they that wore them move not at the sound:
The coronet, placed idly on their head,
Adds nothing now to the degraded dead,
And e'en the star that glitters on the bier,
Can only say-Nobility lies here.

Peace to all such-'twere pity to offend,
By useless censure whom we cannot mend;
Life without hope can close but in despair,
'Twas there we found them, and must leave them
there.

As when two pilgrims in a forest stray,

Both may be lost, but each in his own way;
So fares it with the multitudes beguiled

In vain opinion's waste and dangerous wild;

Ten thousand rove the brakes and thorns among,
Some eastward, and some westward, and all wrong.
But here, alas! the fatal difference lies,

Each man's belief is right in his own eyes;
And he that blames what they have blindly chose,
Incurs resentment for the love he shows.

Say, botanist, within whose province fall

The cedar and the hyssop on the wall,

Of all that deck the lanes, the fields, the bowers, What parts the kindred tribes of weeds and flowers? Sweet scent, or lovely form, or both combin'd,

Distinguish every cultivated kind;

The want of both denotes a meaner breed,

And Chloe from her garland picks the weed.
Thus hopes of every sort, whatever sect

Esteem them, sow them, rear them, and protect,
If wild in nature, and not duly found,
Gethsemane in thy dear hallow'd ground,
That cannot bear the blaze of Scripture light,
Nor cheer the spirit, nor refresh the sight,
Nor animate the soul to Christian deeds,

(Oh cast them from thee!) are weeds, arrant weeds.

Ethelred's house, the centre of six ways,
Diverging each from each, like equal rays,
Himself as bountiful as April rains,

Lord paramount of the surrounding plains.
Would give relief of bed and board to none,
But guests that sought it in the appointed One;
And they might enter at his open door,
E'en till his spacious hall would hold no more.
He sent a servant forth by every road,

To sound his horn, and publish it abroad,

That all might mark-knight, menial, high, and low

An ordinance it concern'd them much to know.
If, after all, some headstrong, hardy lout
Would disobey, though sure to be shut out,
Could he with reason murmur at his case,
Himself sole author of his own disgrace?
No! the decree was just and without flaw;
And he that made had right to make the law;
His sovereign power and pleasure unrestrain'd,
The wrong was his who wrongfully complain'd.
Yet half mankind maintain a churlish strife
With Him the Donor of eternal life,
Because the deed, by which his love confirms
The largest he bestows, prescribes the terms.
Compliance with his will your lot insures,
Accept it only, and the boon is yours.
And sure it is as kind to smile and give,
As with a frown to say, Do this, and live.
Love is not pedlar's trumpery, bought and sold;
He will give freely, or he will withhold;
His soul abhors a mercenary thought,
And him as deeply who abhors it not;
He stipulates indeed, but merely this,
That man will freely take an unbought bliss,
Will trust him for a faithful generous part,
Nor set a price upon a willing heart.
Of all the ways that seem to promise fair,
To place you where his saints his presence share,

This only can, for this plain cause express'd
In terms as plain-himself has shut the rest.
But oh, the strife, the bickering, and debate,
The tidings of unpurchased heaven create!
The flirted fan, the bridle, and the toss,
All speakers, yet all language at a loss.
From stucco'd walls smart arguments rebound;
And beaus, adepts in everything profound,
Die of disdain, or whistle off the sound.
Such is the clamour of rooks, daws, and kites,
The explosion of the levell'd tube excites,
Where mouldering abbey walls o'erhang the glade,
And oaks coeval spread a mournful shade,
The screaming nations, hovering in mid air,
Loudly resent the stranger's freedom there,
And seem to warn him never to repeat
His bold intrusion on their dark retreat.
Adieu, Vinosa cries, ere yet he sips
The purple bumper trembling at his lips,
Adieu to all morality! if grace

Make works a vain ingredient in the case.
The Christian hope is-Waiter, draw the cork—
If I mistake not-Blockhead! with a fork!
Without good works, whatever some may boast,
Mere folly and delusion--Sir, your toast.
My firm persuasion is, at least sometimes,
That Heaven will weigh man's virtues and his crimes
With nice attention in a righteous scale,
And save or damn as these or those prevail.
I plant my foot upon this ground of trust,
And silence every fear with-God is just.
But if perchance, on some dull, drizzling day,
A thought intrude, that says, or seems to say,
If thus the important cause is to be tried,
Suppose the beam should dip on the wrong side
I soon recover from these needless frights,
And God is merciful-sets all to rights.
Thus between justice, as my prime support,
And mercy, fled to as the last resort,

;

I glide and steal along with heaven in view,
And,―pardon me, the bottle stands with you.
I never will believe, the Colonel cries,
The sanguinary schemes that some devise,
Who make the good Creator, on their plan,
A being of less equity than man.

If appetite, or what divines call lust,

Which men comply with, e'en because they must,
Be punish'd with perdition, who is pure?
Then theirs, no doubt, as well as mine, is sure.
If sentence of eternal pain belong

To every sudden slip and transient wrong,
Then Heaven enjoins the fallible and frail
A hopeless task, and damns them if they fail.
My creed (whatever some creed-makers mean
By Athanasian nonsense, or Nicene),
My creed is, he is safe that does his best,
And death's a doom sufficient for the rest.

Right, says an ensign; and for aught I see,
Your faith and mine substantially agree;
The best of every man's performance here
Is to discharge the duties of his sphere.
A lawyer's dealings should be just and fair,
Honesty shines with great advantage there.
Fasting and prayer sits well upon a priest,
A decent caution and reserve at least.
A soldier's best is courage in the field,
With nothing here that wants to be conceal'd
Manly deportment, gallant, easy, gay;
A hand as liberal as the light of day.
Tho soldier thus endow'd, who never shrinks,
Nor closets up his thoughts, whate'er he thinks,
Who scorns to do an injury by stealth,

Must go to heaven-and I must drink his health.
Sir Smug, he cries (for lowest at the board,
Just made fifth chaplain of his patron lord,
His shoulders witnessing by many a shrug,
How much his feelings suffer'd, sat Sir Smug),
Your office is to winnow false from true;

Come, prophet, drink, and tell us, What think you?