And fummon'd to the glorious standard foon,
Which flames eternal crimson through the skies.
Nor are our brothers thoughtless of their kin.
Yet abfent, but not absent from their love.
Michael has fought our battles; Raphael sung
Our triumphs; Gabriel on our errands flown,
Sent by the SOVEREIGN: and are these, O man!
Thy friends, thy warm allies? and thou (shame burn
The cheek to cinder) rival to the brute?
Religion's all. Descending from the skies
To wretched man, the goddess in her left
Holds out this world, and in her right, the next.
Religion! the fole voucher man is man;
Supporter fole fole of man above himself;
Ev'n in this night of frailty, change, and death,
She gives the foul a foul that acts a god.
Religion! providence! an after-state!
Here is firm footing; here is folid rock;
This can fupport us; all is sea besides;
Sinks under us; bestorms, and then devours.
His hand the good man fastens on the skies,
And bids earth roll, nor feels her idle whirl.
As when a wretch, from thick, polluted air,
Darkness, and ftench, and fuffocating damps,
And dungeon horrors, by kind fate, difcharg'd,
Climbs some fair eminence, where æther pure
Surrounds him, and Elysian profpects rise,
His heart exults, his spirits caft their load,
As if new-born, he triumphs in the change;
So joys the foul, when from inglorious aims,
And fordid sweets, from feculence and froth
Of ties terrestrial, set at large, she mounts
To Reason's region, her own element,
Breathes hopes immortal, and affects the skies.
Religion! thou the foul of happiness;
And, groaning Calvary, of thee! there shine
The nobleft truths; there strongest motives sting,
There facred violence afsaults the foul;
There nothing but compulfion is forborn.
Can love allure us? or can terror awe?
He weeps! the falling drop puts out the fun;
He fighs! the figh earth's deep foundation shakes,
If, in his love, fo terrible, what then
His wrath inflam'd? his tenderness on fire?
Like soft, smooth oil, outblazing other fires?
Can prayer, can praise avert it? - Thou, my all!
My theme! my inspiration! and my crown!
My strength in age! my rise in low eftate!
My foul's ambition, pleasure, wealth!-my world!
My light in darkness! and my life in death!
My boaft through time! bliss through eternity!
Eternity, too short to speak thy praife!
Or fathom thy profound of love to man!
To man, of men the meanest, ev'n to me;
My facrifice! my God!-what things are these !
What then art THOU? by what name shall I call
Knew I the name devout archangels use,
[thee?
Devout archangels should the name enjoy,
By me unrivall'd; thousands more fublime,
None half so dear, as that, which though unspoke,
Still glows at heart: O how omnipotence
Is lost in love? Thou great PHILANTHROPIST!
Father of angels! but the friend of man!
Like Jacob, fondest of the younger born!
Thou, who didst save him, snatch the smoking brand
From out the flames, and quench it in thy blood!
How art thou pleas'd, by bounty to distress!
To make us groan beneath our gratitude,
Too big for birth! to favour, and confound;
To challenge, and to distance all return!
Of lavish love stupendous heights to foar,
And leave praise panting in the distant vale?
Thy right too great defrauds thee of thy due;
And facrilegious our fublimeft fong.
But fince the naked will obtains thy smile,
Beneath this monument of praise unpaid,
And future life symphonious to my strain,
(That noblest hymn to heav'n!) for ever ly
Intomb'd my fear of Death! and ev'ry fear,
The dread of ev'ry evil, but thy frown.
Whom fee I yonder, so demurely smile?
Laughter a labour, and might break their rest.
Ye Quietifts, in homage to the skies!
Serene! of foft address! who mildly make
An unobtrusive tender of your hearts,
Abhorring violence! who halt indeed;
But for the blessing, wrestle not with heav'n!
Think you my fong too turbulent? too warm ?
Are paffions, then, the Pagans of the foul?
Reason alone baptiz'd? alone ordain'd
To touch things facred? Oh for warmer still!
Guilt chills my zeal, and age benumbs my pow'rs
Oh for an humbler heart, and prouder fong!
THOU, my much injur'd theme! with that soft eye
Which melted o'er doom'd Salem, deign to look
Compassion to the coldness of my breast,
And pardon to the winter in my strain.
Oh ye cold-hearted, frozen formalists!
On fuch a theme 'tis impious to be calm;
Paffion is reason, transport temper here.
Shall heav'n, which gave us ardour, and has shewn
Her own for man so strongly, not disdain
What finooth emollients in theology,
Recumbent Virtue's downy doctors preach,
That profe of piety, a lukewarm praife?
Rise odours sweet from incenfe uninflam'd?
Devotion, when lukewarm, is undevout;
But when it glows, its heat is struck to heav'n;
To human hearts her golden harps are strung;
High heav'n's orchestra chaunts Amen to man.
Hear I, or dream I hear, their diftant strain,
Sweet to the foul, and tasting strong of heav'n,
Soft-wafted on celestial Pity's plume,
Through the vast spaces of the universe,
To chear me in this melancholy gloom?
Oh when will Death (now ftingless), like a friend,
Admit me of their choir? Oh when will Death,
This mould'ring, old partition-wall thrown down,
Give beings, one in nature, one abode ?
Oh death divine! that giv'st us to the skies!
Great future! glorious patron of the past,
And present! when shall I thy shrine adore?
From Nature's continent, immenfely wide,
Immensely bless'd, this little isle of life,
This dark, incarcerating colony,
Divides us. Happy day! that breaks our chain;
That manumits; that calls from exile home:
That leads to Nature's great metropolis,
And re-admits us, through the guardian hand
Of elder brothers, to our Father's throne;
Who hears our Advocate, and, through his wounds Beholding man, allows that tender name. 'Tis this makes Christian triumph a command; 'Tis this makes joy a duty, to the wife : 'Tis impious, in a good man, to be sad.
Seeft thou, LORENZO! where hangs all our hope?
Touch'd by the cross, we live, or more than die :
That touch which touch'd not angels; more divine
Than that which touch'd confufion into form,
And darkness into glory; partial touch!
Ineffably pre-eminent regard!
Sacred to man, and sovereign through the whole
Long golden chain of miracles, which hangs
From heav'n through all duration, and supports,
In one illuftrious and amazing plan,
Thy welfare, Nature! and thy God's renown:
That touch, with charm celestial, heals the foul
Diseas'd, drives pain from guilt, lights life in death,
Turns earth to heav'n, to heav'nly thrones transforms
The ghaftly ruins of the mould'ring tomb.
Dost ask me when? - When He who dy'd returns;
Returns, how chang'd! where then the man of wo?
In glory's terrors all the Godhead burns;
And all his courts, exhausted by the tide
Of deities triumphant in his train,
Leave a stupendous folitude in heaven;
Replenish'd foon, replenifh'd with increase
Of pomp, and multitude; a radiant band
Of angels new; of angels from the tomb.
Is this by fancy thrown remote? and rise Dark doubts between the promise, and event? I fend thee not to volumes for thy cure; Read Nature; Nature is a friend to truth; Nature is Chriftian; preaches to mankind; And bids dead matter aid us in our creed Hast thou ne'er seen the comet's flaming flight? Th' illuftrious stranger passing, terror sheds On gazing nations, from his fiery train Of length enormous, takes his ample round Through depths of æther; coasts unnumber'd worlds, Of more than folar glory; doubles wide Heav'n's mighty cape; and then revifits earth, From the long travel of a thousand years,
Thus, at the destin'd period, shall return
HE, once on earth, who bids the comet blaze;
And, with him, all our triumph o'er the tomb.
Nature is dumb on this important point;
Or Hope precarious in low whisper breathes;
Faith fpeaks aloud, distinct; ev'n adders hear,
But turn, and dart into the dark again.
Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death,
To break the shock blind Nature cannot shun,
And lands thought smoothly on the farther shere.
Death's terror is the mountain Faith removes;
That mountain-barrier between man and peace.
'Tis Faith difarms destruction; and abfolves
From ev'ry clam'rous charge the guiltlefs tomb.
Why disbelieve? LORENZO Reafon bids, bid
"All-facred Reason." - Hold her facred still;
Nor shalt thou want a rival in thy flame:
All facred Reason! fource, and foul, of all
Demanding praife, on earth, or earth above!
My heart is thine: deep in its inmost folds,
Live thon with life; live dearer of the two.
Wear I the blessed cross, by fortune stamp'd
On passive Nature, before thought was born?
My birth's blind bigot! fir'd with local zeal!
No; Reason rebaptiz'd me when Weigh'd true and falfe in her impartial scale;
My heart became the convert of my head;
And made that choice, which once was but my fate.
"On argument alone my faith is built :"
Reafon purfu'd is faith; and, unpurfu'd
Where proof invites, 'tis reason then no more:
And fuch our proof, that, or our faith is right,
Or reafon lies, and Heav'n design'd it wrong:
Absolve we this? what, then, is blafphemy?
Fond as we are, and justly fond of faith,
Reason, we grant, demands our first regard;
The mother honour'd, as the daughter dear:
Reason the root, fair faith is but the flower;
The fading flow'r shall die; but reason lives
Immortal, as her Father in the skies
When faith is virtue, reason makes it fo.
Wrong not the Christian; think not reason yours;
Tis Reason our great Master holds so dear;
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