Come then, and added to thy many crowns,
Receive yet one, the crown of all the earth,
Thou who alone art worthy! It was thine
By ancient covenant, ere nature's birth;
And thou haft made it thine by purchase fince,
And overpaid its value with thy blood.
Thy faints proclaim thee king; and in their hearts
Thy title is engraven with a pen
Dipt in the fountain of eternal love.
Thy faints proclaim thee king; and thy delay
Gives courage to their foes, who, could they fee
The dawn of thy laft advent, long-defired,
Would creep into the bowels of the hills,
And flee for safety to the falling rocks.
The very spirit of the world is tired
Of its own taunting question, asked so long,
"Where is the promise of your Lord's approach?"
The infidel has shot his bolts away,
Till his exhaufted quiver yielding none,
He gleans the blunted fhafts, that have recoiled,
And aims them at the shield of truth again.
The veil is rent, rent too by priestly hands,
That hides divinity from mortal eyes;
And all the myfteries to faith propofed,
Infulted and traduced, are caft aside,
As useless, to the moles and to the bats.
They now are deemed the faithful, and are praised,
Who conftant only in rejecting thee,
Deny thy Godhead with a martyr's zeal,
And quit their office for their error's fake.
Blind, and in love with darkness! yet even these
Worthy, compared with fycophants, who knee
Thy name adoring, and then preach thee man!
So fares thy church. But how thy church may fare
The world takes little thought. Who will may
preach,
And what they will. All paftors are alike
To wandering sheep, resolved to follow none.
Two gods divide them all-Pleasure and Gain:
For these they live, they facrifice to these,
And in their service wage perpetual war
With confcience and with thee. Luft in their hearts,
And mischief in their hands, they roam the earth
To prey upon each other; ftubborn, fierce,
High-minded, foaming out their own difgrace.
Thy prophets fpeak of fuch; and, noting down
The features of the laft degenerate times,
Exhibit every lineament of these.
Come then, and added to thy many crowns,
Receive yet one, as radiant as the rest,
Due to thy laft and most effectual work,
Thy word fulfilled, the conqueft of a world!
He is the happy man, whose life ev'n now Shows fomewhat of that happier life to come; Who, doomed to an obscure but tranquil ftate, Is pleased with it, and, were he free to choose, Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the
Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith,
Prepare for happiness; bespeak him one
Content indeed to fojourn while he must
Below the skies, but having there his home.
The world o'erlooks him in her busy search
Of objects, more illuftrious in her view;
And, occupied as earnestly as she,
Though more fublimely, he o'erlooks the world.
She fcorns his pleasures, for she knows them not;
He feeks not her's, for he has proved them vain.
He cannot skim the ground like fummer birds
Purfuing gilded flies; and fuch he deems
Her honours, her emoluments, her joys.
Therefore in contemplation is his bliss,
Whofe power is fuch, that whom the lifts from earth.
She makes familiar with a heaven unseen,
And fhows him glories yet to be revealed.
Not flothful he, though feeming unemployed,
And cenfured oft as useless. Stilleft ftreams
Oft water faireft meadows, and the bird,
That flutters leaft, is longeft on the wing.
Ask him, indeed, what trophies he has raised,
Or what achievements of immortal fame
He purposes, and he shall answer-None.
His warfare is within. There unfatigued
His fervent spirit labours. There he fights,
And there obtains fresh triumphs o'er himself,
And never withering wreaths, compared with which
The laurels that a Cæfar reaps are weeds.
Perhaps the felf-approving haughty world,
That as the sweeps him with her whistling filks
Scarce deigns to notice him, or, if she see,
Deems him a cypher in the works of God,
Receives advantage from his noiseless hours,
Of which the little dreams. Perhaps the owes
Her funfhine and her rain, her blooming spring
And plenteous harvest, to the prayer he makes,
When, Ifaac like, the folitary faint
Walks forth to meditate at even-tide,
And think on her, who thinks not for herself.
Forgive him then, thou bustler in concerns
Of little worth, an idler in the beft,
If, author of no mischief and fome good,
He feek his proper happiness by means,
That may advance, but cannot hinder, thine.
Nor, though he tread the fecret path of life,
Engage no notice, and enjoy much ease,
Account him an incumbrance on the state,
Receiving benefits, and rendering none.
His sphere though humble, if that humble sphere
Shine with his fair example, and though small
His influence, if that influence all be spent
In foothing forrow and in quenching strife,
In aiding helpless indigence, in works,
From which at least a grateful few derive
Some taste of comfort in a world of wo,
Then let the fupercilious great confess
He serves his country, recompenfes well
The state, beneath the shadow of whofe vine
He fits fecure, and in the scale of life
Holds no ignoble, though a flighted, place.
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