What equals this? And shall the victor now
Boaft the proud laurels on his loaded brow?
Religion! Oh thou cherub, heavenly bright!
Oh joys unmix'd, and fathomless delight!
Thou, Thou art all; nor find I in the whole
Creation aught, but God and my own foul.

For ever then, my foul, thy God adore,
Nor let the brute creation praise him more.
Shall things inanimate my conduct blame,

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And flush my conscious cheek with spreading shame? 235
They all for him purfue, or quit, their end;
The mounting flames their burning power fufpend;
In folid heaps th' unfrozen billows stand,
To reft and filence aw'd by his command:
Nay, the dire monsters that infest the flood,
By nature dreadful, and athirst for blood,
His will can calm, their favage tempers bind,
And turn to mild protectors of mankind.
Did not the prophet this great truth maintain
In the deep chambers of the gloomy main ;
When darkness round him all her horrors spread,
And the loud ocean bellow'd o'er his head ?

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When now the thunder roars, the lightening flies,
And all the warring winds tumultuous rise;
When now the foaming furges, toft on high,
Disclose the fands beneath, and touch the sky;
When death draws near, the mariners aghast
Look back with terror on their actions past;
Their courage fickens into deep difmay,

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Their hearts, through fear and anguish, melt away; 255

Nor

Nor tears, nor prayers, the tempest can appease ;
Now they devote their treafute to the feas;

Unload their fhatter'd barque, though richly fraught,
And think the hopes of life are cheaply bought
With gems and gold; but oh, the storm so hìgh! 26,
Nor gems nor gold the hopes of life can buy.

The trembling prophet then, themselves to fave,
They headlong plunge into the briny wave';
Down he descends, and, booming o'er his head,
The billows clofe; he 's number'd with the dead. 26;
(Hear, O ye juft! attend, ye virtuous few!
And the bright paths of piety pursue)
Do! the great Ruler of the world, from high,
Looks fimiling down with a propitious eye,
Covers his fervant with his gracious hand,
And bids tempeftuous nature filent stand;
Commands the peaceful waters to give place,
Or kindly fold him in a foft embrace :
He bridles-in the monsters of the deep :
The bridled monsters awful distance keep :
Forget their hunger, while they view their prey ;
And guiltlets gaze, and round the stranger play.

But still arise new wonders; nature's Lord Sends forth into the deep his powerful word, And calls the great leviathan: the great

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1

Leviathan attends in all his ftate;

Exults for joy, and, with a mighty bound,

Makes the fea flake, and heav'n and earth resound; Blackens the waters with the rifing fand,

And drives vaft billows to the diftant land.

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As

As yawns an earthquake, when imprison'd air
Struggles for vent, and lays the centre bare,
The whale expands his jaws enormous size;
The prophet views the cavern with furprize;
Measures his monftrous teeth, afar descry'd,
And rolls his wondering eyes from fide to fide:
Then takes poffeffion of the fpacious feat,
And fails fecure within the dark retreat.

Now is he pleas'd the northern blaft to hear,
And hangs on liquid mountains, void of fear;
Or falls immers'd into the depths below;
Where the dead filent waters never flow;
To the foundations of the hills convey'd,

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Dwells in the shelving mountain's dreadful shade: Where plummet never reach'd, he draws his breath, 300 And glides ferenely through the paths of death.

305

Two wondrous days and nights through coral groves, Through labyrinths of rocks and fands, he roves : When the third morning with its level rays The mountains gilds, and on the billows plays, It fees the king of waters rife, and pour His facred gueft un-injur❜d on the shore : A type of that great bleffing, which the Mufe In her next labour ardently pursues.

VOL. I.

C

THE

[18]

THE LAST DAY.

BOOK II.

- Εκ γαίης ἐλπίζομεν ἐς φάΘ· ἐλθεῖν Λεί [αν ἀποιχομένων· ἐπίσω δὲ Θεοὶ τελέθονται. PHOCYL

N°

-We hope, that the departed will rise again "from the duft after which, like the gods, "they will be immortal."

OW Man awakes, and from his filent bed,
Where he has flept for ages, lifts his head;
Shakes off the flumber of ten thousand years,
And on the borders of new worlds appears.
Whate'er the bold, the rash, adventure cost,
In wide Eternity I dare be loft.

The Mufe is wont in narrow bounds to fing,
To teach the fwain, or celebrate the king.
I grasp the whole, no more to parts confin'd,
I lift my voice, and sing to human kind:

I fing to men and angels; angels join,

While fuch the theme, their facred fongs with mine.

Again the trumpet's intermitted sound

Rolls the wide circuit of creation round,

An univerfal concourfe to prepare

Of all that ever breath'd the vital air:

In fome wide field, which active whirlwinds fweep,

Drive cities, forefts, mountains, to the deep,

To finooth and lengthen out th' unbounded ipace,
And spread an area for all human race.

Now monuments prove faithful to their trust,
And render back their long-committed dust.
Now charnels rattle; fcatter'd limbs, and all
The various bones, obfequious to the call,
Self-mov'd, advance; the neck perhaps to meet
The distant head; the distant legs the feet.
Dreadful to view, fee through the dusky sky
Fragments of bodies in confufion fly,
To diftant regions journeying, there to claim
Deserted members and compleat the frame.

When the world bow'd to Rome's almighty fword,

Rome bow'd to Pompey, and confefs'd her lord.
Yet one day loft, this deity below

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Became the scorn and pity of his foe.
His blood a traitor's facrifice was made,
And smok'd indignant on a ruffian's blade.
No trumpet's found, no gasping army's yell,
3id, with due horror, his great foul farewell.
>bfcure his fall! all weltering in his gore,
lis trunk was caft to perish on the shore!
Vhile Julius frown'd the bloody monster dead,
Who brought the world in his great rival's head.
`his fever'd head and trunk shall join once more,
`hough realms now rife between, and oceans roar.
he trumpet's found each fragrant mote fhall hear, 45
r fix'd in earth, or if afloat in air,

bey the fignal wafted in the wind,
nd not one fleeping atom lag behind,

Ca

40

So