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How poor', how rich', how abject', how august',
How complicate', how wonderful' is Man?
How passing wonder HE', who made him such?
Who centred in our make' such strange extremes'?
From different natures marvellously mixt,
Connexion exquisite of distant worlds'!
Distinguished link in being's endless chain'!
Midway from nothing' to the Deity'!
A beam ethereal', sullied', and absorpt!
Though sullied', and dishonoured', still divine'!
Dim miniature' of greatness absolute'!
An heir of glory'! a frail child of dust'!
Helpless immortal'! insect infinite'!

A worm'! a god' !—I tremble' at myself,
And in myself am lost! at home a stranger',
Thought wanders up and down, surprised', aghast',
And wond'ring at her own': how reason reels!
O what a miracle to man' is man',

Triumphantly distressed'! what joy', what dread' !
Alternately transported', and alarmed'!

What can preserve' my life? or what destroy'?
An angel's arm can't snatch' me from the grave;
Legions' of angels can't confine' me there.

11.-On Death.

Young.

WHERE the prime actors of the last year's scene,
Their port so proud, their buskin and their plume?
How many sleep who kept the world awake

With lustre and with noise! Has death proclaimed
A truce, and hung his sated lance on high?
'Tis brandish'd still; nor shall the present year
Be more tenacious of her human leaf,
Or spread of feeble life a thinner fall.

But needless monuments to wake the thought:
Life's gayest scenes speak man's mortality,
Though in a style more florid, full as plain
As mausoleums, pyramids, and tombs.
What are our noblest ornaments but deaths
Turn'd flatterers of life, in paint or marble,
The well-stained canvas, or the featur'd stone?

Our fathers grace, or rather haunt, the scene:
Joy peoples her pavilion from the dead.

Profest diversions: cannot these escape?
Far from it: these present us with a shroud,
And talk of death like garlands o'er a grave.
As some bold plunderers for buried wealth,
We ransack tombs for pastime; from the dust
Call up the sleeping hero; bid him tread
The scene for our amusement: How like gods
We sit; and, wrapp'd in immortality,
Shed generous tears on wretches born to die;
Their fate deploring, to forget our own!
Where is the dust that has not been alive?
The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors:
From human mould we reap our daily bread.
The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,
And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons.
O'er devastation we blind revels keep;

While buried towns support the dancer's heel.
Nor man alone; his breathing bust expires;
His tomb is mortal: empires die. Where, now,
The Roman? Greek? They stalk an empty name;
Yet few regard them in this useful light,
Though half our learning is their epitaph.-
When down thy vale, unlock'd by midnight thought,
That loves to wander in thy sunless realms,
O death, I stretch my view,-what visions rise!
What triumphs, toils imperial, arts divine,
In wither'd laurels glide before my sight!
What lengths of far famed ages, bellow'd high
With human agitation, roll along

In unsubstantial images of air!

The melancholy ghosts of dead renown,
Whispering faint echoes of the world's applause,
With penitential aspect as they pass,

All point at earth, and hiss at human pride,

The wisdom of the wise and prancings of the great.

Young.

12.-On the Being of a God.

RETIRE;-the world shut out;-thy thoughts call home!
Imagination's airy wing repress;

Lock up thy senses;-let no passion stir;-
Wake all to Reason;-let her reign alone;
Then, in thy soul's deep silence, and the depth
Of Nature's silence, midnight, thus inquire,
As I have done; and shall inquire no more.
In Nature's channel, thus the questions run.
What am I? and from whence?—I nothing know,
But that I am; and, since I am, conclude
Something Eternal: had there e'er been nought,
Nought still had been: eternal there must be.
But what eternal?-Why not human race;
And Adam's ancestors without an end?-
That's hard to be conceiv'd; since every link
Of that long-chain'd succession is so frail;
Can every part depend, and not the whole?
Yet grant it true; new difficulties rise;
I'm still quite out at sea; nor see the shore.
Whence earth, and these bright orbs?—eternal too?—
Grant matter was eternal; still these orbs
Would want some other father; much design
Is seen in all their motions, all their makes;
Design implies intelligence, and art:

That can't be from themselves-or man; that art
Man scarce can comprehend, could man bestow?
And nothing greater, yet allowed, than man.-
Who, motion, foreign to the smallest grain,
Shot through vast masses of enormous weight?
Who bade brute matter's restive lump assume
Such various forms, and gave it wings to fly?
Has matter innate motion? then each atom,
Asserting its indisputable right

To dance, would form an universe of dust:

Has matter none? Then whence these glorious forms, And boundless flights, from shapeless, and reposed? Has matter more than motion? Has it thought, Judgment, and genius? Is it deeply learned

G g

In mathematics? Has it framed such laws,
Which, but to guess, a Newton made immortal?-
If so, how each sage atom laughs at me,
Who think a clod inferior to a man!

If art, to form; and counsel, to conduct;
And that with greater far than human skill,
Resides not in each block;-a GODHEAD reigns.-
And, if a God there is, that GOD how great! Young.

13.-On the Wonders of Redemption.

THOU most indulgent, most tremendous Power!
Still more tremendous, for thy wondrous love!
That arms, with awe more awful, thy commands;
And foul transgression dips in sevenfold night.
How our hearts tremble at thy love immense!
In love immense, inviolably just!

Thou, rather than justice should be stained,
Didst stain the cross; and work of wonders far
The greatest, that thy dearest far might bleed.

Bold thought! Shall I dare speak it, or repress ?
Should man more execrate, or boast, the guilt
Which roused such vengeance? which such love in-
flamed?

(O'er guilt how mountainous !) with out-stretched arms,
Stern justice, and soft-smiling Love, embrace,
Supporting, in full majesty, thy throne,
When seemed its majesty to need support,
Or that, or man, inevitably lost.

What, but the fathomless of thought divine,
Could labour such expedient from despair,
And rescue both! both rescue! both exalt!
O how are both exalted by the deed!
The wondrous deed! or shall I call it more?
A wonder in Omnipotence itself!

A mystery, no less to gods than men !

Ye brainless wits! ye baptized infidels !
Ye worse for mending! washed to fouler stains!
The ransom was paid down; the fund of heaven,
Heaven's inexhaustible exhausted fund,

Amazing, and amazed, poured forth the price,
All price beyond; though curious to compute,

Archangels failed to cast the mighty sum:
Its value vast ungrasped by minds create,
For ever hides, and glows, in the Supreme.
And was the ransom paid? It was: and paid
(What can exalt the bounty more?) for you.
The sun beheld it-no, the shocking scene
Drove back his chariot: midnight veiled his face;
Not such as this; not such as Nature makes;
A midnight, Nature shuddered to behold;
A midnight new! a dread eclipse (without
Opposing spheres) from her Creator's frown!
Sun! didst thou fly thy Maker's pain? or start.
At the enormous load of human guilt,

Which bowed his blessed head; o'erwhelmed his cross, Made groan the centre, burst earth's marble womb, With pangs, strange pangs! delivered of her dead? Hell howled; and Heaven that hour let fall a tear; Heaven wept, that man might smile! Heaven bled, that man

Might never die!

And is devotion virtue? 'tis compelled;

What heart of stone, but glows at thoughts like these?
Such contemplations mount us; and should mount
The mind still higher; nor ever glance on man,
Unraptured, uninflamed.-Where roll my thoughts,
To rest from wonders? other wonders rise;
And strike where'er they roll: my soul is caught:
Heaven's sovereign blessings, clustering from the cross,
Rush on her, in a throng, and close her round,
The prisoner of amaze !-In his blest life
I see the path, and in his death the price,
And in his great ascent, the proof supreme
Of immortality-And did he rise?

Hear, O ye nations! hear it, O ye dead!
He rose! he rose! he burst the bars of death.

The theme, the joy, how then shall man sustain? Oh the burst gates! crushed sting! demolished throne! Last gasp of vanquished Death! Shout, earth and heaven!

This sum of good to man: whose nature, then,
Took wing, and mounted with him from the tomb!."
Then, then, I rose; then, first, humanity

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