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Hopeless immortals! how they scream and shiver, While devils push them to the pit wide yawning, Hideous and gloomy, to receive them headlong

Down to the centre.

Stop here my fancy: (all away ye horrid
Doleful ideas!) come arise to Jesus,

How he sits God-like: and the saints around him

Thron'd, yet adoring!

O may I sit there when he comes triumphant,
Dooming the nations! then ascend to glory,
While our Hosannas all along the passage

Shout the Redeemer.

LAUNCHING INTO ETERNITY.

WATTS.

It was a brave attempt! advent'rous he

Who in the first ship broke the unknown sea;
And, leaving his dear native shores behind,

Trusted his life to the licentious wind.

I see the surging brine: the tempest raves,
He on a pine-plank rides across the waves,
Exulting on the edge of thousand gaping graves:
He steers the winged boat, and shifts the sails,
Conquers the floods, and manages the gales.

Such is the soul that leaves this mortal land
Fearless, when the great Master gives command.
Death is the storm: she smiles to hear it roar,
And bids the tempest waft her from the shore :
Then with a skilful helm she sweeps the seas,
And manages the raging storm with ease;
(Her faith can govern Death) she spreads her
wings

Wide to the wind, and as she sails she sings,
And loses by degrees the sight of mortal things.
As the shores lessen, so her joys arise,
The waves roll gentler, and the tempest dies:
Now vast eternity fills all her sight;

She floats on the broad deep with infinite delight,
The seas for ever calm, the skies for ever bright.

MEDITATION IN A GROVE.

WATTS.

SWEET Muse, descend and bless the shade,
And bless the ev'ning grove;
Bus'ness and noise and day are fled,
And ev'ry care but love.

But hence, ye wanton young
Mine is a purer flame;

No Phillis shall infect the air
With her unhallow'd name.

and fair,

JESUS has all my pow'rs possess'd,
My hopes, my fears, my joys;
He, the dear Sov'reign of my breast,
Shall still command my voice.

Some of the fairest choirs above
Shall flock around my song
With joy, to hear the name they love
Sound from a mortal tongue.

His charms shall make my numbers flow,
And hold the falling floods,
While silence sits on ev'ry bough,
And bends the list'ning woods.

I'll carve our passion on the bark,
And ev'ry wounded tree

Shall drop, and bear some mystic mark

That JESUS dy'd for me.

The swains shall wonder when they read

Inscrib'd on all the grove,

That Heav'n itself came down, and bled

To win a mortal's love.

THE

HERO'S SCHOOL OF MORALITY.

WATTS.

THERON among his travels found
A broken statue on the ground;
And searching onward as he went,
He trac'd a ruin'd monument.

Mould, moss, and shades, had overgrown

The sculpture of the crumbling stone,

Yet ere he pass'd, with much ado
He guess'd and spell'd out, Sci-pi-o.

"Enough," he cry'd; "I'll drudge no more, "In turning the dull Stoics o'er :

"Let pedants waste their hours of ease
"To sweat all night at Socrates;

"And feed their boys with notes and rules,
"Those tedious Recipes of Schools
"To cure ambition: I can learn
"With greater ease the great concern
"Of mortals; how we may despise
"All the gay things below the skies.

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"Methinks a mould'ring pyramid Says all that the old sages said:

"For me, these shatter'd tombs contain "More morals than the Vatican.

"The dust of heroes cast abroad,

"And kick'd and trampled in the road,
"The relics of a lofty mind,

"That lately wars and crowns design'd,
"Tost for a jest from wind to wind,
"Bid me be humble, and forbear
"Tall monuments of fame to rear,

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