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'Twas thus, as under shade I stood, I sung my wishes to the wood,

And, lost in thought, no more perceived
The branches whisper as they waved:
It seemed as all the quiet place

Confessed the presence of the Grace:

When thus she spoke :-"Go, rule thy will,
Bid thy wild passions all be still;
Know God, and bring thy heart to know
The joys which from religion flow:

Then every grace shall prove its guest,
And I'll be there to crown the rest!"

Oh! by yonder mossy seat,

In my hours of sweet retreat,
Might I thus my soul employ,
With sense of gratitude and joy,
Raised, as ancient prophets were,
In heavenly vision, praise, and prayer,
Pleasing all men, hurting none,

Pleased and blessed with God alone;
Then while the gardens take my sight,
With all the colours of delight,
While silver waters glide along,

To please my ear, and court my song,
I'll lift my voice, and tune my string,
And Thee, Great Source of Nature, sing.
The sun that walks his airy way,
To light the world, and give the day;
The moon, that shines with borrowed light;
The stars, that gild the gloomy night;
The seas, that roll unnumbered waves;
The wood, that spreads its shady leaves;
The field, whose ears conceal the grain,
The yellow treasure of the plain ;-
All of these, and all I see,

Should be sung, and sung by me:
They speak their Maker as they can,
But want and ask the tongue of man.

Go, search among your idle dreams,
Your busy, or your vain extremes,
And find a life of equal bliss,

Or own the next begun in this.

THE BURIAL OF MOSES.

THOU flock, whom Moses to thy freedom led,
How wilt thou lay the venerable dead!
Go, (if thy fathers taught a work they knew,)
Go, build a pyramid to glory due;

Square the broad base, with sloping sides arise,
And let the point diminish in the skies:
There leave the corpse, impending o'er his head
The wand whose motion winds and waves obeyed.
On sable banners to the sight describe

The painted arms of every mourning tribe.

And thus may public grief adorn the tomb,

Deep streaming downwards through the vaulted room.
On the black stone a fair inscription raise,
That sums his government, to speak his praise;
And may the style as brightly worth proclaim,
As if affection with a pointed beam
Engraved or fired the words, or Honour due
Had with itself inlaid the tablet through.

But stop the pomp that is not man's to pay,
For God will grace him in a nobler way;
Mine eyes perceive an orb of heavenly state,
With splendid forms and light serene replete;
I hear the sound of fluttering wings in air,
I hear the tuneful tongues of angels there:
They fly, they bear, they rest on Nebo's head,
And in thick glory wrap the reverend dead.
This errand crowns his songs, and tends to prove
His near communion with the quire above.

Now swiftly down the steepy mount they go,
Now swiftly glides their shining orb below,
And now moves off where rising grounds deny
To spread their valley to the distant eye.
Ye blessed inhabitants of glittering air!

You've borne the prophet, but we know not where.
Perhaps lest Israel, over-fondly led,

In rating worth when envy leaves the dead,
Might plant a grove, invent new rites divine,
Make him their idol, and his grave the shrine.
But what disorder? what repels the light?
And ere its season forces on the night?

Why sweep the spectres o'er the blasted ground?
What shakes the Mount with hollow roaring sound?
Hell rolls beneath it, Terror stalks before

With shrieks and groans, and Horror bursts a door;
And Satan rises in infernal state,

Drawn up by malice, envy, rage, and hate;
A darkening vapour with sulphureous steam,
In pitchy curlings, edged by sullen flame,
And framed a chariot for the dreadful form,
Drives whirling up on wild Confusion's storm.

Then fiercely turning where the prophet died,
"Nor shall thy nation 'scape my wrath," he cried;
"This corpse I'll enter, and thy flock mislead,
And all thy miracles my lies shall aid.
But where? He's gone, and by the scented sky
The favourite courtiers have been lately nigh.
Oh! slow to business, cursed in mischief's hour:
Trace on their odours, and if hell has power-"
This said with spite, and with a bent for ill,
He shot with fury from the trembling hill.

In vain, proud fiend, thy threats are half exprest, And half lie choking in thy scornful breast; His shining bearers have performed their rite, And laid him softly down in shades of night. A warrior heads the band, great Michael he, Renowned for victories in wars with thee;

A sword of flame to stop thy course he bears,
Nor has thy rage availed, nor can thy snares;
"The Lord rebuke thy pride," he meekly cries:
The Lord has heard him, and thy project dies.

SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE.

SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE, a neous writer, was born in 1654. character; among them are, Paraphrase on the Book of Job, and a Version of the Psalms. Blackmore was the butt of the wits of his time. Dryden commenced the persecution, and a host of contemporaries followed. Heedless however of this, he went on advancing the cause of truth and virtue; and he has received his reward by the commendations of such men as Addison, Locke, and Johnson. He died in 1739.

poet, a physician, and a miscellaMany of his poems are of a serious The Creation, The Redeemer, a

THE HUNDRED AND FOURTEENTH PSALM
PARAPHRASED.

WHEN God a thousand miracles had wrought,
The favourite tribes' deliverance to promote,
And marching on in triumph at their head,
Their host to promised Canaan led;
Then, Jacob, was thy rescued race
Distinguished by peculiar marks of grace;
Their happiness and honour to advance,
He chose them for his own inheritance;
With whom alone their gracious God
Would make his residence and blest abode.
They were from heaven instructed to adore
Their God, and with celestial light

Canaan was blessed, as Goshen was before,

While all their neighbours lay involved in night.

God the foundation of their empire laid,
The model of their constitution made:

He on their throne their King in person sate,
And ruled with equal laws the sacred state.
For this blest purpose Jacob's seed

Was from the Egyptian bondage freed.

When God to do this wondrous work was pleased,

Great consternation nature seized:

The restive floods refused to flow,

Panting with fear, the winds could find no breath to blow,

The astonished sea did motionless become,

Horror its waters did benumb.

The briny waves, that reared themselves to see

The Almighty judgments, and his majesty,

With terror cystallized, began to halt,

Then pillars grew, and rocks of salt.

Jordan, as soon as this great deed it saw,

Struck with a reverential awe,

Started, and with precipitation fled,

The thronging waves ran backward to their head.
Vast hills were moved from out their place,

Terror the mountains did constrain

To lift themselves from off their base,

And on their rocky roots to dance about the plain.

The little hills, astonished at the sight,

Flew to the mother-mountains in a fright,

And did about them skip, as lambs

Run to and bleat around their trembling dams.

What ailed thee, O thou troubled sea,

That thou with all thy watery troops didst flee?
What ailed thee, Jordan? tell the cause

That made thy flood break nature's laws;

Thy course thou didst not only stop,

And roll thy liquid volumes up,

But didst e'en backward flow, to hide

Within thy fountain's head thy refluent tide.

What did the lofty mountains ail?

What pangs of fear did all the hills assail,

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