ODE ON CHARITY. O thou! whose eye of smiling love, Hail, Charity! thou fairest, best, To beam with lustre of thine own: Sweeter thy breath, than gales that play, Where summer flowers their odours fling; Nor is so soft the voice of May, With all the choir of tuneful spring, The smile that on thy cheek is seen, Bespeaks a paradise within. Oh! still thy sacred form display; Reign the warm friend of human kind! ODE TO MERCY. Ố thou, who sit`st a smiling bride Who oft with songs, divine to hear, Win'st from his fatal grasp the spear, And hid'st in wreaths of flowers his bloodless sword ! Thou who, amidst the deathful field, By godlike chiefs alone beheld, Oft with thy bosom bare art found, Pleading for him the youth who sinks to ground: See Mercy, see, with pure and loaded hands, Before thy shrine my country's genius stands, And decks thy altar still, though pierced with many a wound! |