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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 colors 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.

EDWARD YOUNG.

DR. YOUNG was born at Upham, near Winchester, in 1681. He was educated at Winchester School, and removed thence to New College, Oxford. He took orders in 1727, and was appointed Chaplain to the king. After this he engaged in politics, and at the age of eighty, soliciting further preferment from Archbishop Secker, he was appointed Clerk of the Closet to the Princess dowager of Wales. He died in April, 1765. The principal work of Dr. Young is his "Night Thoughts," of which Dr. Johnson gives the following character: "The author has exhibited a very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions; a wildness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and order. The excellence of this work is not exactness, but copiousness; particular lines are not to be regarded, the power is in the whole; and in the whole there is a magnificence, like that ascribed to a Chinese plantation-the magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity."

THE POET COMPARES HIMSELF TO A TRAVELLER.

As when a traveller, a long day passed

In painful search of what he cannot find,
At night's approach, content with the next cot,
There ruminates awhile, his labor lost;

Then cheers his heart with what his fate affords,
And chants his sonnet to deceive the time,
Till the due season calls him to repose:
Thus I, long travelled in the ways of men,
And dancing, with the rest, the giddy maze,
Where Disappointment smiles at Hope's career;
Warned by the languor of life's evening ray,
At length have housed me in an humble shed:
Where, future wand'ring banished from my thought,
And waiting, patient, the sweet hour of rest,

I chase the moments with a serious song.

IMMORTALITY.

IMMORTAL! ages past, yet nothing gone!
Morn without eve! a race without a goal!
Unshortened by progression infinite!
Futurity for ever future! life

Beginning still where computation ends!
'Tis the description of a Deity!

'Tis the description of the meanest slave.

Immortal! What can strike the sense so strong,

As this the soul? it thunders to the thought;

Reason amazes, gratitude o'erwhelms.

No more we slumber on the brink of fate;

Roused at the sound, the exulting soul ascends,
And breathes her native air: an air that feeds
Ambition high, and fans ethereal fires!
Quick kindles all that is divine within us,

Nor leaves one loitering thought beneath the stars.
Immortal! was but one immortal, how

Would others envy! how would thrones adore!
Because 'tis common, is the blessing less?
How this ties up the bounteous hands of heaven!
O vain, vain, vain! all else; eternity!

A glorious and a needful refuge that,
From vile imprisonment in abject views.
"Tis immortality, 'tis that alone,
Amid life's pains, abasements, emptiness,
The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill.
Eternity depending covers all;

Sets earth at distance, casts her into shades;
Blends her distinctions; abrogates her powers:

The low, the lofty, joyous, and severe,
Fortune's dread frowns, and fascinating smiles,
Make one promiscuous and neglected heap,
The man beneath, if I may call him man,
Whom immortality's full force inspires.
Nothing terrestrial touching his high thought;

Suns shine unseen, and thunders roll unheard,
By minds quite conscious of their high descent,
Their present province and their future prize;
Divinely darting upward every wish,

Warm on the wing, in glorious absence lost.
Doubt you this truth? Why labors your belief?
If earth's whole orb by some due distanced eye
Was seen at once, her towering Alps would sink,
And levelled Atlas leave an even sphere.
Thus earth, and all that earthly minds admire,
Is swallowed in eternity's vast round.
To that stupendous view when souls awake,
So large of late, so mountainous to man,
Time's joys subside, and equal all below.

THE WORLD.

SUCH the glories of the world!

What is the world itself? Thy world,—a grave.
Where is the dust that hath 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;
Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel.

Each element partakes our scattered spoils;
As nature wide, our ruins spread; man's death
Inhabits all things, but the thought of man,
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, unlocked 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 withered laurels glide before my sight!

What lengths of far-famed ages, billowed high
With human agitation, roll along

In unsubstantial images of air.

...

But, O Lorenzo! far the rest above,
Of ghastly nature, and enormous size,

One form assaults my sight, and chills my blood,
And shakes my frame. Of one departed world
I see the mighty shadow.

DEATH.

AH! how unjust to nature and himself,
Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!
Like children babbling nonsense in their sports,
We censure nature for a span too short;
That span, too short, we tax as tedious too,-
Torture invention, all expedients tire

To lash the lingering moments into speed;
And whirl us (happy riddance) from ourselves.
Art! brainless art! Our furious charioteer

Drives headlong towards the precipice of Death;

Death, most our dread; Death, thus more dreadful made:
Oh! what a riddle of absurdity!

Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot wheels;
How heavily we drag the load of life!
Blessed Leisure is our curse; like that of Cain,
It makes us wander; wander earth around,
To fly the tyrant Thought. As Atlas groaned
The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour;
We cry for mercy to the next amusement,—
The next amusement mortgages our fields:
Slight inconvenience!

Yet when Death kindly tenders us relief
We call him cruel; years to moments shrink,
Ages to years. The telescope is turned;
To man's false optics (from his folly false)
Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings,

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