God never meant that man should scale the

heav'ns By strides of human wisdom. In his works, Though wond'rous, he commands us in his word To seek him rather, where his mercy shines. The mind indeed, er:lighten'd from above, Views him in all; ascribes to the grand cause The grand effect; acknowledges with joy His manner, and with rapture tastes his style. But never yet did philosophic tube, That brings the planets home into the eye Of observation, and discovers, else Not visible; his family of worlds, Discover him that rules them; such a veil Hangs over mortal eyes, blind from the birth, And dark in things divine. Full often, too, Our wayward intellect, the more we learn Of nature, overlooks her author more; From instrumental causes proud to draw Conclusions retrograde, and mad mistake. But if his word once teach us, shoot a ray Through all the heart's dark chambers, and reveal Truths undiscern’d but by that holy light, Then all is plain: Philosophy, baptiz’d In the pure fountain of eternal love,

a

Has eyes indeed; and, viewing all she sees
As meant to indicate a God to man,
Gives him his praise, and forfeits not her own.
Learning has born such fruit in other days
On all her branches: piety has found
Friends in the friends of science, and true pray'r
Has flow'd from lips wet with Castalian dews.
Such was thy wisdom, Newton, childlike sage!
Sagacious reader of the works of God,
And in his word sagacious. Such too thine,
Milton, whose genius had angelic wings,
And fed on manna! And such thine, in whom
Our British Themis gloried with just cause,
Immortal Hale! for deep discernment prais'd,
And sound integrity, not more than fam'd
For sarctity of manners undefild.

All flesh is grass, and all its glory fades Like the fair flow'r dishevelld in the wind; Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream: The man we celebrate must find a tomb, And we that worship him ignoble graves. Nothing is proof against the gen'ral curse Of vanity, that seizes all below.

HUMANITY

TO

ANIMALS.

MAN scarce had ris'n, obedient to his call Who form’d him from the dust, his future grave, When he was crown'd as never king was since. God set the diadem

upon

his head, And angel choirs attended. Wond'ring stood The new-made monarch, while before him pass’d, All happy, and all perfect in their kind, The creatures, summon’d from their various haunts To see their sov’reign, and confess his sway, Vast was his empire, absolute his pow'r, Or bounded only by a law, whose force 'Twas his sublimest privilege to feel And own the law of universal love.

The heart is hard in nature, and unfit
For human fellowship, as being void
Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike

To love and friendship both, that is not pleas'&
With sight of animals enjoying life,
Nor feels their happiness augment his own.
The bounding fawn, that darts across the glade
When none pursues, through mere delight of

heart,
And spirits buoyant with excess of glee;
The horse as wanton, and almost as fleet,
That skims the spacious meadow at full speed,
Then stops and snorts, and, throwing high Iris

heels, Starts to the voluntary race again; The very

kine that gambol at high noon, The total herd receiving first from one That leads the dance a summons to be gay, Though wild their strange vagaries, and uncouth Their efforts, yet resolv’d with one consent To give such act and utt'rance as they may To ecstacy too big to be suppress'dThese, and a thousand images of bliss, With which kind nature graces ev'ry scene, Where cruel man defeats not her design, Impart to the benevolent, who wish All that are capable of pleasure pleas'd,

A far superior happiness to their's,
The comfort of a reasonable joy.

In measure, as by force of instinct drawn,
Or by necessity constrain'd, they live
Dependent upon man; those in his fields,
These at his crib, and some beneath his roof.
They prove too often at how dear a rate
He sells protection.-Witness at his foot
The spaniel dying, for some venial fault,
Under dissection of the knotted scourge-
Witness the patient ox, with stripes and yells
Driv'n to the slaughter, goaded, as he runs,
To madness; while the savage at his heels

;
Laughs at the frantic suff'rer's fury, spent
Upon the guiltless passenger o’erthrown.
He, too, is witness, noblest of the train
That wait on man, the flight-performing horse:
With unsuspecting readiness he takes
His murd’rer on his back, and, push'd all day,
With bleeding sides and flanks that heave for life,
To the far-distant goal, arrives and dies.
So little mercy shows who needs so much!
Does law, so jealous in the cause of man,