Green as the bay-tree, ever green, With its new foliage on, The gay, the thoughtless, I have seen--- Read, ye that run, the solemn truth, No present health can health insure And Oh! that, humble as my lot, These truths, though known, too much forgot, So prays your clerk with all his heart, Begs you for once to take his part, And answer all---Amen! ON A SIMILAR OCCASION, FOR THE YEAR 1788. Quod adest, memento Componere æquus. Cætera fluminis Ritu feruntur. Improve the present hour, for all beside Is a mere feather on a torrent's tide. Hor. COULD I, from heaven inspired, as sure presage To whom the rising year shall prove his last, As I can number in my punctual page, And item down the victims of the past; How each would trembling wait the mournful sheet, On which the press might stamp him next to die? And, reading here his sentence, how replete With anxious meaning, heaven-ward turn his eye! Time then would seem more precious than the joys Then doubtless many a trifler, on the brink Of this world's hazardous and headlong shore, Ah self-deceived! Could I prophetic say Observe the dappled foresters, how light They bound, and airy, o'er the sunny glade--One falls---the rest, wide scattered with affright, Vanish at once into the darkest shade, Had we their wisdom, should we, often warned, Sad waste! for which no after thrift atones : Learn then, ye living! by the mouths be taught That, soon or late, death also is your lot, And the next opening grave may yawn for you. ON A SIMILAR OCCASION, FOR THE YEAR 1789. -Placidâque ibi demum morte quievit Virg. There calm at length he breathed his soul away. "OH most delightful hour by man "His folly, and his woe! "Worlds should not bribe me back to tread "Again life's dreary waste, "To see again my day o'erspread "With all the gloomy past. "My home henceforth is in the skies; "Earth, seas, and sun adieu, "All heaven unfolded to my eyes, " "I have no sight for you." So spoke Aspasio, firm possest Of faith's supporting rod, Then breathed his soul into its rest, The bosom of his God. He was a man among the few, Sincere on virtue's side; And all his strength from scripture drew, To hourly use applied. That rule he prized, by that he feared, He hated, hoped, and loved ;. Nor ever frowned, or sad appeared, But when his heart had roved. For he was frail as thou or I, But, when he felt it, heaved a sigh, Such lived Aspasio; and at last His joys be mine, each reader cries, They shall be your's, my verse replies, ON A SIMILAR OCCASION, FOR THE YEAR 1790. Ne commonentem recta sperne. Despise not my good counsel. Buchanan. HE who sits from day to day, Hardly knows that he has sung. Where the watchman in his round So your verse-man I, and clerk, Death at hand---yourselves his mark- Duly at my time I come Publishing to all aloud-- Soon the grave must be your home, But the monitory strain, Oft repeated in your ears, Seems to sound too much in vain, Wins no notice, wakes no fears. Can a truth, by all confessed Pleasure's call attention wins, Death and Judgment, Heaven and Hell--- No more move us than the bell When some stranger is interred. Oh then, ere the turf or tomb Spirit of instruction come, Make us learn that we must die. |