SUBMISSION.

O LORD, my best desire fulfil,
And help me to resign

Life, health, and comfort, to thy will,
And make thy pleasure mine.

Why should I shrink at thy command,
Whose love forbids my fears?
Or tremble at the gracious hand
That wipes away my tears?

No, let me rather freely yield
What most I prize to Thee;
Who never hast a good withheld,
Or wilt withhold from me.

Thy favour all my journey through
Thou art engaged to grant;
What else I want, or think I do,
'Tis better still to want.

Wisdom and mercy guide my way,
Shall I resist them both?

A poor blind creature of a day,
And crushed before the moth!

But ah! my inward spirit cries,
Still bind me to thy sway;

Else the next cloud that veils my skies,
Drives all these thoughts away.

STANZAS

joined to the Yearly Bill of Mortality of the Parish

All Saints, Northampton.* Anno Domini, 1787.

Pallida Mors æquo pulsat pcde pauperum tabernas,

Regumque turres.

HORACE.

Pale Death with equal foot strikes wide the door
Of royal halls, and hovels of the poor.

WHILE thirteen moons saw smoothly run
The Nen's barge-laden wave,

All these, life's rambling journey done,
Have found their home, the grave.

Was man (frail always) made more frail
Than in foregoing years?

Did famine or did plague prevail,

That so much death appears?

No; these were vig'rous as their sires,
Nor plague nor famine came :
This annual tribute Death requires,
And never waives his claim.

Like crowded forest-trees we stand,
And some are marked to fall;
The axe will smite at God's command,
And soon shall smite us all.

Green as the bay tree, ever green,

With its new foliage on,

Composed for John Cox, parish clerk of Northampton.

The gay, the thoughtless, have I seen,
I passed-and they were gone.

Read, ye that run, the awful truth,
With which I charge my page;
A worm is in the bud of youth,
And at the root of age.

No present health can health ensure
For yet an hour to come;

No med'cine, though it oft can cure,
Can always balk the tomb.

And O! that, humble as my lot,
And scorn'd as is my strain,

These truths, though known, too much forgot,
I may not teach in vain.

So prays your clerk with all his heart,

And, ere he quits the pen,

Begs you for once to take his part,

And answer all-Amen!

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,
In which he sports away the treasure now;
And prayer more seasonable than the noise
Of drunkards, or the music-drawing bow.

Then doubtless many a trifler, on the brink

Of this world's hazardous and headlong shore,
Forced to a pause, would feel it good to think,
Told that his setting sun must rise no more.

Ah self-deceived! Could I prophetic say
Who next is fated, and who next to fall,
The rest might then seem privileged to play;
But, naming none, the voice now speaks to ALL!

Observe the dappled foresters, how light

They bound and airy o'er the sunny gladeOne falls-the rest, wide-scattered with affright, Vanish at once into the darkest shade.

Had we their wisdom, should we, often warned,
Still need repeated warnings, and at last,
A thousand awful admonitions scorned,

Die self-accused of life run all to waste?

Sad waste! for which no after-thrift atones:
The grave admits no cure for guilt or sin;
Dew-drops may deck the turf that hides the bones,
But tears of godly grief ne'er flow within.

Learn then, ye living! by the mouths be taught
Of all these sepulchres, instructors true,
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.

-Placidaque ibi demum morte quievit. VIRG.
There calm at length he breathed his soul away.

ww

"O MOST delightful hour by man
Experienced here below,

The hour that terminates his span,
His folly, and his woe!