TIROCINIUM, grace Ir is not from his form, in which we trace But borrows all its grandeur from the foul. An intellectual kingdom, all her own. For her, the mem'ry fills her ample page. With truths pour'd down from ev'ry diftant age; The wisdom of great nations, now no more ; When copiously supplied, then most enlarg'd, For her, the judgment, umpire in the strife That grace and nature have to wage through life, Appointed fage preceptor to the will, I Condemns, Condemns, approves, and with a faithful voice Why did the fiat of a God give birth To yon fair fun and his attendant earth; And, when descending he refigns the skies, Why takes the gentler moon her turn to rise, Whom ocean feels through all his countless waves, And owns her pow'r on ev'ry fhore he laves? Why do the feafons ftill enrich the year, Fruitful and young as in their first career? Spring hangs her infant blossoms on the trees, Rock'd in the cradle of the western breeze; Summer in hafte the thriving charge receives Beneath the fhade of her expanded leaves, 'Till autumn's fiercer heats and plenteous dews Dye them at last in all their glowing hues'Twere wild profufion all, and bootless waste, Pow'r mifemploy'd, munificence misplac'd, Had not its Author dignified the plan, And crown'd it with the majefty of man. Thus form'd, thus plac'd, intelligent, and taught, Look where he will, the wonders God has wrought, The wildeft fcorner of his Maker's laws Finds in a fober moment time to pause, To press th' important question on his heart, Why form'd at all, and wherefore as thou art ?" If man be what he seems, this hour a slave, The next, mere duft and ashes in the grave; His crimes and follies with an aching eye; With ev'ry luft with which frail nature burns, And And ufelefs while he lives; and when he dies, Truths that the learn'd pursue with eager thought, Are not important always as dear-bought, Proving at last, though told in pompous ftrains, A childish waste of philofophic pains; But truths on which depends our main concern, That 'tis our fhame and mis'ry not to learn, With fuch a luftre, he that runs may read. 'Tis true, that if to trifle life away Down to the fun-set of their latest day, Then perish on futurity's wide shore Like fleeting exhalations, found no more, Were all that Heav'n requir'd of human kind, What none could rev'rence all might justly blame, And man would breathe but for his Maker's fhame. But |