ASKING LEAVE TO SING.

YET, mighty God, indulge my tongue,

Nor let thy thunders roar,

Whilst the young notes and venturous song To worlds of glory soar.

If thou my daring flight forbid,
The muse folds up her wings;
Or at thy word her slender reed
Attempts almighty things.

Her slender reed, inspired by thee,
Bids a new Eden grow,
With blooming life on every tree,
And spreads a heaven below.

She mocks the trumpet's loud alarms,
Filled with thy dreadful breath:
And calls the angelic hosts to arms,
To give the nations death.

But when she tastes her Saviour's love,
And feels the rapture strong,
Scarce the divinest harp above
Aims at a sweeter song.

DIVINE JUDGMENTS.

NOT from the dust my sorrows spring,

Nor drop my comforts from the lower skies: Let all the baneful planets shed

Their mingled curses on my head,

How vain their curses, if the eternal King
Look through the clouds and bless me with his eyes
Creatures, with all their boasted sway,

Are but his slaves and must obey;

They wait their orders from above,

And execute his word, the vengeance, or the love.

'Tis by a warrant from his hand,

The gentler gales are bound to sleep; The north wind blusters, and assumes command Over the desert and the deep;

Old Boreas with his freezing powers, Turns the earth iron, makes the ocean glass, Arrests the dancing rivulets as they pass,

And chains them moveless to their shores; The grazing ox lows to the gelid skies,

Walks o'er the marble meads with withering eyes, Walks o'er the solid lakes, snuffs up the wind, and dies.

Fly to the polar world, my song,

And mourn the pilgrims there, (a wretched throng!)

Seized and bound in rigid chains,

A troop of statues on the Russian plains,
And life stands frozen in the purple veins.

Atheist, forbear; no more blaspheme:
God has a thousand terrors in his name,
A thousand armies at command,
Waiting the signal of his hand,

And magazines of frost, and magazines of flame. Dress thee in steel to meet his wrath;

His sharp artillery from the north

Shall pierce thee to the soul, and shake thy mor. tal frame.

Sublime on winter's rugged wings

He rides in arms along the sky,
And scatters fate on swains and kings;

And flocks, and herds, and nations die;
While impious lips, profanely bold,

Grow pale; and, quivering at his dreadful cold,
Give their own blasphemies the lie.

The mischiefs that infest the earth, When the hot dog-star fires the realms on high, Drought, and disease, and cruel dearth,

Are but the flashes of a wrathful eye

From the incens'd divinity.

In vain our parching palates thirst,

For vital food in vain we cry,

And pant for vital breath;

The verdant fields are burnt to dust,

The sun has drunk the channels dry,

And all the air is death.

Ye scourges of our Maker's rod,

'Tis at his dread command, at his imperial nod, You deal your various plagues abroad.

Hail, whirlwinds, hurricanes, and floods,
That all the leafy standards strip,

And bear down with a mighty sweep

The riches of the fields and honours of the woods; Storms, that ravage o'er the deep,

And bury millions in the waves;

Earthquakes, that in midnight sleep

Turn cities into heaps, and make our beds our graves!

While you dispense your mortal harms,

'Tis the Creator's voice that sounds your loud

alarms,

When guilt, with louder cries, provokes a God to

arms.

O for a message from above

To bear my spirits up;

Some pledge of my Creator's love
To calm my terrors and support my hope!

Let waves and thunders mix and roar,
Be thou my God, and the whole world is mine:
While thou art sovereign, I'm secure;

I shall be rich till thou art poor;

For all I fear, and all I wish, heaven, earth, and

hell are thine.

EARTH AND HEAVEN.

HAST thou not seen, impatient boy,

Hast thou not read the solemn truth
That gray experience writes for giddy youth
On every mortal joy —

'Pleasure must be dash'd with pain?'
And yet, with heedless haste,

The thirsty boy repeats the taste,

Nor hearkens to despair, but tries the bowl again. The rills of pleasure never run sincere;

Earth has no unpolluted spring;

From the curs'd soil some dangerous taint they

bear;

So roses grow on thorns, and honey wears a sting.

In vain we seek a heaven below the sky;
The world has false, but flattering, charms:
Its distant joys show big in our esteem,
But lessen still as they draw near the eye;
In our embrace the visions die,
And when we grasp the airy forms,
We lose the pleasing dream.

Earth, with her scenes of gay delight,
Is but a landskip rudely drawn