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Souls, that can grasp whate'er th' Almighty made,
And wander wild thro' things impossible!
What wealth, in faculties of endless growth,
In quenchless passions violent to crave,
In liberty to chuse, in pow'r to reach,
And in duration (how thy riches rise!)
Duration to perpetuate-

-boundless bliss!

Ask you, what pow'r resides in feeble man
That bliss to gain? Is virtue's, then, unknown?
Virtue, our present peace, our future prize.
Man's unprecarious, natural estate,
Improveable at will, in virtue lies;

Its tenure sure; its income is divine.

High-built abundance, heap on heap! for what?
To breed new wants, and beggar us the more;
Then, make a richer scramble for the throng?
Soon as this feeble pulse, which leaps so long
Almost by miracle, is tir'd with play,
Like rubbish from disploding engines thrown,
Our magazines of hoarded trifles fly;
Fly diverse; fly to foreigners, to foes;
New masters court, and call the former fool
(How justly!) for dependance on their stay.
Wide scatter, first, our play-things; then, our dust.
Dost court abundance for the sake of peace?
Learn, and lament thy self-defeated scheme:
Riches enable to be richer still;

And, richer still, what mortal can resist?
Thus wealth (a cruel task-master!) enjoins
New toils, succeeding toils, an endless train!

And murders peace, which taught it first to shine.
The poor are half as wretched as the rich;
Whose proud and painful privilege it is,
At once, to bear a double load of woe;
To feel the stings of envy, and of want,
Outrageous want! both Indies cannot cure.
A competence is vital to content.
Much wealth is corpulence, if not disease;
Sick, or incumber'd, is our happiness,
A competence is all we can enjoy.

O be content, where heav'n can give no more!
More, like a flash of water from a lock,
Quickens our spirits' movement for an hour;
But soon its force is spent, nor rise our joys
Above our native temper's common stream.
Hence disappointment lurks in ev'ry prize,
As bees in flow'rs; and stings us with success.

The rich man, who denies it, proudly feigns;
Nor knows the wise are privy to the lye.
Much learning shews how little mortals know;
Much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy:
At best, it babies us with endless toys,
And keeps us children till we drop to dust.
As monkeys at a mirror stand amaz'd,
They fail to find what they so plainly see;
Thus men, in shining riches, see the face
Of happiness, nor know it is a shade;
But gaze, and touch, and peep, and peep again,
And wish, and wonder it is absent still.

How few can rescue opulence from want!

Who lives to nature, rarely can be poor;
Who lives to fancy, never can be rich.
Poor is the man in debt; the man of gold,
In debt to fortune, trembles at her pow'r.
The man of reason smiles at her, and death.
O what a patrimony this! A being

Of such inherent strength and majesty,

Not worlds possest can raise it; worlds destroy'd
Can't injure, which holds on its glorious course,
When thine, O Nature! ends; too blest to mourn
Creation's obsequies. What treasure, this!
The Monarch is a beggar to the Man.
Immortal! Ages past, yet nothing gone !
Morn without eve! a race without a goal!
Unshorten'd by progression infinite!
Futurity for ever future! Life

Beginning still where computation ends!
'Tis the description of a Deity!

'Tis the description of the meanest slave:
The meanest slave dares then LORENZO Scorn?
The meanest slave thy sov'reign glory shares.
Proud youth fastidious of the lower world!
Man's lawful pride includes humility;
Stoops to the lowest ; is too great to find
Inferiors; all immortal! brothers all!

Proprietors eternal of thy love.

IMMORTAL! What can strike the sense so strong,

As this the soul? It thunders to the thought;

Reason amazes; gratitude o'erwhelms;

No more we slumber on the brink of fate;

Rous'd at the sound, th' exulting soul ascends,
And breathes her native air; an air that feeds
Ambitions high, and fans ethereal fires:
Quick kindles all that is divine within us;
Nor leaves one loit'ring thought beneath the stars.
Has not LORENZO's bosom caught the flame?
Immortal! Were but one immortal, how

Would others envy! How would thrones adore!
Because 'tis common, is the blessing lost?
How this ties up the bounteous hand of heav'n!
O vain, vain, vain, all else! Eternity !
A glorious, and a needful refuge, that,
From vile imprisonment, in abject views.
'Tis immortality, 'tis that alone,
Amid life's pains, abasements, emptiness,
The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill.
That only, and that amply, this performs;
Lifts us above life's pains, her joys above;
Their terror those, and these their lustre lose;
Eternity depending covers all;

Eternity depending all atchieves ;

Sets earth at distance; casts her into shades Blends her distinctions; abrogates her pow'rs; The low, the lofty, joyous, and severe, Fortune's dread frowns, and fascinating smiles, Make one promiscuous and neglected heap, The man beneath; if I may call him man, Whom Immortality's full force inspires. Nothing terrestrial touches his high thought; Suns shine unseen, and thunders roll unheard,

By minds quite conscious of their high descent,
Their present province, and their future prize;
Divinely darting upward ev'ry wish,

Warm on the wing, in glorious absence lost!

Doubt you this truth? Why labours

your belief? If earth's whole orb by some due distanc'd eye Were seen at once, her tow'ring Alps would sink, And levell'd Atlas leave an even sphere.

Thus earth, and all that earthly minds admire,
Is swallow'd in Eternity's vast round.

To that stupendous view, when souls awake,
So large of late, so mountainous to man,
Time's toys subside; and equal all below.
Enthusiastic, this? Then all are weak,

But rank enthusiasts. To this godlike height
Some souls have soar'd; or martyrs ne'er had bled,
And all may do, what has by man been done.
Who, beaten by these sublunary storms,
Boundless, interminable joys can weigh,
Unraptur'd, unexalted, uninflam'd?

What slave unblest, who from to-morrow's dawn
Expects an empire? He forgets his chain,

And, thron'd in thought, his absent sceptre waves.
And what a sceptre waits us! what a throne !
Her own immense appointments to compute,
Or comprehend her high prerogatives,
In this her dark minority, how toils,
How vainly pants, the human soul divine!
Too great the bounty seems for earthly joy;
What heart but trembles at so strange a bliss?

In spite of all the truths the muse has sung,

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