No robber then shall haunt the forest deep;

Secure the traveller may stroll or sleep:

No suicide rush madly on his fate;

Nor captive wistful look through prison grate :
No martyr clasp the stake, or clank the chain,
For liberty shall smile o'er all again :

No bloated drunkard then offend the eye;
The fatal poison none shall sell or buy:

The revel be forsaken, and the fane

Where lewdness dwelt be purified again:

No niggard soul be found, nor miser's heart,

To all shall charity her grace impart:

The spendthrift then shall curb his reckless haste,

And give to poverty, nor longer waste:

Justice her equal balances shall hold,

No hand be bribed or lured by tempting gold;

Sharing domestic bliss and harmony,

Each family a type of Heaven shall be:

Pride overbear no more, nor haughty eye
Flash in disdain; anger and malice die:
Truth, virtue, honor, innocence shall be

Bonds that bind all in blessed security :
Oh, day of wonders! haste thy tardy flight,
And burst in glory on our ravished sight!

6*

THE BRIGHTER AGE.

PART III.

NOT crimes alone that cut the social tie,

Nor woes that wring the heart with agony,
Shall take from earth their everlasting flight,
When brighter days shall chase the moral night;
The human soul, so prone to error's ways,

Illumined then by truth's effulgent rays,

Rescued from prejudice and ignorance,

Shall wake in wonder from its death-like trance.

Who can survey the errors, unbelief,

That chain th' immortal mind, and feel no grief? What millions still in moral midnight dwell;

No chart to guide-no beacon light to tell

Where the poor spirit, tempest-tossed and driven, May find at last a safe and peaceful haven !

Can nature be an index to their path,

To guide them here; or save from future wrath? Look at their miseries, mark their numerous woes, As generation after generation goes;

Why no improvement, why in misery still,

If nature elevates, or saves from ill?

Have nations, where the gospel never shone,

Forsaken deities of wood and stone;

Abandoned sensual lusts, and found the road
That leads to Heaven, to purity, to God?
Compare their present with their past estate;
Ask what has nature done to elevate?

Is not the mind as dark, the thought as low
As in past ages? And if this be so,

Can nature guide to truth, from error save,

Unloose the shackle, or redeem the slave?

If nature has not saved, she never will,
(Passing the future) e'en from present ill.

Who can conceive; what human tongue declare

The nameless woes that pagan nations share?
Their horrid rites, their bloody sacrifice,

Their gestures lewd, their uncouth images!

The son his sire destroys; the mother too,

As if a mother's love she never knew,

Flings from her arms the babe she nursed before, And as the floods, with fierce and savage roar,

Seize on their victim, reckless of its cries

She stands invoking bloody deities.

The mother in her turn must feel the brand: The blazing torch is in her offspring's hand. Linked to the dead she grasps the fatal stake,