Let genius then despair to make thee great;
Nor flatter station: what is station high?
'Tis a proud mendicant; it boasts, and begs;
It begs an alms of homage from the throng,
And oft the throng denies its charity.

p. 150.

Shall man be proud to wear his livery?
And souls in ermine scorn a soul without ?.
Can place or lessen us, or aggrandize?
Pigmies are pigmies still, tho' perch'd on alps;
And pyramids are pyramids in vales.

Each man' makes his own stature, builds himself:
Virtue alone outbuilds the pyramids ;

Her monuments shall last, when Egypt's fall. p. 151.

Virtue, our present peace, our future prize.
Man's unprecarious, natural estate,

Improvable at will, in virtue lies;

Its tenure sure; its income is divine.

*

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, and endless train!
And murder 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,
Outragous want! both Indies cannot cure.
A competence is vital to content.

Much wealth is corpulence, if not disease;
Sick, or encumber'd, is our happiness.

A competence is all we can enjoy.

The rich man who denies it, proudly feigns;
Nor knows the wise are privy to the lie.

Who lives to nature, rarely can be poor;
Who lives to fancy, never can be rich.

'Tis immortality, 'tis that alone,

Amid life's pains, abasements, emptiness,

The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill.

To this godlike height

- p. 158.

p. 160.

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,
Unraptured, 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.

Th' aspiring soul

Ardent, and tremulous, like flame, ascends;

Zeal and humility, her wings to heaven.

p. 161.

p. 164.

Earth's cover'd o'er with proofs of souls immortal; And proofs of immortality forgot.

p. 167.

How little they, who think aught great below?
All our ambitions death defeats, but one;

And that it crowns,

p. 168.

Heav'n gives the needful, but neglected call.
What day, what hour, but knocks at human hearts,
To wake the soul to sense of future scenes? p. 175.

Resolve me why, the cottager, and king,

He whom sea-sever'd realms obey, and he
Who steals his whole dominion from the waste,
Repelling winter blasts with mud and straw,
Disquieted alike, draw sigh for sigh,

In fate so distant, in complaint so near? p. 176..

Blest Heav'n! avert

A bounded ardour for unbounded bliss ;

O for a bliss unbounded!

Far beneath

A soul immortal, is a mortal joy.

p. 177.

Beyond our plans of empire and renown,
Lies all that man with ardour should pursue;
And he who made him, bent him to the right.

Man's heart eats all things and is hungry still; More, more! the glutton cries: for something new So rages appetite, if man can't mount,

He will descend. He starves on the possest. p. 179.

Die for thy country?-Thou romantic fool!

Seize, seize the plank thyself, and let her sink;
Thy country! what to thee?

Can we conceive a disregard in Heaven,

What the worst perpetrate, or best endure?
This cannot be.

p. 180.

p. 184.

Hope exults;

And though much bitter in our cup is thrown,
Predominates, and gives the taste of Heaven.

We blush, detected in designs on praise,
Though for best deeds, and from the best of men ;

*

w;

Heav'n kindly gives our blood a moral flow
Bids it ascend the glowing cheek, and there
Upbraid that little heart's inglorious aim,
Which stoops to court a character from man;
While o'er us, in tremendous judgment sit,

Far more than man, with endless praise and blame.

Consult the ambitious, 'tis ambition's cure.

"And is this all ?" cry'd Cæsar at his height, Disgusted.

p. 187.

Not kings alone,

Each villager has his ambition too;

No sultan prouder than his fetter'd slave;
Slaves build their little Babylons of straw,

Thirst of applause calls public judgment in,
To poise our own, to keep an even scale,

*

*

Why freighted rich to dash against a rock ?

*

The man that blushes is not quité a brute,

*

Nature's first wish is endless happiness;
Annihilation is an after-thought,

A monstrous wish, unborn, 'till virtue dies. p. 204.

Duration gives importance; swells the price.
An angel, if a creature of a day,

What would he be? a trifle of no weight;
Or stand, or fall; no matter which; he's gone.
Because immortal, therefore is indulg'd

This strange regard of deities to dust.

p. 211.

Who would not give a trifle to prevent

What he would give a thousand worlds to cure?

p. 212.

What then is unbelief? 'Tis an exploit ;
A strenuous enterprize: to gain it, man
Must burst through ev'ry bar of common sense,
Of common shame, magnanimously wrong;
And what rewards the sturdy combatant?

His prize repentance; infamy his crown.