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VERSES TO THE AUTHOR.

WOW let the Atheist tremble; Thou alone

Can bid his confcious heart the Godhead own. Whom shalt thou not reform? O thou haft seen, How God defcends to judge the fouls of men. Thou heard'st the sentence how the guilty mourn, Driven out from God, and never must return.

Yet more, behold ten thousand thunders fall,
And fudden vengeance wrap the flaming ball:
When nature funk, when every bolt was hurl'd,
Thou faw'ft the boundless ruins of the world.

When guilty Sodom felt the burning rain,
And fulphur fell on the devoted plain;
The patriarch thus, the fiery tempest past,
With pious horror view'd the defart waste;
The reftlefs fmoke ftill wav'd its curls around,
For ever rifing from the glowing ground.

But tell me, oh! what heavenly pleasure tell,
To think fo greatly, and describe so well!
How waft thou pleas'd the wondrous theme to try,
And find the thought of man could rise so high?
Beyond this world the labour to pursue,
And open all ETERNITY to view?

But thou art best delighted to rehearse
Heaven's holy dictates in exalted verfe:
O thou haft power the harden'd heart to warm,
To grieve, to raise, to terrify, to charm;
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To fix the foul on God; to teach the mind
To know the dignity of human-kind;
By ftricter rules well-govern'd life to scan,
And practife o'er the angel in the man.

Madg. Coll.
Oxon.

T. WARTON.

TO A LADY, WITH THE LAST DAY.

MADAM,

HE

ERE, facred truths, in lofty numbers told,
The profpect of a future state unfold:
The realms of night to mortal view display,
And the glad regions of eternal day.
This daring author fcorns, by vulgar ways
Of guilty wit, to merit worthlefs praife.
Full of her glorious theme, his towering Mufe,
With gen'rous zeal, a nobler fame pursues :
Religion's caufe her ravish'd heart inspires,
And with a thousand bright ideas fires;
Tranfports her quick, impatient, piercing eye,
O'er the ftrait limits of mortality,

To boundlefs orbs, and bids her fearless foar,
Where only Milton gain'd renown before;
Where various scenes alternately excite
Amazement, pity, terror, and delight.

Thus did the Mufes fing in early times,
Ere fkill'd to flatter vice, and varnish crimes:
Their lyres were tun'd to virtuous fongs alone,
And the chafte poet, and the priest, were one.

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