Bid virtuous forrow fmile, fcorn'd merit chear,
And o'er affliction pour the generous tear.
Some, wildly liberal, fquander, not bestow,
And give unprais'd, because they give for fhow
To fanctify thy wealth, on worth employ
Thy gold, and to a blessing turn the toy :
Thus offerings from th' unjust pollute the fkies,
The good, turn fmoke into a facrifice.
As when an artift plans a favourite draught,
The structures rife refponfive to the thought;
A palace grows beneath his forming hands,
Or worthy of a God a temple stands :
Such is thy rising frame! by heaven design'd
A temple, worthy of a godlike mind;
Nobly adorn'd, and finish'd to display
A fuller beam of heaven's æthereal ray.
May all thy charms increafe, O lovely boy!
Spare them, ye pains, and age alone deftroy!
So fair thou art, that if great Cupid be
A child, the God might boaft to look like thee !
When young Iülus' form he deign'd to wear,
Such were his fimiles, and fuch his winning air:
Ev'n Venus might miftake thee for her own,
Did not thy eyes proclaim thee not her fon ;
Thence all the lightning of thy mother's flies,
A Cupid, grac'd with Cytherea's eyes!
Yet ah! how short a date the powers decree
To that bright frame of beauties and to thee?
Pafs a few days, and all those beauties fly!
Pass a few years, and thou alas! fhalt die !
Then all thy kindred, all thy friends fhall fee
With tears, what now thou art, and they must be;
A pale, cold, lifelefs lump of earth deplore!
Such fhalt thou be, and kings fhall be no more!
But oh when, ripe for death, fate calls thee hence, Sure lot of every mortal excellence!
When, pregnant as the womb, the teeming earth
Refigns thee quicken'd to thy fecond birth,
Rife, cloath'd with beauties that shall never die !
A faint on earth! an angel in the fky!
The Forty-third Chapter of Ecclefiafticus.
A PARAPHRASE.
HE fun that rolls his beamy orb on high, Pride of the world and glory of the sky, Illuftrious in his courfe, in bright array Marches along the heavens, and featters day
O'er earth, and o'er the main, and through th' ethe
He in the morn renews his radiant round,
And warms the fragrant bofom of the ground;
But ere the noon of day, in fiery gleams
He darts the glory of his blazing beams;
Beneath the burnings of his fultry ray,
Earth to her centre pierc'd admits the day;
Huge vales expand, where rivers roll'd before,
And leffen'd feas contract within their fhore.
O! Power fupreme! O! high above all height!
Thou gav'ft the fun to fhine, and thou art light:
Whether he falls or rifes in the skies,
He by thy voice is taught to fall or rife ;
Swiftly he moves, refulgent in his sphere,
And measures out the day, the month, and year;
He drives the hours along with flower pace,
The minutes rush away impetuous in their race:
He wakes the flowers that fleep within the earth,
And calls the fragrant infants out to birth;
The fragrant infants paint th' enamel'd vales,
And native incenfe loads the balmy gales,
The balmy gales the fragrancy convey
To heaven, and to their God an offering pay.
By thy command the moon, as day-light fades,
Lifts her broad circle in the deepening fhades;
Array'd in glory, and enthron'd in light,
She breaks the folemn terrors of the night;
Sweetly inconftant in her varying flame,
She changes ftill, another, yet the fame!
Now in decrease by flow degrees fhe shrouds
Her fading luftre in a veil of clouds ;
Now at increase, her gathering beams display
A blaze of light, and give a paler day;
'Ten thousand stars adorn her glittering train,
Fall when the falls, and rife with her again;
And o'er the deferts of the fky unfold
Their burning fpangles of fidereal gold:
Through the wide heavens she moves ferenely bright,
Queen of the gay attendants of the night;
Orb above orb in fweet confufion lies,
And with a bright diforder paints the skies.
The Lord of Nature fram'd the fhowery bow,'
Turn'd its gay arch, and bade its colours glow;
Its radiant circle compaffes the skies,
And sweetly the rich tinctures faint, and rise;
It bids the horrors of the ftorm to cease,
Adorns the clouds, and makes the tempest please.
He, when deep-rolling clouds blot out the day,
And thunderous ftorms a folemn gloom difplay;
Pours down a watery deluge from on high,
And opens all the fluices of the sky;
High o'er the fhores the rushing furge prevails,
Bursts o'er the plain, and roars along the vales :
Dafhing abruptly, dreadful down it comes,
Tumbling through rocks, and toffes, whirls and foams :
Mean time, from every region of the sky,
Red burning bolts in forky vengeance fly;
Dreadfully bright o'er feas and earth they glare,
And bursts of thunder rend th' encumber'd air;
At once the thunders of th` Almighty found,
Heaven lours, defcend the floods, and rocks the ground.
He gives the furious whirlwind wings to fly,
To rend the earth, and wheel along the sky;
In circling eddies whirl'd, it roars aloud,
Drives wave on wave, and dashes cloud on cloud;
Where'er it moves, it lays whole forefts low,
And at the blaft, eternal mountains bow;
While, tearing up the fands, in drifts they rife,
And half the deferts mount the burthen'd fkies.
He from aërial treasures downward pours
Sheets of unfully'd fnow in lucid showers,
Flake after flake, through air thick-wavering flies,
Till one vaft shining waste all nature lies;
Then the proud hills a virgin whiteness shed,
A dazzling brightnefs glitters from the mead :
The hoary trees reflect a filver fhow,
And groves beneath the lovely burden bow.
He from loofe vapours with an icy chain
Binds the round hail, and moulds the harden'd rain:
The ftony tempeft with a rushing found,
Beats the firm glebe, refulting from the ground;
Swiftly it falls, and as it falls invades
The rifing herb, or breaks the spreading blades :
While infant flowers that rais'd their bloomy heads,
Crush'd by its fury, fink into their beds.
When formy Winter from the frozen North
Borne on his icy chariot iffues forth;
The blafted groves their verdant pride refign,
And billows harden'd into crystal shine :
Sharp blows the rigour of the piercing winds,
And the proud floods as with a breaft plate binds :
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