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You suppose you 're a genius, that ought to engage
The attention of wits, and the smiles of the age:
Would the wits of the age their opinion make known,
Why—every man thinks just the same of his own.

You imagine that Pope-but yourself you beguile
Would have wrote the same things, had he chose the same

style.

Delude not yourself with so fruitless a hope, –

Had he chose the same style, he had never been Pope,

You think of my muse with a friendly regard,
And rejoice in her author's esteem and reward;
But let not his glory your spirits elate,

When pleased with his honours, remember his fate.

FRAGMENT.

"Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him?"

PROUD, little Man, opinion's slave,

Aldborough, 1778.

Error's fond child, too duteous to be free,

Say, from the cradle to the grave,

Is not the earth thou tread'st too grand for thee?
This globe that turns thee, on her agile wheel
Moves by deep springs, which thou canst never feel:
Her day and night, her centre and her sun,
Untraced by thee, their annual courses run.
A busy fly, thou sharest the march divine,
And flattering fancy calls the motion thine:
Untaught how soon some hanging grave may burst,
And join thy flimsy substance to the dust.

THE RESURRECTION.

Aldborough, 1778.

THE wintry winds have ceased to blow,

And trembling leaves appear;
And fairest flowers succeed the snow,

And hail the infant year.

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Yes! wintry winds have ceased to blow,
And trembling leaves appear,

And Nature has her types to show
Throughout the varying year.

MY BIRTH-DAY

Aldborough, Dec. 24. 1778.

THROUGH a dull tract of woe, of dread,

The toiling year has pass'd and fled :
And, lo! in sad and pensive strain,
I sing my birth-day date again.

Trembling and poor, I saw the light,
New waking from unconscious night:
Trembling and poor I still remain
To meet unconscious night again.

Time in my pathway strews few flowers,
To cheer or cheat the weary hours;
And those few strangers, dear indeed,
Are choked, are check'd, by many a weed.

Beccles, 1779.

TO ELIZA.

THE Hebrew king, with spleen possest,
By David's harp was soothed to rest;
Yet, when the magic song was o'er,
The soft delusion charm'd no more:
The former fury fired the brain,
And every care return'd again.

But, had he known Eliza's skill
To bless the sense and bind the will,
To bid the gloom of care retire,

And fan the flame of fond desire,
Remembrance then had kept the strain,

And not a care return'd again.

LIFE.

Aldborough, 1779.

THINK ye the joys that fill our early day,

Are the poor prelude to some full repast.
Think you they promise? - ah! believe they pay;

-

The purest ever, they are oft the last.

The jovial swain that yokes the morning team,
And all the verdure of the field enjoys,
See him, how languid! when the noontide beam
Plays on his brow, and all his force destroys.
So 'tis with us, when, love and pleasure fled,

We at the summit of our hill arrive :

Lo! the gay lights of Youth are past - are dead,
But what still deepening clouds of Care survive!

THE SACRAMENT.

Aldborough, 1779

O! SACRED gift of God to man,

A faith that looks above,

And sees the deep amazing plan

Of sanctifying love.

Thou dear and yet tremendous God,
Whose glory pride reviles;

How did'st thou change thy awful rod
To pard'ning grace and smiles!

Shut up with sin, with shame, below,
I trust, this bondage past,

A great, a glorious change to know,
And to be bless'd at last.

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The verse is written, and the med'cine made;
Shall thus a boaster, with his fourfold powers,
In triumph scorn this sacred art of ours?

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