VERSES TO THE AUTHOR.

N

OW let the Atheist tremble; Thou alone

Can bid his conscious heart the Godhead own. Whom shalt thou not reform ? O thou hast seen, How God descends 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 sudden vengeance wrap the flaming ball :
When nature sunk, when every bolt was hurld,
Thou saw'st the boundless ruins of the world.

When guilty Sodom felt the burning rain,
And sulphur fell on the devoted plain ;
The patriarch thus, the fiery tempeft past,
With pious horror view'd the defart waste;
The restless smoke still wav'd its curls around,
For ever rising from the glowing ground.

But tell me, oh! what heavenly pleasure tell,
To think so greatly, and describe fo well!
How wast thou pleas’d the wondrous theme to try,
And find the thought of man could rise fo 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 verse :
O thou haft power the harden'd heart to warm,
To grieve, to raise, to terrify, to charm;

:

To fix the soul on God; to teach the mind
To know the dignity of human-kind;
By stricter rules well-govern'd life to scan,
And practise o'er the angel in the man.

T. WARTON.

Madg. Coll.

Oxon,

TO A LADY, WITH THE LAST DAY.

MADAM,
H
ERE, sacred truths, in lofty numbers told,

The prospect 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 worthless praise.
Full of her glorious theme, his towering Muse,
With gen'rous zeal, à nobler fame pursues :
Religion's cause her ravish'd heart inspires,
And with a thousand bright ideas fires;
Transports her quick, impatient, piercing eye,
O'er the strait limits of mortality,
To boundless 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 Muses fing in early times,
Ere skill'd to flatter vice, and varnish crimes:
Their lyres were tun'd to virtuous songs alone,
And the chaste poet, and the priest, were one.

But