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Before the world was first conceiv'd,

Before the pregnant earth,

Call'd forth the mountains from her womb,
Who ftruggled to their birth;

Eternal God! thy early days
Beyond duration run,

Ere the first race of starting time
Was meafur'd by the fun.

We die; but future nations hear
Thy potent voice again,

Rife at the fummons, and restore
The perith'd race of man ;

Before thy comprehenfive fight,
Duration fleets away;

And rapid ages on the wing,
Fly swifter than a day.

As great Jehovah's piercing eyes

Eternity explore,

The longest æra is a night,

A period is an hour.

We at thy mighty call, O Lord,

Our fancy'd beings leave,

Rouz'd from the flattering dream of life,

To fleep within the grave.

Swift from their barrier to their goal

The rapid moments pass,

And leave poor man, for whom they run,

The emblem of the grass.

In the first morn of life it grows,
And lifts its verdant head,
At noon decays, at evening dies,
And withers in the mead.

We in the glories of thy face
Our fecret fins survey,

And fee how gloomy those appear,
How pure and radiant they.

To death as our appointed goal
Thy anger drives us on,

To that full period fix'd at length
This tale of life is done.

With winged speed, to stated bounds
And limits we must fly,
While feventy rolling funs compleat
Their circles in the sky.

Or if ten more around us roll,
'Tis labour, woe, and ftrife,

Till we at length are quite drawn down
To the laft dregs of life.

But who, O Lord, regards thy wrath,
Though dreadful and fevere ?
That wrath, whatever fear he feels,

Is equal to his fear.

So teach us, Lord, to count our days,

And eye their conftant race,

To measure what we want in time,

By wisdom, and by grace.

With us repent, and on our hearts

Thy choiceft graces shed,

And shower from thy celestial throne
Thy bleffings on our head.

Oh! may thy mercy crown us here,
And come without delay;

Then our whole courfe of life will seem

One glad triumphant day.

Now the bleft years of joy restore,
For thofe of grief and strife,
And with one pleasant drop allay
This bitter draught of life.

Thy wonders to the world display,
Thy fervants to adorn,

That may delight their future fons,
And children yet unborn;

Thy beams of majesty diffuse,

With them thy great commands,

And bid profperity attend

The labours of our hands.

The 139th PSA L M paraphrafed in Miltonick Verfe.

Dread Jehovah! thy all-piercing eyes Explore the motions of this mortal frame, This tenement of duft: Thy ftretching fight Surveys th' harmonious principles, that move

In beauteous rank and order, to inform
This cafk, and animated mass of clay.
Nor are the profpects of thy wondrous fight
To this terrestrial part of man confin'd;
But fhoot into his foul, and there difcern
'The first materials of unfashion'd thought,
Yet dim and undigested, till the mind,
Big with the tender images, expands,
And, fwelling, labours with th' ideal birth.
Where-e'er I move, thy cares pursue my feet
Attendant. When I drink the dews of fleep,
Stretch'd on my downy bed, and there enjoy
A fweet forgetfulness of all my toils,
Unfeen, thy fovereign prefence guards my sleep,
Wafts all the terrors of my dreams away,
Sooths all my foul, and foftens my repose.
Before conception can employ the tongue,
And mould the ductile images to found;
Before imagination stands display'd,
Thine eye the future eloquence can read,
Yet unarray'd with fpeech. Thou, mighty Lord!
Haft moulded man from his congenial duft,
And spoke him into being; while the clay,
Beneath thy forming hand, leap'd forth, infpir'd,
And started into life: through every part,
At thy command, the wheels of motion play'd.
But fuch exalted knowledge leaves below
And drops poor man from its fuperior sphere.
In vain, with reafon's ballaft, would he try
To ftem th' unfathomable depth; his bark
O'er-fets, and founders in the vast abyss.

7

Then

Then whither fhall the rapid fancy run,
Though in its full career, to speed my flight
From thy unbounded presence? which, alone,
Fills all the regions and extended space
Beyond the bounds of nature! Whither, Lord!
Shall my unrein'd imagination rove,

To leave behind thy fpirit, and out-fly

Its influence, which, with brooding wings, out-fpread
Hatch'd unfledg'd nature from the dark profound.
If mounted on my towering thoughts I climb
Into the heaven of heavens; I there behold
The blaze of thy unclouded majesty!

In the pure empyrean thee I view,

High thron'd above all height, thy radiant fhrine,
Throng'd with the proftrate feraphs, who receive
Beatitude paft utterance! If I plunge

Down to the gloom of Tartarus profound,
There too I find thee, in the lowest bounds
Of Erebus, and read thee, in the scenes
Of complicated wrath: I fee thee clad
In all the majefty of darkness there.

If, on the ruddy morning's purple wings
Up-born, with indefatigable course,

I feek the glowing borders of the Eaft,
Where the bright fan, emergent from the deeps,
With his firft glories gilds the fparkling feas,
And trembles o'er the waves; ev'n there, thy hand
Shall through the watery defert guide my course,
And o'er the broken furges pave my way,
While on the dreadful whirles I hang fecure,

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